A Tall Tale of Patty Murphy

A few decades ago I met a man in the place I came from. Well, I'm telling you, all that man did was hum and sputter.

He said he was a fisherman, but I knows myself that he wasn't. I saw it with my very own eyes what that dear old man was able to do. Well, he did fish now mind you, but that was only in the summers. He was a well know carpenter. He built his house, his shed, and a green house for his old woman. He was a loan shark for the months when the neighbours found it just too hard to put some grub on the table. He was a lumber jack for he chopped down trees four or five times bigger than he. He was a mechanic that was known to have built more than one or three cars and trucks in his day. And this was all that I can attest to him doing. But I'm telling you, all that man did was hum and sputter.

He would sit down in his thinking chair and think about what he was going to do the next year. I always thought this was foolishness because knowing that old man either he'd forget it, or he'd beat it up trying to tinker with it. Well, that or what he tried to fix wouldn't would normal anyhow. Last summer he tried to build a book case with 45 nails. 17 of them were rustier than old hell, 19 of them was as crooked as he was, and the rest was both. So of course, being the wise old man that he was, he would get his welder out and make his own nails. After all, it was only done right if he done it his self. That poor old house still looks like it's gonna tip over. After all this, I'm telling you, all that man did was hum and sputter.

21 years and no matter how many times he had to do it to get it right, all I heard that man do was hum and sputter. Mom tells me I'm just like him, but I can't get the hums and sputters right. But I guess that was his thing, and he had it figured out: if everything else is gone haywire, at least you can control your hums and your sputters.