Sobs of a downhearted cake

By: Charlie Walker | SCNOW
Published: August 06, 2008

Dorn Smith brings Peggy red ripe tomatoes. Peggy retaliates by baking Dorn her fabulous licorice stirred-fried jalapeño pepper, USDA choice croutons, okra and tomatoes, ox tails, Oreo cookies and a can of McCall Farms’ world-famous hopping johns. One bite would put King Kong in a coma. Dorn’s health insurance doesn’t cover Peggy’s cooking, playing in traffic on I-95 or sipping Sevin cocktails.

Dorn didn’t live that long and get to be that pretty without being cautious. So he called in Dr. Troy Gamble for consultation. When two doctors have a consultation, this means some funeral home is fixing to move into a higher tax bracket. They decided to call in Bubba Matthews to perform an autopsy on the cake. Bubba had a hissy, informing Dorn that he had been elected by the people of Florence County and it was beneath his dignity to perform an autopsy on a cake.

Dorn reminded Bubba he had installed a pacemaker on Bubba’s tattoo and only charged Bubba an RC Cola and a Moon Pie, and if he didn’t perform an autopsy on Peggy’s cake, Dorn would send him a bill that would equal the cost of that new power plant in Kingsburg.

After the autopsy, Bubba told Dorn and Dr. Gamble that the cake was a pussycat, and no more dangerous than a hydrogen bomb with a fever blister. So Dorn and Troy did what all good employers do: they offered each member of their mercy brigade a slice. The ladies who grace Dr. Dorn’s office are top-notch, cream of the crop. They are refined, dignified and eye candy, but they ain’t stupid. So Peggy’s masterpiece to gluttony still sits on the third floor of Carolinas Hospital System, uncut, un-tasted, alone and forsaken. Licorice teardrops fall from its seven layers. Everybody loves something sometime. Ole Scrap Iron’s licorice stir-fried masterpiece is the exception.

There is nothing quite as heartbreaking as the sobs of a downhearted cake as its misery echoes through the steel canyons of Carolinas Hospital System.

Tune in next week for another exciting episode of “As the Stomach Turns” as we learn the fate of Peggy’s cake. Will Peggy’s cake run for mayor of Florence on the platform of a chicken in every pot, two cars in every garage and three McKenzies in every jail? Learn the answer to these questions in our next installment of “As the Bull Flies.”

— Charlie Walker is a local newspaper columnist. He can be reached at P.O. Box 441, Kingstree, SC 29556.