Uncle Sal and the Polluted Prank (Episode 177)

Uncle Sal sat across from Alice in the Root Hog or Diner. He hadn't even ordered his Bloody Mary when Alice said, "Did you see the story about the vandalism at the high school?"

Uncle Sal shook his head and slipped three raw sugar packets into the pocket of his burnt orange guayabera shirt.

"It's a terrible story. A bunch of kids got together and just went crazy on this school. They broke windows, tore up the football field, even cut down some tree branches on the school campus."

Uncle Sal caught the attention of his favorite waitress Amelie and asked for his usual, which included a bacon and pepper jack omelet with extra crispy bacon and rye toast, and of course an extra-spicy Bloody Mary. "Dang shame. Whatever happened to harmless pranks like we used to pull in high school." He took a pull from his flask. "When I was a senior, a bunch of the other football players and I came up with a great one. Our rival was LaQuay High. Now, LaQuay has this big piece of granite right outside the stadium. All the players on their team touch the rock before they run onto the field. You know, just one of those sports superstitions."

Amelie delivered Uncle Sal's Bloody Mary. He tipped some vodka from his flask and stirred the drink with the celery. "Perfect. anyway, like I was sayin', we came up with a doozy. We decided we were gonna coat that dang LaQuay rock with tobacco juice."

Alice winced.

"Ya shoulda seen it. some of the guys like Buffalo Bennett, saved up their tobacco juice for a month. Ya never smelled anything so foul, I bet. Well, the night before the game, we take all our tobacco juice and we go dump it on that big hunk of granite. That ol' thing was dripping with spit. Those LaQuay players were in for a big surprise when they went to touch the rock before the game. Well, after we covered the whole thing with the old stuff, we decided to leave some fresh juice on it. So we passed around a big pouch of tobacco and we just kept spittin' on that thing. Until the cops showed up, anyway."

"The cops? Really?"

"Yeah. Turns out someone lives near the stadium saw us loitering near the school and called the cops."

"But what did they do?"

"They didn't do nothin'. I mean, what could they do? We were just a buncha kids standin' and spittin' on the rock of LaQuay."

This episode featured:
Otis "Red" Greene as Uncle Sal
Rowena Sohl as Alice
Rachel N. Branson as Amelie
and
Jellybean Merengue as one of the sugar packets.

Tune in next week when Uncle Sal says, "With all due respect, sir, I just spent 18 hours locked in a jail cell, on no formal charges, getting pulverized by drunken bigots!"