Short Stories To Tickle Your Funnybone

Short Stories To Tickle Your Funnybone
Excerpts from the Lady Justice Mystery/Comedy
Series
Copyright January, 2013 by Robert Thornhill
All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way, by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or
otherwise without prior permission of the author except
as provided by USA copyright law.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, incidents and
entities
included in the story
are products
of
the
author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual
persons, events and entities is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Peg Thornhill
1.
Fiction, Humorous
2.
Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General

One year, Maggie and I decided to host the
traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
Although we
were
both in our sixties,
neither of us had done it before, but how hard
could it be. I'd watched my mom and grandma do
it for years.
The special day finally arrived.
“Ok, I’m ready to tackle this beast,” I
proclaimed, and I ripped into the shrink-wrap.
After the bird was fully exposed, I noticed
the corner of a bag sticking out of his rear end.
“Hey, somebody hid something inside our
turkey,” I exclaimed.
Maggie came over to take a look. “Oh
silly, nobody hid anything. Those are the giblets.”
“The what?”
“Giblets! You know, some of the inside
parts of the turkey.”
“What am I supposed to do with them?”
“Well, I think you can make things with
them, like stuffing and gravy.”
“Hold on a minute. I don’t EVER
remember Grandma putting giblets in her gravy.
That just doesn’t sound right.”
So
I
dried
my
hands,
grabbed
my
dictionary and looked up‘giblets’. According to
Mr. Webster, “giblets are the edible offal of a fowl
including
the
heart, gizzard, liver and other
visceral organs.”
I nearly fainted.
“I’m sorry Maggie, but no giblets will ever
be eaten in my house or in my presence. I hope
that’s not a deal breaker.”
“I think I can live with that,” she replied.
I returned to the turkey, shoved my hand
up his butt and pulled out the bag of giblets. For
curiosity’s sake, I cut open the bag to take a look.
I shouldn’t have done that. There’s just
some things that ought not be seen.
Sure enough, the inner plumbing of Tom
Turkey spewed forth onto my countertop --- and
something else too.
A stiff
piece
of grisly
meat about six
inches long sat there staring me in the face.
“Holy Crap!” I exclaimed. “Come here and
look at this! That looks like --- No! Surely they
wouldn’t put a turkey’s ----in the bag!”
“No, silly,” Maggie replied. “That’s his
neck.”
“This is just WRONG in so many ways.”
After disposing of the offending offal, I
turned my attention to the cooking instructions I
had pulled off the Internet.
“How To Cook A Turkey in 3 Easy Steps.”
Step 1: Preheat oven to 325 degrees and
select a
3-4 inch-deep
roaster
pan with lid.
Cooking time: 15 minutes per pound.
Step one seems pretty easy.
Step 2: For
golden brown skin, spread
butter evenly and season to taste with salt, pepper,
garlic or rosemary.
No problem.
I dipped into the ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not
Butter’ tub and under Maggie’s watchful eye,
started lathering the bird’s ample breasts.
“Hmmm, this feels kind of good,” I
murmured and gave Maggie my ‘sly, whadda you
think’ look.
“Don’t even THINK about it, Buster,” she
shot back.
“OK, OK, I’ll be good. Can you get me the
salt and pepper and see what’s in my spice rack?”
“Nothing here but crab boil and taco
seasoning. But you do have salt and pepper.”
“Well it says ‘season to taste’ and we both
love
tacos.
How
about
we
make
Mexicali
Turkey?”
I’ll bet nobody’s tried that before.
So I liberally coated the buttered breasts
with salt, pepper and Old El Paso, and he was
ready for Step 3, bake and baste.
“What about the stuffing? Aren’t you
going to make stuffing?”
“O yea, stuffing. I almost forgot. How do
you make it?”
Seeing the blank look on Maggie’s face, I
muttered, “Well, back to the Internet.”
After an exhaustive search, we discovered
there were two methods of stuffing preparation,
pan and bird.
We went back to the kitchen and took a
look up Tom’s rear end.
“Isn’t that where the offal came from?” I
asked.
Getting an affirmative nod from Maggie, I
made an executive decision on the spot.
“Pan it is!” I said.
Maggie didn’t argue.
Besides, I can’t ever remember my
