HICKORY HOG AND THE CHRISTMAS RASCAL, part 1

PART 1, December 1

Hickory Hog, as everyone knows, lives in a shack by the side of a brook. He has a garden, and in his garden he has corn and turnips and potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Close by is the city known as Potatotown in which reside his many friends and admirers. It is not with them, however, that we are concerned at the moment, but with another party who happened into the area.

It was a cold, nippy sort of morning. Of course all the harvesting was long over. All the people thereabouts had filled their barns and cupboards with all the good things God had given them that year, In fact, there were some squirrels who had made a barn out of one of the potatoes that Hickory Hog had grown, in order to store their nuts. His potatoes were large indeed. One had been made into an apartment building for homeless birds. Another had made a long river journey as a boat. Yet another had become the first airplane (or perhaps we should say potatoplane) to land at the Potatotown airport. One time he had ridden one to victory in a race. Of course the potato hadn't run itself, but had been powered by Hickory Hog's friend, Whizzer Worm, Whenever folks thought of potatoes they thought of Hickory Hog, and vice verse, too,

Anyway, back to the morning. It hadn’t snowed yet, but people were expecting it to do so any day. That was one way that they knew Christmas was just around the comer, Potatotown was one of those places that always had a white Christmas. If it didn't snow they would just open a couple of packages of Hickory Hog's dried potato flakes and create a blizzard of their own. Once the flakes were pressed down they made real nice sledding, and of all the sledders in town none enjoyed it as much as Hickory Hog. This year, though, it seemed pretty certain there'd be no need of that. Any day now the white flakes would come tumbling down and cover the land with a pure white blanket of snow.

Hickory Hog went out to check his barn. He wanted to make sure that his supply of corn was snuggly settled in for the winter ahead. He only ate a hundred ears a day, not to mention a few odd bushels of turnips and Brussels sprouts along with one or two thirty pound potatoes for dessert. His harvest had been plentiful and he had shared with his neighbors, but still he liked to check his stock to make sure that everything was safe. You could never be too careful.

He looked over the pile of corn. There seemed to be still about the same amount as the day before. There'd be enough to last him until the harvest next year, especially if he was careful. There might even be some extra to make corn syrup out of to go with his potato pancakes. So, he went back into the house to bundle up for the cold days ahead. He wasn't there to see something strangely move around deep under the pile of corn.

© 1989 Kevin Don Levellie