The Englebee Troobles
Pondered upon August 8, 1999.
I remembered the Englebee Troobles this week. I was supposed to find them. So I decided that I would go and look for them. I had no idea what an Englebee Trooble even was, or what it looked like, or what kind of noise it made when you accidentally crushed it under your boot, but I was determined to find them nonetheless. So, on Tuesday morning without delay, I donned my leisure suit and bolo tie, put my burnt-umber fez on (the one I won in a Sicilian rat-fighting contest), and gathered all the pennies I could. After filling my pockets with S’mores, Fluffernutter, and peanut butter, I was off!
My good friend, Mister Ollanthorpe von Sträsmussenbörg, from southern Moravia, used to tell stories about his hunts for the Englebee Troobles. A dogfish would’ve helped, but I had none. My first stop was in Las Vegas, Nevada. I exchanged all my pennies for some corned beef and Deutsch pfennigs (which I would later use to procure some potholders). Then, I heard from a man named José Vargas de las Joyas Matemáticas that an Englebee Trooble had been seen in a small alley in İstanbul.
I headed to İstanbul on Wednesday, first stopping in Crete, Lemnos, Ithaka, Macedonia, Kosovo, Smolensk, and Islamabad. In Crete I picked up some cretins, then I traded one for a new shoe and fez in Lemnos, and the two others for a pack of cigarettes in Ithaka. I used 215 pfennigs to buy my way to Kosovo, by way of Macedonia, then ran to Smolensk and bounced over to Islamabad to pick up a yak and a yurt.
I counted out some more pfennigs and bribed the local magistrate to tell me anything he knew about Englebee Troobles. He knew nothing, but said he’d once seen a photograph of a parsimonious Czarjoonibee Trooble in 1956.
After a quick explosion and re-integration, I waddled over to the bus station waiting for a train to southern Moravia. Maybe someone else from there, other than Mister Ollanthorpe von Sträsmussenbörg, would know about the Englebee Troobles. I had to find them. Or plonk myself.
“Trooble! Trooble!!” a camel suddenly squawked behind me. I ran away fast, intent on finding one, before the camel ate my fez and bolo tie. As of this Sunday, the search continues…