Kiss My McCracken: and other original tales in the life of Winston Weston

By Ernest S. Martin

What could possibly go wrong when winning tickets to the Antiques Road Show?

What should you do when police arrive at the beach where you and a hundred other people are swimming nude?

How concerned should you be if the Giza camel on which you are riding on is overly virile, highly temperamental and highly aggressive?

Can W

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ernest S. Martin
• Release date: Sep 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9780692166963

Book preview

KISS MY MCCRACKEN

I was a grateful guest at the Antiques Road Show last year but alas, my psycho-analyst is the one who still seems to be recovering from that curiously maddening calamity.

You see a year earlier, my dear friend and confidante Katie McCracken and I had both ventured online to try and win the rare and elusive tickets to the one and only national antique appraising and traveling exposition. One much anticipated year later, the rare and elusive show did indeed arrive in our curiously happy town. By the interest this one day event drew, one might have thought the likes of Barnum and Bailey, Minnie Pearl and Rue Paul were all performing together on stage at the downtown Wishy-Washy Springs Convention Center!

Kate and her hulking husband Kilroy McCracken, sold almost antiques and not so rare collectables at a premium price. They were landed Dubliners by birth and were raised to apprise and appraise interesting, rare and unique items of yore, found more readily in the old world than the new.

Lady Katie did first I meet, seemingly a life time ago when I worked part time for her and her husband, who were then recently arrived and much the indebted purveyors of the classically new, yet vintage nouveau treasure trove of a warehouse aptly named the Chic Antiques & Erin-go-Bragh Barn on the outskirts of Wishy-Washy Springs. The antiques part of the newly renovated barn harbored all sorts of collectibles and soon to be antiques, while the Eringo-Bragh side of the establishment specialized in intimate apparel for belligerently buxom women.

The now moderately populated city of Wishy-Washy Springs was long known for its curative spring water and its local vineyards of the indigenous North American Norton grape variety, which when matured and fermented, offered reasonably tasty wine for a thriving if not reasonably juiced up municipality. Early on, Wishy-Washy Springs was the preeminent destination for anyone and everyone who had acquired any type of physical affliction be it natal or post, believing that the curative spring waters bubbling up through the ground would bring almost instant relief to all who drank and/or immersed themselves in the clear, cold and sparkling water.

In the early to mid 1800’s, certain native tribes in the area had first shared their intimate knowledge of the healing springs with interloping and aggressive settlers (right before their untimely but thoughtful removal to a beautiful reservation upstate), that the mineral waters found there were good at curing anyone who was accursed with certain afflictions such as being: Dim-Eyed, Dim-Witted, Jimmy-Legged, known to be Buck-Toothed or Shark-Gobbed, Gammy Handed, Bowl-Legged, Bowled over, Overly-Goitered, Underly-Goitered, or anyone suffering from Chronic-Stinky-Feet, Dry-Socket (eye or tooth), was Knock-Kneed, had ever been skunk bitten, possessed a forked tongue or was Pigeon-Toed, amongst other natural aspects of nature’s morbid sense of conflicted humor.

Having nowhere else to go and coming to realize that the curative spring waters weren’t so curative after all, these hopeful but pillaged people lingered and settled the area, creating this urban legend of a town, where everyone who was a little different from everyone else was always welcome, by which, Always Welcome-Never Leave became the town’s ubiquitous motto.

And so it came to pass, that most of the eager immigrants who had originally come to the area for the deliverance from their physical sufferings (if not for the fresh water and mind numbing wine), remained and intermarried. With each successive generation, the close knit gene pool of afflicted strains soon found children mutating combinational D.N.A. sequences at an alarming rate, creating new sets of compelling physical societal markers and an abundant combination of gripping genetic traits. After a hundred years or so, a significant portion of the town’s population had come to see themselves as normal as anyone else in the country, so long as they didn’t leave the metropolitan area of Wishy-Washy Springs, anyway.

In the early twentieth century, this genetically altered city had become a hallmark of human plurality, its uninhibited inhabitants internationally known, as well as finding an appreciable financial windfall, being as it was an avid recruiting station for traveling circuses.

While still in apprenticeship to my gregarious Gaelic couple, I earnestly endeavored to learn all that I could concerning the business of buying, transforming and then selling almost antiques and collectibles; from how to create the look of age by beating a three month old table with a heavy linked chain, to roughening, sandpapering and glaze painting a secondhand chair, to get that 1930’s depression era looking patina; all the while hoping against hope that someday I too would be able to attend the Antiques Road Show.

