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As Hyman had foretold,
even bird guano doesn't last forever, especially when
your mining activities frighten the migrating masses
of avian sojourners away from their traditional stop.
So, after the last
guano-freighter weighed anchor in 1899, there was
not much to do on Poco Cabesa and almost everybody
left -- Galveston and southeastern Florida were popular
destinations.
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Idle
guano miners
Nowhere
else to go
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a dedicated slice of the upper-crust and a modest crowd
of those laborers who had nowhere else to go stayed
on. These sturdy few, these hearty souls who proudly
called themselves Klinkleburgers, remained to await
an accounting of the Trust. |
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Looking
north on East Street, Klinkleburg, circa 1901
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Klinkle
House on Gull Hill, razed by citizenry in
1899 riots
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To the despair
of Poco Cabesans then and now, when all was said and
done, the flow of funds from the Trust to the descendants
of the island's plucky pioneers resembled a ripple
of subsistence, as opposed to a tsunami of riches.
Not enough to invest
and grow. Just enough to scratch out a meager existence,
keep half a dozen saloons in business, and permit
the occasional coup. As Jack
Waller's daddy used to call it, "Just gettin'
by money."
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emergency motion was made in the island's Parliament
to change the town's name to "Suckerville."
After heated debate, it failed passage by one vote.
Then everyone went out and tore down Hyman's old mansion.
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The Trust wasn't
merely parsimonious. It had strings attached. To prevent
writers and artists -- whom Hyman thought useless,
frivolous, and depraved loafers and free-thinkers
-- from descending upon his tiny isle and squandering
his benefaction, he established a complicated resident-population
limit based on a mathematical formula having, as one
factor among many, the number of females on Noah's
Ark.
Although this
equation was soon forgotten, the residents of Klinkleburg
saw the writing on the wall and wisely controlled
their physical yearnings to avoid generating descendents
that would further dilute the monthly Trust pay-out.
And, since newcomers were ineligible for the dole
and there was nothing else to attract them, no one
bothered to move into the neighborhood.
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Hyman's
formula for population control
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Klinkleburg's
famous leaning house
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Importing
mutton during famine of 1929
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Due to these factors,
the population of the island settled at a few hundred
or so bored residents -- not counting the happy natives
of the kingdom of Medillo
Grande.
As the years wound
down (or up, depending upon your perspective), while
World Wars raged, skirts and stock markets rose and
fell, scientists split the atom, and the American
League instituted the Designated Hitter rule, the
white power elite of Poco Cabesa (badly addled by
generations of inbreeding and always short of cash)
controlled the disbursement of Trust funds and ruled
their part of town with a confused iron fist.
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The
Klinkleburg Constabulary Corps, circa 1902
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This kept the non-elite
residents well-mannered but extremely paranoid due
to their leaders' frequent mood swings.
If Poco Cabesa
had had anything to offer besides guano (and it didn't
even have that anymore) it might have attracted the
attention of a superpower or maybe even Venezuela.
But, that not being the case, the island lapsed into
a sleepy post-industrial stupor abstemiously funded
by Hyman Klinkle's benefaction.
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Loyalty
to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed
a human soul.
-- Mr. Twain |
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