Royer’s Madcap Experiences: The Onion Ring Trailer
The lands of the carnival were brown prairie– cleared to accommodate the various structures. But nearest the gravel parking lot, as the ground began to slope a little, was the Onion Ring Trailer.
The heat was terrible. I passed many people from town, dressed in slacks and shirts, the women in house dresses. So many, not being able to stand the thousand-long line to the one portable toilet, simply urinated where they stood. The children carried cones filled with strange blue ice substances.
I had eaten 19 cotton-candies– my stomach was vastly confused and there was a feeling of great turbulence. I needed something to soak up the cotton-candies and the onion ring trailer instantly beckoned.
A doctor had told me once:
“Eat some fried onion rings. That will settle your stomach.”
I never forgot that sage advice.
PART TWO
This was a part of the lot poorly-lighted, bereft– empty picnic tables, empty barrels. Someone had overturned an abandoned old incinerator, the kind that abuts right up to your building, releases the smell of garbages [sic] into the air directly surrounding your home, office, or business. The positionable “clean-out” doors were swung open in a frank way, there was a skull inside.
I was now beneath the lights of the onion ring trailer. The proprietor was a morbid, putrid creature– I wanted to view his death instantly but he was all that stood between me and those rings.
The sign said “FRESH DAILY”.
“Is that true?” I demanded.
He seemed far away. Finally- “Huh? Wuzzit? Fuckin’ onion rings, man.”
“I’d like five tureens.”
He paused. “How about if I just put them in a barrel?”
“OK. I would like that.”
He filled the barrel with rings and I paid only $1.75 and five carnival tickets. I smothered them in ketchup and then, when the creature turned his back, I surreptitiously placed all the condiment containers at the top of the barrel. I was going to stick it to this creature. I was going to make him responsible. I desired to know that he would be fired, that others would say Look at this god damn lardass. I’m not hiring this god damn lardass. I desired him to sleep in barns, to make his way quietly across pitch-black countryside and to finally be shot down, for trespassing as he attempted to gingerly cross an electrified fence.
I rolled the barrel over to the picnic table. It was then that a figure emerged from the shadows. I cannot say that he was an official. I just know that he made me leave my barrel where it stood and he walked me to a place in deep darkness near the back of the gravel lot and then he punched me until I fainted.
When I woke up, I was in the Foontz-Flonnaise Home of Abundant Senseless, a notable mental institution.
LETTER SACK