grandma digging stuffing out of the turkey’s butt.
Satisfied with our preparation thus far, we
plopped the bird in the
oven and turned our
attention to the stuffing.
“OK, it says to chop up onion and celery
and sauté in melted butter. Let’s see what’s in the
vegetable bin.”
I had an onion, but the only other green
thing was a head of lettuce.
“Aren’t celery and lettuce in the same food
group?” I asked. “I mean they’re both green and
both a vegetable.”
How can you argue with logic like that?
So we chopped up the onion and lettuce
and while they were boiling in the butter, we
checked out the
next ingredient, bread. More
precisely, stuffing bread.
“What’s stuffing bread?”
Another blank look.
I checked the breadbox and found a loaf of
Wonder White Bread fortified with vitamins and
minerals.
“If we use this in our stuffing, doesn’t it
then become ‘stuffing bread’ by definition?”
Again, how can you argue with the logic?
So we cut the Wonder Bread in little cubes
and added them to our boiling vegetable mix per
the instructions.
Next step, ‘add two cups of stock’.
“What’s stock?”
“Well, I think it’s some kind of meat juice
or gravy that comes in a can. I remember seeing
cans of ‘beef stock’ and ‘chicken stock’ on the
grocery shelf next to the soups.”
We looked in the cabinet and found a can
of Campbell’s Beef Barley soup and a can of
Campbell’s Creamy Chicken Noodle soup.
“Since this is a fowl dish, I vote we go
with the chicken noodle.”
More culinary logic.
We opened the can and sure enough there
was a creamy liquid.
“Looks like stock to me,” I said.
“Are you going to drain it?”
“Why? Aren’t bread and noodles almost
the same thing? We’ve got a huge crowd coming
today. This will add a little more body to the
dish.”
So into the pan went the soup.
The
final
step
was
to
add
poultry
seasoning.
Having already exposed the deficiencies in
my spice rack, we knew the only thing left was
crab boil.
We looked at each other.
“What do you think?”
“Well, it’s going to be pretty bland without
some kind of seasoning.”
So into the pot it went.
After mixing the gooey mess, we plopped
it in a baking pan. Ready for the oven.
So far, so good.
The remainder of the morning was spent
with last minute cleaning, showering, shaving and
make-up sandwiched around our hourly basting
duties.
The
directions said to remove the lid
during the final hour of cooking to ensure a golden
brown skin. So off came the lid.
Our creative recipes had produced a rather
unusual aroma
that permeated
the
apartment.
There was the essence of Taco Bell laced with a
hint of Joe’s Crab Shack. Not exactly what I
remembered from Grandma’s kitchen.
By 12:30, it was time for the bird to come
out of the oven.
Beautiful!
Guests would be arriving soon, so it was
time for the final preparations.
Then it hit me.
GRAVY!
I can’t ever remember a Thanksgiving
without turkey gravy.
OK, think. How did Grandma make gravy?
I
remembered
seeing
her
add
three
ingredients, milk, flour and the greasy stuff out of
the bottom of the turkey pan. We have all of that -
- I think.
We pulled Tom out of the pan and several
inches of rich, greasy turkey broth covered the
bottom of the pan.
I went to the cabinet to look for flour and
came up empty.I couldn’t remember when I had
bought flour. I don’t bake.
But there on the shelf, next to my Top
Ramen Noodles was my answer --- Aunt Jemima.
OK, so it’s pancake mix, but flour is flour,
right?
I kept dumping Aunt Jemima in the turkey
grease until I had a thick brown paste. I put the
pan on the stove and added milk. I was ready to
cook it down to a rich smooth texture. It made my
mouth water.
At last everything was ready.
Our guests had arrived, each with their
own special dish, and sat expectantly awaiting the
holiday feast.
I looked at the food on the table: Mexicali
turkey: Wonderbread crab paste: Aunt Jemima
gravy; hockey puck rolls, chitlins, and enough
pumpkin pie with strawberry Cool Whip to feed
the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
And, of course, we had the perfect wine
paring, Arbor Mist. It goes good with everything.
Not exactly the traditional Thanksgiving I
remembered from my youth, but I wouldn’t have
traded it for anything in the world.
*********************************
An excerpt from
Lady Justice and the Lost
Tapes
http://booksbybob.com/lady-justice-andthe-lost-tapes_307.html

Sometimes, no matter how much you think
you know about a person, they will surprise the
heck out of you.

