Nobody knows, where that joke came from. I've heard many theories over the years, but not a single one of them is really believable. By the way, personal, I think Shorty made it up that night he went out with April for the first time. I don't remember the date. It took me five years to forget it. Till that day I had thought April was my girl-friend.
Well now they are married, the third child is on its way, and she is still working for minimum wage in a local fast food restaurant. Maybe I should send her a card from sunny Beverly Hills.
The joke started like this: 'A man walks into the bar of the Mizpah ( that's a local casino and one of the oldest buildings in town ) and sees an Ape sitting at the counter.' The rest was some kind of weird, obscene story witch wasn't really funny.
One day I heard him talking to that tall guy, whose name couldn't be pronounced by any normal human being. I think he was an exchange student from Germany.
He said that one day an alien walked into the bar of the Mizpah, seeing him sitting at the bar and drinking a glass of milk. To be honest, that wasn't the exact wording.
It was more like this:
"I was in bar. It was Friday night. I drank milk. Then an alien walked in. Alien saw me. I saw alien. I took baseball bat and beat the heck out of him. The alien went down and disappeared."
That's a typical kind of story a guy like him would tell. I mean, everybody knows that you can only kill an alien by making him eat ten large pan-cakes with lots of maple syrup. Even if they were out of pancakes, three boles of clam chowder* would have done it as well as 2 gallons of whiskey. You can't tell me they were out of that, too. For another reason his story was unbelievable. Aliens just don't go into a room, if there's a person with an IQ of less than 50 in it.
Next day, it was a Tuesday, we had no school, because we had to listen to the Lieutenant Governor, who was giving a speech in our convention center. At least now I knew whom not to vote for in the upcoming election.
I spend that afternoon in the James-Butler-Park reading "THE GRAPES OF WRATH" by John Steinbeck, when I suddenly noticed something darkening the sky. I looked up and saw an alien standing there. " I got to talk to you", it said with a voice that sounded like a vacuum cleaner. Since I had neither whiskey, pancakes nor clam chowder with me, I decided to have him have his fun for a while: "What do you want ?" It came right to the point:
"Do you know about law ?"
"You'll have to be a bit more specific !"
"Well..."
"I ain't got all day."
"Well, do you know if it is allowed to hit aliens with baseball bats ?"
Until that moment I hadn't realised the bandage he was wearing around his left head.
"Why would anybody doing somebody as dumb as hitting an alien with a baseball bat?"
"Well, I don't know. You know Shorty better than I do. He did it."
"I know, but I don't talk to people who don't know that Almity is the capital of Mongolia."
"It isn't !"
"You'll better be quiet if you want your information !"
"OK."
"Well, there is no law known to me that forbids to beat aliens with baseball bats."
"Damn."
It turned around, walked down Ricegrass Lane and disappeared. He was the last alien I ever saw in Tonopah.
Then graduation day came. It was June 1st, and everybody was exited, except me. School hadn't been a challenge. I had higher aims those days than my classmates and I was sure I'd be able to reach them and much more work had to be done, until I could celebrate. We were all lined up in the auditorium. A lot of speeches were being held, but unfortunately they sounded all the same. In the and it was my turn. That's the bad side of having an GPA of 4.233. First I had though about making some kind of rebellious speech, but then I said, what everybody expected me to say: How proud I was of this country and that I wished everybody luck for the future. At least I didn't had to wish Shorty luck, since he dropped out a half year earlier. Then we got our graduation papers, threw our hats in the air, and the ceremony was over. I left, jumped into my car, and when the others gathered in the '`Silver Queen' for celebration, I had already left town.
Since I never returned to Tonopah, that was the last time I saw April. I guess it's OK. I went to Stanton University and founded a company while studying, that has know a stock value of over $2 000 000 000 (Unfortunately I only own part of it), and I bought myself a nice house in the Los Angeles area.
What else could a boy from a small town in Nevada want.
Dear April !
How are you ? I don't know if this letter will reach you, but I decided to give it a try. I hope you wont be angry at me for trying to make contact after such a long period of time. I just think that there are many things we should have talked out and I hope we could make up for it now. It would be lovely if you could visit me for a couple of days, maybe on labor-day-weekend. I hope you can.
Bye
Jonathan
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*Clam chowder is traditionally the daily soup served in the west on Friday.