The Old Gray Mare, She Ain't What She Used To Be

By Marlowe, Official Old Coot of and Envoy to Bryan Bishop’s Adventure Island

In my day, they didn’t have these fancy little countries. We had three countries! Russia, Prussia, and Mexico. That was it. And we didn’t have a problem with it. And we went to war all the time without the belly-achin’. It wasn’t ‘cause Taft could persuade us or nothin’. We just liked fightin! Unlike these kids today. Bunch of goddamn pussies!

Chuck Norris is on the TV again. She’s a handsome woman. If I was thirty years younger, I tell you what.

In my day, penny candy only cost a nickel. Cletus Walker and the Hang the Blacks Band was the hottest jazz ensemble in America. And every night, we would gather around the phonograph to hear the delightful sounds of Ma Rainey, who might have been a niggress. I ain’t certain. It was a simpler time, you see.

Little Billy Shatner. I remember him.

They named their currency after me. Know why? ‘Cause I invented the Monkees, that’s why. That was me. Don’t you pick up no newfangled history books and try to prove it wrong, ‘cause it ain’t. I saved Davey Jones from a wolf-man. We had wolf-men in those days. Mainly from Prussia. That’s how we had our monsters! Wolf-men in Prussia, and Frankensteins in Mexico. Russia was full of the Blob. I remember my first sight of it; it was just before Rudyard Kipling molested me.

Where’s my applesauce?

Johnny Appleseed was a commie. You could tell because he wanted to give every apples, even the blacks and the stupid, unwashed Slovakians. I killed me a Slovakian back in aught ‘25. I ain’t ashamed of it. He cried like a woman and begged for his life.

Confounded bushes won’t stay away from my driveway. Now they’re outside my house. The birds that come to my birdfeeder are too small to kill with a shotgun. All of my socks are too itchy. I blame Woodrow Wilson. He was a bull-dyke and a pinko.

Mussolini was innocent. It was a frame-job from Johnny Kennedy’s pappy.

My favorite song was “She’ll be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.” Few people know it was a campaign song used to make fun of Eleanor Roosevelt. There’s lots of mountains in Prussia, and we knew it was a matter of time until Eleanor just let all of those pointy-helmeted bastards in our front door, where they would sodomize our livestock and feed our children unpleasant meals.

I think Gladys shat in my wheelchair again. No, wait, that was me. Maybe someday, though. Well, least it’s warm for a little bit.

In my day, monkeys didn’t throw feces. They behaved. It was that goddamn Elvis Presley, riling all of them up, makin’ ‘em horny and whatnot. Him gyratin’, takin’ his tallywacker out on stage and wavin’ it around, it ain’t no good for nobody!

My family’s comin’ to pick me up any day now, and we’re all gonna eat pancakes and go hang some Indians. Goddamn Indians, stealin’ my cookware!

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Marlowe is a victim of the very rare “stage eight” of Alzheimer’s.