Uncle Bunion Tours The Brewery

It hasn't been the same down here since Uncle Bunion got his
cravat entangled in the stirring paddle that mixes the mash
at the old American Brewery, makers of Tam O'Shanter <tm> Ale
back in the heyday of the horse-drawn ice wagon and the push
cart full of produce.  Howl for help is what he did and the
alarum was struck at the corner fire-box, which brought two
engine companies and a hook-and-ladder truck screaming down
the street to the scene.  They assessed the situation and
timed the revolutions of the mixer paddle and the hook-
and-ladder guys opined that they could catch Uncle Bunion
by hooking his sleeve-garters with a pike-pole as he passed
by, while the engine companies fought over which of them was
going to get the privilege of pumping out the vat of beer.

Word soon spread of the dilemma at the brewery, and the scene
became crowded with Batallion Chiefs, off-duty policemen and
members of the press with their credentials and Speed
Graphics, not to mention 4 old gentlemen who had been playing
checkers in the park down the street and had the foresight to
stop at the corner grocery and buy a pint of ice cream each,
then empty the round wax-coated carton in the gutter so they
would have a proper vessel to help assure that no spilled
beer would be wasted.

As we look in on the affray, we see a 6 firemen, their ladders
propped against the side of the vat trying to catch Uncle
Bunion as he passes by at the approximate speed of 24 RPM,
while more firemen are laying hose across the street to a
waiting water-wagon used by the city to keep the dust down on
the dirt streets, hoping to salvage as much of the liquid as
was possible, and calculating what measure of it they will
have to give over to the foreman of the Department of Public
Works in exchange for the "borrowing" of the wagon, while the
brewery's founder and chairman is standing on the staircase
outside his door exhorting Uncle Bunion to keep his chin
above the surface and to not swallow the bubbles for fear of
inviting flatulance, in which case the contents of the vat
would not be salvageable, not even for sale in the poorer
parts of town and would have to be viewed as a loss.

So we now have a dozen firemen in the building and as many
and more outside shouting orders and encouragement, the
street crews from that quadrant of town had gathered,
ostensibly to watch over their water wagon, the precinct
captain and his constabulary keeping order in the street,
and 4 old geezers that had abandoned their checkerboard, as
well as various and sundry citizens who had taken time from
their normal activities to come and offer advice and aid.

And then the organ-grinder appeared.

The organ-grinder saw the gathering and viewed it as a great
opportunity so he unlsung his instrument, set it on its peg
and began to crank, whence it bellowed forth with renditions
of "O Sole Mio", followed by a procession of tarantellas and
Gipsy dance music.  Meanwhile, his trained monkey worked the
crowd with a practiced approach, a tug at the frock or coat,
a wistful look upon its countanance while he raised his little
tin cup in supplication for coins.

The Precinct captain, worried that the crowd had grown beyond
the capacity of the street started shouting for the attendees
to move across the way onto the opposite sidewalk, but as the
organ-grinder had begun to sing in accompaniment to his
instrument, the voice of that minion of the law was drowned
out and went unheard.  Wishing to be recognized as the
authority in charge and understanding the reason that he was
not, he grabbed the organ-grinder by his weskit and,
indicating the nearby stable-barn, rather rudely propelled
him thither by the toe of his boot.  This, however, caused
the organ-grinder to lose his grasp on the monkey's leash,
and the monkey, realizing that he had no allies in the
immediate area, slipped under a broken slat in the brewery
gate and into the vat room where he espied a veritable river
of the golden mead being drawn from the vessel that contained
Uncle Bunion.

Now, everyone knows that an organ-grinder's monkey carries a
tin cup, we expect it, we could not conceive of an organ-
grinder's monkey without a tin cup; however, as this primate
had acquired a taste for the nectar of the hops, he had no
need or purpose for coinage, so he removed the government's
hard specie from the cup and flung it in the air in the way
of freeing the cup for other, more important tasks.

The monkey set about scooping up cups of beer and quaffing
them on the spot, but, whilst he had been engaged in begging
the gathered assemblage to part with their coins, one of the
old checker-playing geezers, being nearly sightless, had
mistakenly placed his steel, nickel-sized slug to which had
been soldered a length of piano wire so that it could be
withdrawn from a pay telephone after making a call, into the
beggar's cup. This interesting piece had flown through the
air and fallen into the cog-works that drove the shaft that
turned the paddles that were caught in Uncle Bunion's cravat.

As the shaft turned 'round, one of the cogs kept striking
the piece of piano wire, which made a twanging sound, which
aroused the monkey's curiosity. He went to the open gear-works
to see the source of this amusing sound, and was mesmerised by
the slowly-rotating bits therein, his head began to rotate in
unison with the biggest of gears, his eyes became foggy and he
might have lost his balance and fallen into the works except
that his stomach was much disturbed by the motion of the gears
and he regurgitated, expelling all that he had eaten and drunk
that day.

The force of this stream of vomit fell sqarely on the metal
slug and piano wire which became dislodged and plunged further
into the cog-works where it lodged and brought the machine to
a halt.

Seizing the opportunity, the firemen reached in unison and
grabbed Uncle Bunion by his sleeve-garters and pulled him from
the vat, half of which contents had been pumped away for
future forensic investigation by the Constabulary, the firemen
and the Head of the Department of Public Works.  Uncle Bunion
was soaked in every manner of use of the word, the founder and
chairman of the board was pleased to learn that the balance of
the contents of the vat were unsullied and the reporters
gathered 'round to make glass-plate photographs of the primate
who saved the day, the first known instance of a machine being
stopped by a monkey's retch in the works.

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