Receiving Road Show tickets was by lottery only. Five thousand people had registered online, but only half of that number was given tickets to attend. Did I get lucky? Well, yes and no. Although I didn’t win any tickets per se, Katie did indeed receive two golden tickets in the mail. This is where the luck gets iffy.

Recently, her husband Kilroy had gone to stroll along the golf course and inhale some fresh air at the Smokey Bar Country Club; that was until he heedlessly found himself socially engaged in glass raising toasts of 60% alcohol. Some two hours later and along with the rest of his new ten best friends, Kilroy McCracken stumbled out of doors to play eighteen holes of putt-putt golf without a chaperone. It turned out to be a Bumper-Cars event san the cars.

As a result, Katie’s spitfire of a spouse Kilroy, had received a terrifying broken toe and bruised larynx from an aggressively wild, itinerant and inebriated inspired rotary backswing while his ball was still in play. Kate said that she thought the untimely schnockered maneuver was brought on by the excitement of winning Antique Road Show tickets two weeks before and since Kilroy couldn’t walk or talk so well, she unhesitantly rang me up.

So I drove over to their home on the anticipated splendid Saturday morning, with a lovely bouquet of truncated flowers for Kate in one hand and Kilroy’s favorite imported box of dark chocolates in the other. I arrived at their home early of course, because I never like to be late for anything, especially for an event of this magnitude and at the front door rapped lightly upon the dull brass knocker.

Kilroy and Kate resided in the verdant and bedazzling parkland tract of Avondale, which was known as a community of great deportment and colossal blue-hair hopping. Once a year if you’re so inclined, you may just be lucky enough to bribe the right person for a bus ticket for which to tour this neighborhood’s Christmas seasonal holiday display of illumination, which I hear puts the Northern Lights to shame.

The McCracken’s home was superbly nestled betwixt the Quivering River and a wax museum housing an extinct, if not authentic artistic display of natural hair colors, cranial creasings, saggy bottoms and other such previously carnal sufferings of mankind, though no longer assaulting those with the monetary means with which to halt the ornery onslaught of age.

My mentors’ residence next door was an ancient three story Victorian mansion built before the turn of the century and possessing an outward faux Tudor brick hue, which unfortunately displayed a sizable and disturbing jagged two inch fissure in its stucco coat, arcing as it was in rare distinction from the second story balcony ingloriously down into the sandy foundation below. As I gazed up to the tallest eave from the front portico steps, the house reminded me mightily of an aging, if overweight leaning Tower of Pisa.

When no one answered my summons within the proper time frame of considerate and punctual etiquette, I promptly rang the doorbell, repeatedly applying a forceful index finger of pressure to the cracked Mother-of-Pearl button. This procedure produced a slightly audible and clumsy but slumbering sultry nocturne from the bell chimes and at last if not soon thereafter, Carlotta Clotworthy, the apologetic and long suffering maid ostensibly answered the door.

Years ago, Carlotta Clotworthy had been discovered openly squatting on the posh but shabby-chic property she now called home. When first discovered, Kilroy and Kate McCracken had just purchased the small estate and it was she, Ms. Carlotta Clotworthy, who had been precariously residing in the quaint but run down Mother-in-law cottage, behind some overgrown Azalea bushes in the rear portion of the premises.

The McCracken’s, having hearts as big as dump trucks, as well as having been on their feet all day, invited the illegal homesteader to stay and run their baths for tuppence. Having accomplished this trivial task well enough, Carlotta was then asked to change the Volvo’s deflating tire and afterwards make dinner while the McCrackens took a short nap.

Carlotta did as she was bidden and after receiving kudos for her Cornish game hens and creamed peas, the McCracken’s then asked Carlotta Clotworthy if in return for room and board, she might launder, sew, saw, fix plaster and answer the damn door should someone knock on it! It also gave the hopeful and upward mobile McCracken duo an air of much needed respectability, having on the premises a live-in house keeper, gardener and mechanic all in one.

Apologizing ad nauseam for her slothful and sluggish arrival but for some reason only mustering the nerve to slightly bob her head at me instead of her usual deferential curtsey, Carlotta then carefully turned around, muttered something less than charitable under her beleaguered breath and ever so slowly, led me through the entrance hall and into the faded rosewood paneled drawing room.

Carlotta then carefully poured us both a steaming demitasse of Earl Grey until the mistress of the house could make her praiseworthy and ostentatious appearance abundantly known. We didn’t have long to wait, for soon we were readily summoned by a great commotion coming from on high at the top of the stairs in the great hall. Carlotta and I mustered ourselves as quickly as we could scramble from the drawing room, spying with eager delight the thickly darkened eyelashes and glazen blood shot eyes of the ever beloved (if not bawdy), our one and only Lady Katie McCracken, poised as she was in wavering elegance atop the third floor platform.

