An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you!

Tales from the crypt...

(Who doesn’t love a good crypt?)

An’ little Orphant Annie says when the blaze is blue,
An’ the lamp-wick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!

Hello, Bob, it’s me, one of your readers! I know it’s late, and there’s a thunderstorm, and you weren’t expecting me, but I wanted to talk to you. Whoa! Did you just see that lightning?

Oh, hello there. I’m sorry, have you been knocking for long? I thought it was just more trick-or-treaters. Come in and dry yourself off. Here, we still have lots of candy left.

Wow, full-size Kit Kats! Thanks! Am I interrupting anything?

Nah, I was just down in the crypt working on a new 5 a.m. Story. Here, you want a bite of my gecko sandwich?

Ewww, no thank you. I read your recent piece about – wait a minute, did you just say you were down in a crypt?

Yeah, I had it built, to use it for my, um, hobbies.

I’ll bet you paid for it with cryptocurrency? Get it?

No.

Okay. As I was saying, in your story about growing up in Indiana, you mentioned “Little Orphant Annie,” which was written in 1885 by James Whitcomb Riley, the so-called “Hoosier Poet.”

That’s right. That was the beginning of  the whole “Annie” franchise. It all started with Riley, a poet who is beloved by the whole world. When I was growing up in Indianapolis, we were taught that he was a national treasure.

That’s just it. He isn’t. I’m an American Lit major, and I never even heard of this Riley guy. This must have been a joke they played on unsuspecting Hoosier children. There is only one Hoosier writer who is a national treasure, and his name is Kurt Vonnegut.

Have you at least read “Little Orphant Annie”?

No, but I understand it’s about an exploited little orphan girl in 19th century Indiana who has to do a lot of housework, is that right?

No. You didn’t even read the first verse, did you? After a few innocent lines about washing cups and saucers, the poem quickly turns ghoulish. Annie considers it her job to scare the living crap out of the little children in the household, spinning yarns that will scar them for life. Her stories all end with this dire warning:

An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you
             Ef you
                Don’t
                     Watch
                      Out!

The tales Annie tells the children are very dark. Black holes in a grim Hoosier past. First, there is a cautionary tale about a little boy who wouldn’t say his prayers.

He goes upstairs, and his parents hear him screaming in terror. They search and search, but he’s gone. They even look up the chimney, to see if his little body has been stuffed up there, but they find nothing. The Goblins really got him.

Gosh, I’d find that pretty traumatic if I were a child!

It gets worse. Annie’s next verse is about this little girl who mocked her elders. You know what happened to her?

An’ thist as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide,
They was two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side,
An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ‘fore she knowed what she’s about!
An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you
             Ef you
                Don’t
                   Watch
                      Out!

(Author Kurt Vonnegut discovers his inner Riley)

That’s it? The girl gets a little sassy, and so she’s pulled through the ceiling  by two great big Black Things? That doesn’t seem fair.

Yep. It kind of makes you wonder what Annie had in store for children who smoked weed, got tattooed or read a banned book.

So the State of Indiana considered this to be fit reading for children? Show me more.

Once’t they was a red-head boy, wouldn’t eat his peas
And his mama say to him, “you think they grows on trees?”
But then, a clotty himmel-do came down and ate his head,
And afore we even know’ed it, the red-head boy was dead
You gots to eat yore succotash, yore kale, and sauerkraut,

Or, the Gobble-uns’ll git you
             Ef you
                Don’t                    

                Watch
                      Out!

My Lord, that’s the worst one yet! The moral is, eat your veggies, or die?

Actually, I wrote that last verse myself. It’s my hobby, writing poems in the Riley style. I think I’m pretty good at it.

I have to ask. Is this garbage translated from some foreign language? Because, I don’t recognize a lot of these words.

Riley wrote in “Hoosier Dialect.” It’s the secret language we speak when it’s just us Hoosiers around. Have a look at one of his most famous poems:

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,
 And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,
And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,
And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence…

   (Just keep on walking. Don’t look, don’t stop…)

Boy, they don’t write ‘em like that anymore, do they? Let’s get back to this crypt you mentioned. I presume it’s out back?

 Nah, it’s right here in the foyer. You’re standing next to it. What sense would a back yard crypt make? That’s where my wood-chipper belongs.

 I’m curious. What do you do when you’re not writing your 5 a.m. Stories?

My day job is with the State of Indiana. We have a whole department devoted to finding Riley deniers like you, wherever they lurk, and taking them out of circulation, so to speak.

We’ve got a multi-billion dollar Riley industry to protect by pretending the guy could really write! Now, come with me, son, it’s time for you to see my crypt. I think you’ll be surprised.

 No! Let go of me! I’ll scream bloody murder!

 It’s Halloween. You think anyone will notice a scream coming from a house that looks like this one?

Please, don’t hurt me! I can learn to like Riley! I’m liking him more already. Honest! He’s the best! Move over, William Shakespeare!

Maybe now you’ll recognize great poetry when it’s forced on you! Hey! Where you going? Come back here with my Kit Kat bars!

I don’t know why he was so afraid of my crypt. I was just going to show him my collection of every Mad Magazine going back to 1952. The first issue is worth $6,500!

Welp, I guess it’s time for me to finish my gecko sandwich, head upstairs and go to sleep, for I know, without a doubt,

The Gobble-uns’ll git me
             Ef I
                Don’t
                     Watch
                      Out!