My sweetie, with no fanfare, and in her
quiet unassuming way, had been gently steering
me into a healthier lifestyle.

While I hadn't violently resisted, I hadn't
exactly embraced the idea either.
Maybe it was time to give it a try.
I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
"Thanks for caring," I said.
"You're welcome," she replied.
I
had
thought
that
the
path
to
an
enlightened way of living was not so bad: just eat
healthier food and take a few pills each day, but I
soon discovered that I had only taken the first few
baby steps in my transformation.
One evening we had just polished off a
large pepperoni lover’s from Pizza Hut. I was
wiping the grease off my fingers when Maggie
delivered her next salvo in my lifestyle overhaul.
“Walt, we eat entirely too much meat and
grease. We need to do a colon cleanse.”
“Say what?”
“A colon cleanse. Over the years especially
as we grow older, mucous and fecal material build
up in your colon.”
I looked at the glom clinging to the bottom
of the pizza carton. That thought wasn’t how I
wanted to finish off my meal.
“There’s nothing wrong with my colon.”
“Oh really? And just how do you know
that?”
“Well, everything I eat seems to come
out—eventually.”
“Experts say you should clean your colon
of mucous, fecal matter, and parasites every year.
Have you ever done it?”
“Parasites? What are you talking about?”
“You know, tapeworms, stuff like that.”
I looked at a piece of stringy cheese on the
side of the box and noticed a queasy feeling in my
stomach.
“Is this all really necessary?”
“Let me tell you a story. When Elvis died,
they did an autopsy. His colon was filled with over
seventy
pounds of impacted fecal material—
mostly old cheeseburgers and fries.”
This was way more information than I
wanted to hear about my most cherished idol. “So
how does this cleanse thing work?”
She produced a bottle of pills. I guess it
was a foregone conclusion that we were both
going to be cleansed
.
“We just take five of these at bedtime, and
in the morning nature will take its course.”
Dutifully, I swallowed the pills.
At 6:00 a.m. the next morning, I had a rude
awakening. It felt as if a volcano was about to
erupt in my
lower
regions. Fortunately,
the
bathroom wasn’t far, and I waddled toward it with
my cheeks clinched shut.
My butt hit the seat just in time, and in the
next three minutes everything I had ever eaten
from last night’s pizza to the hot dogs I ate after
my senior prom came pouring out. I staggered
from the bathroom, a beaten man.
Maggie greeted me in the kitchen.
“Now doesn’t that feel better?”
Actually, it felt like my asshole was on
fire, but I smiled and said, “Yes! That was just
grand!”
I opened my paper, drank my coffee, and
ate my
cereal, but before
I
had finished the
comics, the fiber kicked in. I felt another rumbling
in my
stomach
and made
a
beeline
for
the
bathroom.
I was in the midst of another colon scourge
when I heard the phone ring.
“Oh, swell. Here I am pouring out my guts,
and I have to share the experience with someone
on the line. This day just isn’t starting well.”
I
opened the door just far enough for
Maggie to hand me the phone. I thought I heard
her cough and mutter, “Oh my God!”
“This is Walt.”
“Ox here. I was so excited about what we
learned from Dr. Pearson I just couldn’t sleep. Can
I pick you up a half hour early?”
“Just then, an enormous gas bubble
reverberated from the porcelain throne.
“What was that noise?”
“Never mind. Where are you now?”
“I’m actually on the way.”
“Give me a few minutes. I’m just --- uhh -
-finishing up a project I started last night.”
By the time Ox arrived, I thought I had
everything under control, but two blocks from the
apartment, mother nature struck again.
“Ox! Quick! Pull into that 7-Eleven!”
“What’s the emergency?”
“If you don’t pull over, we’ll be giving our
car to Hazmat!”
After one final cleanse, I emerged from the
can and saw an elderly gentleman who had been
patiently waiting for his turn.
As I
was walking
away, I
heard him
mutter, “Good Lord!”
****************************************
An excerpt from the
Lady
Justice
and the
Avenging Angels
http://booksbybob.com/lady-justice-and-theavenging-angels_336.html