So I Went to the Corner

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh man manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, what with all the racist spew cycling through our national discourse, lo, these days, like crap through a goose, I’m forced to remember a time past where I took a day off so as to think about, perhaps even mull, my vowel-challenged Polish immigrant forefathers and foremothers who had to cross a pretty gosh darn big ocean to find a country where they could serve as the dupa of humorous anecdotes to help cure an ailing nation ’cause laughter is the best medicine. To wit: How many Polish guys (Polacks for you’s unrehabilitated old-schoolers) does it take to go ice fishing? Seven. One to drill the hole in the ice and six to put the boat in. Ba-ding!

And on that day, I recall that I went to the place where I always do my best thinking, over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school on the wistful corner of Center & Humboldt, where self-medication sure beats the cost of the prescription variety, what the fock. So come along, again, if you feel like it, and like last time, you buy the first round. Let’s get going.

Julius: So I’m driving my 8-year-old granddaughter to school and I beep the horn by mistake. She looks at me and I say, “I did that by accident, sweetheart.” She says, “I know that, Grandpa.” I ask her how she could know and she says, “Because you didn't say ‘focking asshole!’ afterwards.”

Little Jimmy Iodine: You’s guy hear Wally Brzscziewiczynsky passed away?

Herbie: Who?

Little Jimmy Iodine: Wally Brzscziewiczynsky.

Herbie: You got to be jerking my beefaroni. I thought “Brzscziewiczynsky” had two “e’s” in it, what the fock.

Little Jimmy: You must be thinking of Teddy Brzescziewiczynsky. He’s still with us.

Ernie: So what happened to Wally? I heard he never drank a day in his life.

Julius: And that was his problem right there. I read a study somewheres that said when you pound a couple of ounces of booze every day, you can avoid keeling over from the Big One.

Emil: I’ve been saying that for years. The more you drink the longer you live. I spit on the tomb of the teetotalling knobshine.

Herbie: I never listen to those bullshit testimonials from geriatric geezers who say the reason they’re so old is ’cause they never touched a drop, and then before you know it, they go just like that at 95 or something. The knobs. If they knew their way around a bottle like they do a load of crap, they’d live to a hundred and focking twenty-five, the focksticks.

Ray: Speaking of focksticks…

Little Jimmy: Hey, Artie! Over here.

Art: Hey gents, what do you know, what do you hear.

Little Jimmy: I heard Wally Brzscziewiczynsky passed away.

Art: No kidding. And here I thought “Brzscziewiczynsky” had three “y’s” in it. What the fock happened?

Little Jimmy: Here’s what I know. I called Wally’s widow to express my sympathies and find out what happened. Artie, Wally was really getting up there in age, plus he never drank a day in his life.

Art: For crying out loud, that’s his problem right there. Good guy, though. I remember once he says he went to the DMV for his driver’s license and had to take an eye exam. The optician holds up a card with the letters “C Z W S Y N E S T A C Z” and asks Wally if he could read the card. Wally says, “Sure I can read it. I know the guy.”

Little Jimmy: So anyways, the widow says Wally had a heart attack last Sunday morning whilst they were having the hootchie-cootchie.

Ray: Laying the Polish pipe at his age—god bless him, but that’s just asking for trouble when you’re that old, I don’t care who you are.

Little Jimmy: That’s what I said, but she said that wasn’t a problem ’cause they stopped going at it like a couple of barnyard animals years ago. You know they lived over by St. Stanislaus there, and they figured out the best time to enjoy the pleasures in the connubial bed of the man and wife would be when the church bells would start to ring. She said it was the perfect rhythm, slow and even. Nothing too strenuous.

Art: I can see that. Makes sense—in on the Ding and out with the Dong, ain’a?

Little Jimmy: That’s right. Then she kind of choked up a little and said, “What with the nice weather, we had the windows open and I swear to god, Jimmy, he’d still be alive if that focking ice cream truck hadn’t come along.”

(Hey, I know you got to go, but thanks for letting us bend your ear again, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.)