As a baby I was smuggled out of Eastern Patagonia inside a pawnshop accordion that my father, The Earl of Northplankton, had won the previous night in a game of cards. My dear father used to tell the story whenever he was drunk on brandy, which was more often than you could ever imagine. He would even drink brandy while sitting on the toilet, and this activity alone occupied a good five-eighths of his time on this strange and beautiful rock that we call a planet!
He had stitched me up inside the bellows of the accordion with a couple bottles of warm breast milk (from my mother, not from him), which he believed would last me the duration of the four-hour train voyage into sovereign West-Central Patagonia. Patagonia was divided into 79 nation states in those days, you see, and Eastern Patagonia was by far the most oppressive. Alas! My father underestimated my hunger, and just two hours into the trip I began crying.
I do not remember this voyage, but I assume that I was frightened, because Inside An Accordion is a terrifying place, which any fool knows. Had I been discovered, I would surely have faced a firing squad, which would have been terribly uncomfortable for everyone involved. Imagine a baby in front of a firing squad! Imagine a baby underneath a firing squad! Now imagine a baby in a firing squad! Well, yes, the first two are terrible, but the third rather humorous. Go ahead; picture it.
Back to the interior of the train, where my father, a deposed nobleman traveling under an assumed name, is receiving some very strange looks because a baby is crying from within the accordion on his lap. Now a security agent is coming down the aisle, and my father must do some very quick thinking. He looks out the window at the thick blanket of virgin snow covering the countryside, opens his window, and tosses the accordion, with me wailing in its innards, out the window. With a shrug, he remarks to his fellow passengers, "Well that accordion was obviously haunted." Silence and suspicious looks fill the air like a sickness. "Good thing I won it in a game of cards." Laughter erupts from all corners of the train, and my father is off the hook.
I, on the other hand, was stranded in the notoriously unfriendly western woods of East Patagonia, but was returned to my family by the bison who discovered me. They were very intelligent bison. The Very Intelligent Bison of the West Woods of East Patagonia. Perhaps you've heard of them? But that was years ago, and I have forgiven my father for stitching me up inside an accordion and throwing me out of a moving train. However, I have not forgiven the bison for returning me to my family.
c. March, 2007
Portland, Oregon