Kate was tightly corseted in a shimmering green and gold Lame’ sequined ensemble, while her colossally high blonde and plaited hair extensions harbored several ten inch cassowary feathers, the colorful quills of which were intermittently stuck within. Looking up from the first floor as we were, Katie McCracken looked to be a combination of befuddled Nordic Valkyrie and jewel encrusted ostrich, riding home from a drunken night of ceaseless carousing at the Coconut Grove in Valhalla.

Sporting three inch stilettos, Katie’s massive décolletage of a bosom embossed itself into an overly stretched and lovely costume of cascading emeralds and glittering costume jewelry, stressing her beautiful but bulging gown to near bursting. With inebriated glamour, the buxom, glitzy and alluring diva without warning, descended the highly polished mahogany staircase not on foot as a fashionable about-towner and cultivated boozer might do, but instead insisted on a more Otis elevator approach, when she merrily hopped aboard the polished banister side saddle atop of the third floor landing.

With a queenly wave of her left hand and a double chaser of Scotch in her right, Katy was jubilant as she glided joyfully down the newly polished rail like a rare and graceful swan upon the wing, at least for the first few feet. Gaining momentum, Katie suddenly arrived at the curve in the shiny banister but much too quickly and soon thereafter soared abundantly forthwith and with great gusto onto the elegant stairs and down two carpeted steps, painfully crashing heavily into the Paisley plastered wall amid the second floor landing which shook in small tremors from the impact.

At that moment Carlotta screamed and we both lurched for the stairs, but Grande Dame McCracken singularly held up a bruised and briskly blackening branch of an arm in warning. Giving us a halting and upturned finger and with pursed lips, Katie summarily saluted our earnest efforts of attempted rescue. Importing to us her great courage, conviction and while harboring a wayward wig which was more than slightly fubard from the fall, Kate insistently articulated in a besotted and not so princess becoming slur, that she was quite alright and would be down to greet us in an easy minute. In the McCracken home dignity would prevail.

As it was, there was small chance of that happening and Katie narrowly escaped her puzzling predicament thanks to the motivating sight of a small but portable liquor cabinet parked along the wall behind a large and tropical but yellowing potted plant. Lying prone and horizontal on the second story stairwell but with rising resolve, Katie huffed and puffed, then rolled about and when momentum finally brought her knees in the vicinity of an upright position, she hiked up her knickers, pulled down her petticoat and the hemline of her sequined dress and without missing a beat, unswervingly poured herself a large triple helping of top shelf tequila from the traveling mini-bar.

She then turned around, unexpectedly belching a breezy tune of face flatulence while burping a delicate minuet in Irish brogue; its audible and steady cadence tippled yet benign. With the back of her hand, she wiped her waxy chin of excess spirits and returned to the unlucky balustrade, while Carlotta and I stood with mouths ajar, dumbfounded on the first floor below.

With a newly found shot of incautious confidence under her belt, Katie McCracken once again attempted to straddle the bruised banister come what may. The soles of her red knockoffs glared down at us, while her makeup over stubble, gently sanded the polished wooden grain. Her modus operandi back in motion, she then slid teeter-totter style down the remaining several yards to her intended destination, traversing the wooden bullet at a less than respectable pace until abruptly her bodiced backside winced like a sour lemon as it struck the unyielding newel post, where upon the unsung debutante was flung quite unflatteringly headlong through the air to land not so squarely on her well padded fanny.

Yes, Mrs. McCracken had yielded to too much celebratory imbibing in anticipation of the impending, if not historical afternoon event. Kate now lay on an old and thread bare Persian carpet which was thinly covering the hardwood floor. While moaning and groaning for all she was worth and for what seemed to Carlotta and me a short eternity, the two of us sympathetically shook our heads in curious dismay.

As the Grandfather clock musically chimed that the magical hour was upon us, it reminded us without pause, that we urgently needed to move things appreciably along. While fanning Kate’s upturned visage vigorously with soft words of encouragement and the occasional menacing threat, Katie, like the unsinkable Mollie Brown, thoughtfully rallied her iron will as well as her poached liver for the impending and imminently sensational occasion.

After much effort by all and being raised mostly intact from her mortal stupor, Kate subsequently summoned Carlotta, the apologetic and long suffering maid, to ring us up a taxi for to take us onward towards our destiny of celebrated antiquities; that and I was pretty certain that presently the urban core traffic would shortly become unfortunate and subsequently downright dismal soon thereafter if we didn’t get a move on.

