The Prune Exposed
The shabby churl affecting pompous airs on the unsinkable stone boat in Heights is none other than the Prune.
As a lifetime acquaintance of that charlatan let me tell you how he got that name. He’d asked me to maintain a strict confidence in relating his affairs to me, but in his case, a pledged secrecy is not merited.
On his way to the Charles Briggs School one day with “Lilly Lully”, a.k.a. Kenny Ollila, he was wearing a dark hooded winter coat. The hood came to a peak, like a monk’s cowl.
“Your head is shaped just like a prune,” Lilly Lully said to him. Come to think of it, it’s shaped like a prune even without the hood. This occurred in front of the house where his cousin Shadow Johnson, et al, used to live on Pewabic Street, circa 1947. The name stuck.
Prune’s family had moved from Laurium to Centennial Heights in 1939 and then back to Laurium in 1944. Upon moving to Heights in 1939, his mother told him to go out and meet some nice new friends. He gave it a try.
A splendid young cock he was strutting down Crooked Hill, clad in a Buster Brown outfit, short pants and all, wearing two-tone brown and white shoes with his hair neatly combed.
“Just where do you think you’re going, fancy pants,” he heard a voice say. It was Willis, the town bully who ate two soft-boiled eggs while the prune-to-be, at 48 pounds and outweighed by 12 pounds, could only gag down one.
“How would you like to be my friend?” the Prune timidly asked him.
Instead he got a good poke in the bread basket, sending him home bawling to his mother.
Other tribulations endured before he finally got street smarts are too numerous to mention, after which he got to participate in some good mischiefs, such as helping to set the bull rush swamp in Heights on fire each spring and tying cans to dogs’ tails.
He claimed to be smart and tried hard to impress others after the family moved back to Laurium.
“Do not boast, oh wretched one,” he was told by a contemporary.
One notable victory scored by this chump stands out in his mind to this very day.
There was a pear apple tree belonging to a neighbor directly behind the Torola barn on Tamarack Street, a Mrs. Mulligan, I believe, the Prune related to me. After a successful raid by the Prune and his cohorts, Mrs. Mulligan said to the Prune, “I know it’s you, Mukka, I can tell by that devilish grin. Score one for the Prune. Mukka was not present this time and stands absolved.
Many are the falsehoods uttered from the vulpine lips of that imposter. Yet he states one truth, a truth I can vouchsafe with certainty. He wishes all his old friends and relatives well—Pete, Ullen, Kirby, Shadow and Johnny Tauren to name but a few. He also wishes Henny Penny good luck at the Casita.
Author Anonymous
gawNewellWVaug102009
