One Idahoan Night

One Idahoan Night

One time as a young man I witnessed something that many people said was hogwash even then...people look at me now when I tell it with something in-between disgust...and pity. I grew up in a small farming comunity near the Oregon border. Most of the farmers on both the idaho and oregon side of the border grow potatos for ORE-IDA. One night Lenny lumpkin the local drunk came screamin in to the regular town metting, which was the only form of entertainment some of us could get so we all were there (the town metting...we were all at the town meeting). Lenny was frantic he was the soberest I think I had ever seen him."There's UFOs up in the sky!!!" He squeeled. Lenny always squeeled most of us just assumed he was half pig cause he had the snout and rumor had it that he was also born with a curly little tail. Most of us would normally have been inclined to ignore Lenny on any given day even if he said the building was on fire, but this particular town meeting was very boring becase MA'ama Borchert was giving a lecture on all the uses of potatos. So we all filed out of the local courthouse/potato-storage-facility and had us a look. What we saw then made many of us have to change our pants.


There were lights in the sky. And they flew all over in crazy patterns..whirlwinds and curlie cues like a little dance all in sync yet almost random too. And they grew larger and it became apparent that these lights were large crafts of some sort...not the sort of craft rosie o'donnell used to do on her talk show. Spacecrafts. Man were they huge and they came down to hover over the potato fields."Attention, we will free our brother spuds from their earthen oppression." A voice that came from everywhere and nowhere said.And with that the large craft opened up to reveal huge multi-eyed spud-like creatures with many root-like arms descending upon the crops we all worked so hard to cultivate. THey cast rays about with their wildly swinging tentacle/root/appendages and then just a s quickly they went back into their ships and flew off. But there was movement in the fields still.

The potatos were growing at an amazing rate. and as they grew they undulated til they were sick mockeries of the once famous Idahoan cash crop. They began to move to anf fro and then with what seem a psychotic intelligence began to slaughter dogs cats...cows in the nearby fields. Something had to be done. Ma'ama Borchert was still inside spouting off recipes but yelling now hoping to be heard by those outside. "..Of course there's always my favorite...Mashed potatos...." With a gleem in each of our eyes we all grabbed something heavy...shovels...axes... rolling pins. We proceded to the fields and began swinging.Later on Ore-Ida wanted to know why our crop was so small that year. I wonder if they heard rumors of the largest bowl of mashed potatos ever seen in idaho or Eastern Oregon. We weren't talking.