For the illustrious appraisers’ downtown, I was bringing with me a picture by Carle J. Blenner, which was painted in the 1920’s entitled Lilacs and Apple Blossoms and given to me by my Grandmother on my father’s side, Desdemona Sorbanis nee Dunwoody Weston as a graduation present. I swore that I could see the brilliant brush strokes on it and Christy’s had recently auctioned off a Carl J. Blenner on the internet for thousands of dollars, so I just knew that I had a winner! I also took a 1930’s 18" ceramic German ewer which belonged to my boon companion Rocco Biscotti, so that he could participate in the day’s eventful excitement as well.

With the previous unfortunate rollercoaster of an episode now temporarily demobilized, Carlotta rang for us a temporary conveyance in which to take us to the afternoon’s festivities. I then located and handed Kate the cut flowers which I had brought her, who then handed them off to Carlotta so that she could go and put them in a well watered vase. While waiting for our taxi to arrive, we were impatiently determined to say a quick hello and goodbye to the sullen and brooding Senor Kilroy McCracken.

We found our disabled and beleaguered golfer in the living room, nursing his temporarily injured windpipe and his one El Grande purplish toe which he had singularly propped up on several brightly colored cushions. Now resting on a large wingback sofa and surveying simultaneously multiple Spaghetti Westerns on three flat screen televisions, Mr. McCracken pretended that we had not entered the room in the first place, keeping up a petulant and sulky glare at the sets throughout our brief visitation.

It was then that Kate entered the brightly lit room and half stumbled to the divan where she smiled sorrowfully down at her brooding colt of a spurious spouse. Bending her half bared bosom forward, she kissed Kilroy on his furrowed forehead, lovingly donating residual traces of Sparkly Peach #1 lipstick between her husband’s sullen and frustrated brows.

Abruptly and with as much resolution as she could majestically muster, Kate then slowly up righted herself and readjusted her fallen feathered headdress of slithering extensions. Turning towards the door and oscillating ever so slightly but with new found help from an abundance of heavy furniture, Katie carefully exited the living room, tottering herself back into the hall. Moments later, she slowly reversed course and stuck her blonde frontal lobe around the door frame. Repeatedly curving her gold lacquered index finger in my direction, she subsequently motioned for me to join her.

Remembering the sweets which I had intended to give Kilroy, I swept past Kate, double timed it down the hall, snatched the box of confections from the foyer and ran back into the living room. As I went to hand him the proffered treats, Kilroy shot me a most undeserving stare of palpable resentment. Suddenly taken aback, as I didn’t much appreciate the way he was eyeballing me, I set the chocolates down near him, just out of reach mind you and gave him the evil eye right back.

I then fled the room but soon caught up with Kate, as I could hear her and Carlotta making grievous noises, the sounds of which were emanating from the formal dining room. Arriving on the mesmerizing scene, I could see Carlotta teetering atop a cushioned Victorian footstool, attempting to christen her lord and master with yet more sparkling jewelry about her eager but clammy neck.

Kate has arthritis in her hands and so with a delicate and much refined stammer and after Carlotta’s unsuccessful efforts to stay on the stool without strangling her benefactor at the same time, she then implored me to help her put on her diamond studded silver heart necklace. The pendant was a long ago received and much treasured honeymoon gift from her recently banged up and broken husband.

Without climbing the footstool myself, I politely informed our Lady McCracken, that as my eyes were not so good, perhaps we should attempt clasping the necklace on in the living room, in front of the big bay window where there was an abundance of surplus light.

This decision I was soon to regret, for Kate’s husband was not only an extremely boorish man when it came to his lovely wife, but he could quickly become very jealous indeed. It had been much rumored that many years before in old Dublin town, when down on his luck and with bare knuckles aplenty, Kilroy narrowly but formidably won Katie’s heart, her person and a pile of cold hard cash in a hotly contested game of Whist.

Kilroy is very old fashioned and Katie does have a beautiful neck and I made the audible effort of telling her so; but as we were now back in Kilroy’s presence and as soon as Kate lifted her hair for me, Kilroy made an involuntary lunge towards us while grunting something that none of us could quite understand. I suggested to Kate that perhaps her husband was maybe trying to reach the chocolates, whereupon she opened up the ribboned tied gift box and stuffed his mouth with Switzerland’s finest to keep him quiet.

A big yellow taxi soon drove up the manicured driveway to