The Flaming Chicken and other Tales

By Bartholomew Thockmorton

What do a hairless dog, a flaming chicken and Mel Torme have in common? Visit Freddy and Bubba's service station outside of Ashville, North Carolina and find out! Burning poultry at its finest!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bartholomew Thockmorton
• Release date: Nov 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466173262

Bartholomew Thockmorton

Bartholomew James Thockmorton was born shortly after World War II in the burly, rural environs outside of Antsiranana. His ancestral family owned one of the larger cassava plantations, which his father managed. A small army of poor, itinerate laborers worked the fields and walked the cows when necessary. Although his mother was a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse for the kafirs working the plantation, she often closed school and helped with the family business. Before Bartholomew entered the first grade, his immediate family emigrated to the Americas seeking political asylum during a brief period of political unrest in their home province. Unwilling to enroll her son in a foreign school system, Misses Thockmorton home schooled young Bartholomew, teaching him to read using comic books and by continual recitations off the labels of various and sundry commercial products. This unorthodox methodology is credited to the boy's almost astounding ability to recall a staggering amount of obscure trivia and minutiae. Additionally, his mother's use of American television as an inexpensive and trusted babysitter led to the boy's later talent of usually being the only person in an occupied room that can recall the name of the foreign actor portraying the Cisco Kid (Duncan Renaldo). When the family returned home, Bartholomew enrolled in an academy for gifted children where he studied particle physics and animal husbandry. On his 18th birthday, he took a menial position aboard a tramp steamer, using it as free and convenient passage to the mother country. Upon arrival, he promptly used his undeserved citizenship to enlist in the Royal Navy, where his strapping physique and precise ability to speak intelligently while using large, unusual words led to his serendipitous assignment to special ops. Subsequently, Lieutenant Thockmorton participated in numerous clandestine campaigns abroad and on a multitude of contentious fronts. Completing his enlistment, he promptly returned home to assist with the family business. It was during this period, after a night of unrestrained drinking with a group of chums from his military days, that the still young Bartholomew accepted a wager to attempt a crossing of equatorial Africa with nothing more than the first 25-issues of Mark Evaniner's Groo the Wanderer. Which he did, with splendid aplomb. After a long and unsuccessful life of struggling to blend with the great, unwashed masses, Master Thockmorton now...

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The Flaming Chicken and Other Tales

By Bartholomew Thockmorton

Copyright 2011 Bartholomew Thockmorton

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment; it may not be re-sold or given away to friends, family or acquaintances. And especially not to those people standing in the middle of the Los Angeles River, with those greasy, cardboard signs with crayon lettering saying Weel cleen yer windshield fer kash or fud or used loteary tickkets. If you want to give them money (or food) please feel free to do so…charity is good for the soul! I wouldn’t recommend the companionship part though, since there is no telling where they’ve been, or whom they’ve been with! I mean...what if they’ve been with Ashton Kutcher? Wouldn’t that be terrible? Talk about a horror story! If you feel compelled, or in dire need thereof, to share this book with others, please purchase an additional copy for each and every recipient. In fact, buy ten copies for each of them…that way, if they lose one, they’ll still have nine more for backup! You just can’t be too careful! Just giving free advice, you see…not like I’m in this for the money or anything. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy…or twenty…whatever. Wait a minute! This story is free! Never mind...give it to whomever you wish! In fact, that’s an order recruit! Drop down and give me TEN! Hut! Thank you for respecting the hard work of Bartholomew Thockmorton.

And wash between your toes, gosh-darnit!

This work is dedicated to Mama, who gave me my life-long love for Gil Kane.

I miss you.

If you enjoy this story, please check out some of my other yarns at:

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Thockmortonterritory

Table of Contents

Foreword

One: When Mel Came To Town

Two: Patches the Dog

Three: The Flaming Chicken

The Flaming Chicken and Other Tales

This is more or less a true story about Freddy and Bubba, life-long friends who met while living in the suburbs of Arlington, Virginia. It was the late Fifties, and America still struggled with the social evolution that followed the Second World War. It was serendipity they were such