It’s A Gas Gas Gas Can!

[Ron "Oily" Sprague]

So Shane Speal asked for 2-3 paragraph “histories” on his antique gas can Guitar, with the submission deadline being tomorrow. So early yesterday morning, I couldn’t sleep, read his e-mail, and in about 30 minutes came up with this - lemme know what y’all think, as I’m pretty happy with it, and just couldn’t resist sharing, sinceI haven’t been on here in awhile:

Samuel “Ell” Jackson was disgusted. Disgusted with his music, his prospects, and his life in general. 

He was especially disgusted with the fact that it was late, dark, raining, and he was, as far as he knew, up-and-down-hill miles from the nearest gas station in this part of northern Alabama. He was also acutely conscious of the fact that he was alone, virtually destitute...and black.

 

“Po,” as his God-fearing Aunt Sally would have saucily put it. Rumor was that, in her younger days, before becoming principal soloist and arbiter of moral rectitude at the Shady Grove African Ecumenical Revival Church, she was the living inspiration for the song “Mustang Sally.” Anyone who even whispered such in range of her abnormally-good hearing got a literal Bible thumping.

 

Ell tripped over something buried in the roadside brush, and swore F- and S-lettered oaths as he picked himself out of the ditch. He was already soaked, so that didn’t matter too much, but his left big toe now hurt like hell. Figured he might as well see what had lamed him, so he bent down, and pulled out of the briar patch a rusty old gasoline can with no lid, and a small, suspiciously toe-shaped dent on one end.

“God gotta sensa humor,” he thought acidly. Still, he figured it could come in handy if there magically appeared a gas station over the next hill.

His surprise, as he crested it, half-limping, at the bright round Gulf sign winking fitfully through the pines, was matched by the fact that the two-pump general store at the crossroad was, unaccountably, still open. What’s more, there was an older, sharply-dressed gentleman sitting on a rickety stool beneath the roof-gushing porch, plucking away melodically at a three-stringed homemade instrument featuring a gas can, that spookily resembled the one he thought he’d been carrying in his left hand.

“Evenin’, duck,” cackled the older man. “Y’all bring de chicken? We gon’ need it...you know...fo’ de, ah...sarah-moaney...ovah theah.” He motioned briefly toward the empty, red clay muddied crossroad, then unleashed a counterpoint flurry of slippery, evilly-bent blue notes.

  

Ell fainted dead away in the gravel-spiked downpour, when he realized that his right hand was bloody, and his left hand, which didn’t know what the other had done, was full of neck feathers...