copyright © 2015
by Robert L. Blau
Puglio purported to be a purveyor of pork, although he had never
owned a pig, or even seen one up close. What he did have was a foul-tempered,
evil-smelling, one-eyed, shred-eared, cantankerous old villain of
a tom cat. Called Old Tom, of course.
"Getcher prime, grade-A pork!" Puglio would cry as he strode the
streets of the town. "Fresh! Premium! On the hoof!" And as
he hawked (or hogged) his wares (or ware), he would gesture grandly at
Old Tom, who followed his master everywhere, always on the alert for
something to eat, steal, savage, rape, or kill. Or some
combination of the foregoing, for preference.
And the customers would line up, eagerly proffering up their
hard-earned ducats for the promised pig. Then Puglio would stick Old
Tom into a sack and sell him to a lucky customer. The customer
would then return home and open the sack, at which stimulus Old Tom
would leap from the sack, rip the poor devil's face off, and hustle
home to Puglio.
And the customer, after suitable first aid, would also return to Puglio
in hopes of buying another pig.
One day, a traveler from a less civilized land witnessed several
iterations of this street drama and collared some of Puglio's customers
to ask an explanation.
"Why," asked the traveler, "do you buy from that man?"
"My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather bought pork from his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather,"
replied one seriously lacerated customer. Others nodded in
agreement.
"Did the great-great-whatsis sell real
pigs?" asked the traveler.
"What? Real pigs?" The customer did not seem to understand the
question. "Well, of course he
sold real pigs! As real as Puglio's!"
"Ah," mused the uncivilized traveler. "But you realize that this Puglio
is actually selling you a cat?"
"Well, a cat does sometimes attack me when I'm trying to take my
pig out of the bag," admitted the customer, but that's not what Puglio
sells me."
"True," agreed another customer. "We know it's a pig because
Puglio tells us so. Haven't you heard him say, 'prime, grade-A
pork' and so forth? Pork is what we call the meat we get from
pigs." He said the last sentence very slowly, one word at a time,
so the uncivilized foreigner could understand.
"Maybe," suggested the
traveler, "you could try buying your pig without the sack. That might
give you a hint or two."
"Oh, no!" replied all the
Puglio customers in unison. "The sack is traditional. Can't make
the purchase without the sack!"
"Well, it's true that the con artist does not attempt to hide that he's
selling them the cat," thought the traveler, scratching his head.
"Are there any other pig sellers around here?" he continued out
loud.
"There sure is," replied the
first customer, "but we'll never buy
from him!"
All of the Puglio customers narrowed their eyes with deep distaste.
"Um, why not?" asked the traveler.
"He sells bad pork!" they all
hissed.
"Oh, so you've had bad experiences with this other guy's pork, eh?"
prompted the traveler. "Worse than getting your faces mauled and not
getting any actual pork at all?"
The customers looked at each other in puzzlement.
"We don't understand about half of what you say," said one.
"That's probably because you're a foreigner," said another generously.
"It's not so much 'bad experiences,'" said a third, "as never having
bought anything from him."
"But why not?" ventured the traveler rashly.
"Because Puglio told us not
to," said the first customer. "Because it's bad pork. And we believe
everything he says because our
great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers bought from his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather."
The others nodded agreement. Foreigners can be so thick.