“There I was, standing there, without shoes, on my first day on the job. What would you have done?”
The others at the table downed their drinks, muttering about how these foreigners would bring only wreck and ruin to the country, when one of them asked me, “Are you certain, it was only shoes, you were lacking? Usually when I have dreams like that, I’m standing there, Buck Naked, with God and all of his Buds as my witness, when suddenly the Penguin next to me yells, “I…
“Bob would never do something like that” I added, but sensed that this was a rather hostile crowd, as bar patrons go that is.
“But why”, asked Lola, who by now was almost sitting upright in bed, where we had been, well, discussing the possibilities about…well, it actually had been my suggestion, but when she measured the distance between the bed and the…well, she just shook her head….well, it wasn’t exactly her head, that she shook, but…
“But why” asked Lola, who by now was wondering why anyone in their Right Mind would have dreamed about not wearing shoes on their first day on the job and all, but she said that, “I…
“It didn’t matter anyway, just like I told the fellows at the Peculiar Penguin Bar in Downtown Soldotna, because they made me, and of course Bob, feel welcome and all, regardless of my shoe-less appearance.”
One of the fellows nearby said, “What if it were an omen?” which caused the others to shake their heads, and wonder if it had been just another curse brought upon them by the Canadians, who were…
“Did you just put in that part about the Canadians, or are there more of your ilk on this Peninsula?” asked Lola, while she thumbed through her latest travel book, “Shoe-less Excursions in Canada”.
“I just nudged Bob, indicating that we should leave that bar before things got ugly, and especially after that fellow that spoke of an omen, with him saying, “Why, we can look it up in the Kenai Book of Wisdom! That has answers to everything under the Alaskan Winter Sun!”
“Well, that really got them riled up, what with them blowing into their Penguin Whistles and banging the tables with those longish poles that got into the most narrow of all crevices, poking and prying until they…”
Bob just stopped me saying, and rightly so, that we should wait to hear what was in that book, so we just sat there a bit more, nursing our drinks, when the fellow read the following passage, “In the wilds of the Kenai, there…
Lola was getting just a bit cold, lying there in bed wearing her sexy socks, but lacking just about anything else a warm-blooded Alaskan Male could think of! And believe you me, they can really think up a storm, if need be!
“Ahem”, he said suddenly, throwing us his steely glare in the light of the aluminum lamps, saying “In the wilds of the Kenai, there are those, who feel the need to expose their feet to the rest of the population.”
The others at the tables started making signs of the Penguin Curse, using nothing else but their…..with their……., but we don’t need all of the details, now do we?
Lola agreed. If she wanted to lie in bed only wearing her sexy socks, then it wasn’t necessary to make that common knowledge. Their house shuddered a bit, as the relentless winter storms continued to pound the outside walls, as the Penguins huddled in their pens. Bob managed to rally round them, telling them a tale of intrigue and woe, taken directly from the Kenai Book of Wisdom, under the Chapter called, “Interesting Penguin habits of the Lower Kenai….
The Penguin Whistles were just about too much to take, that’s what I thought anyway, so I and of course Bob as well, millimetered our way towards the door, when one of them stood up and yelled, “Hey You! Why didn’t you show up to your first day of work?”
The bar got quiet, deathly quiet, with all eyes focused on me, and of course Bob too.
The fellow, held in hat in his hand saying, “If you didn’t know it by now, this is a Wake in honor of the new man on the job today! We was all grieving about that poor fellow, who was on the way to work, when some big Semi-driver, most likely some foreigner from Anchorage – muttering among the men, who were starting to stand up to – Someone who run his sorry butt down, before he was to show up, and put his nose to the grindstone with the rest of us!”
“I’m telling you Lola. What with the Kenai Book of Wisdom, and the other unfortunate chain of events that day working against me, I was afraid, and of course, Bob was as well, that those fellows would…
Bob had just finished his story to the others, who all ran around the pen, tooting on their Penguin Whistles, while they-
“-and you know what the point of this story is Lola?”
Lola had fallen asleep again, not worrying about the unruly mob in someone elses dream, in some fictive bar, ostensibly located in the lovely Garden City of Soldotna!
“It seems that those Penguin Whistles only get us Humans riled up, almost like a Dog Whistle would do! Bob just turned to me as we got to the door and showed me one of those devilish things, with writing on it that said: “Made with devilish intent, by the Bob Penguin Company of Homer, Alaska……
Lola's Travels in Alaska 