"Spuds" Bridges
Baby Bojangles ("Spuds") Bridges was born looking
like a 4-D potato collage. The poor, precious, little poop had more "eyes"
than a 42nd St. peep show. See, Spuds had some sort of skin disorder that left
little skin puckerings all over his collodial oatmeal grey body. Hence, his
resemblance to a sandy-soiled tuber. Well, this didn't keep his mom, Bridget,
from loving him to death, which is precisely what she (accidentally) accomplished
right before his first birthday. Truth be told, Bridget was a simpleton from
Derry, County Donegal. The villagers would affectionately chide, "The head
on a Guinness has more sense that that sweet Bridey." Thus, the sorrowful
turn of events bore not a hint of malice, but the backward notions of a dimwitted
country girl.
As the story goes, Spuds was teetering around the kitchen trying out his legs
- as toddlers are want to do - when he had a run in with the cupboard and knocked
the contents of a crock of grape jam over his head. Not a child easily rattled
(he was after all Bridey's spawn - if you know what I mean), Spuds ambled towards
the back door, leaving a trail of jam in his wake and a brackish purple visage
from head to toe. Poor, simple Bridget was out back chasing chickens when Spuds
banged through the screen door out onto the porch. Bridey screamed, grabbed
the still non-plussed Spuds, and flung him down the well.
When it was discovered what she'd done, Bridey lamented, "Poor, little
Spuds was finally taken by the 'blight'. He was just all squishy and purple
- like an Inishowen tater field." No one knew what to say. So, old Doc
Folger wrote up the cause of death as "potato blight" - the only documented
case in the County, in the WORLD for that matter. They buried Spuds in a plot
overlooking the grape arbor. His epitaph reads:
"Spuds was a 'different' child
And had he lived
Would surely have made a difference."
Bridey assisted Simon, the town dipsomaniac, in its composition.