MASH 12 MASH goes to Texas

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  Davy Crockett “Alamo” Jones not only ran uncontested for the seat Brother Dave was vacating, but with the endorsement of both the Liberal and Conservative parties. He prevailed upon Eagle Eye MacNamara to abandon his promising journalistic career to enter the field of public service as his Executive Director of Media Relations, a position Mr. MacNamara holds to this day, and for which the grateful taxpayers compensate him at $38,570 per annum.

  Congressman Jones experienced very little trouble making the transition from Texas state legislator to United States Congressman. For one thing, he hired, intact, the entire staff of dedicated public servants who had for so long served Brother Dave Murgatroyd.

  These people not only told him what to vote for, and what to vote against, thus relieving him of the onerous chore of deciding for himself, but they were able to advise him which of the more powerful members of the House might be susceptible to taking a flier in oil exploration, and who would, should the flier be financially successful, be most grateful.

  This frankly proved to be a more expensive means of attracting favorable attention of his seniors than, say, expressing wonder at the beauty of their grandchildren, letting them win at golf or even flying them down to the ranch in a Dalrymple Oil & Gas airplane for “a little Texas hospitality.”

  But as Ida-Sue confessed in the privacy of their boudoir in the little penthouse atop the Park-Sheraton Hotel, “No sacrifice was too great when it came to climbing up the ladder to the White House.”

  The way the plan worked was this: Dalrymple Oil & Gas’ Exploration Division would, after due investigation of seismographic charts and other little tricks of the trade, conclude that the odds were very good that oil would be found at, say, 18,500 feet beneath the west Texas sagebrush. Dalrymple Oil & Gas would then install a “rig” and “make a hole” to 18,250 feet. At that point, they would become discouraged and “abandon” the hole. All the money spent to drill the hole to 18,250 feet would be recorded in their books in red ink as a loss.

  That amount could then be deducted from income for tax purposes.

  Ida-Sue and Alamo would then form another company, say, for example, The West Texas-Hohokus, New Jersey, Oil Company and sell shares in it to, for example, the Honorable Tiny Tony Bambino of Hohokus, New Jersey. Then the West Texas-Hohokus, New Jersey, Oil Company would buy the mineral rights to the land on which Dalrymple Oil had dug the “dry” 18,250-foot hole.

  A somewhat smaller, and thus more inexpensive, drilling rig, called a “work-over rig,” would then be placed over the abandoned hole, and the hole would be extended another 250 feet.

  “Eureka! Oil!” the cry would go up, and the royalties would begin to flow in. Congressman Bambino’s faith in the oil industry in general, and in the all-around wisdom of his new companion in the halls of Congress, the Honorable Alamo Jones, would be rewarded. Not only were his profits from his investment regarded as a capital gain, but there was the oil depletion allowance, which rather effectively cut into the share the government would normally get as taxes.

  To keep the whole thing honest, of course, Congressman Bambino and Congressman Vibrato Val Vishnefsky actually did put up some real money: fifteen hundred dollars in the case of Congressman Bambino, and two thousand dollars in the case of Congressman Vishenfsky, which latter sum saw Vishnefsky become sole owner of the Midland, Texas, & Cicero, Illinois, Oil Company.

  The best-laid plans of mice, men and ambitious congressmen’s wives, however, as the saying goes, sometimes go astray. And this was the reason Congressman Bambino and Congressman Vishnefsky had decided to have a little tête-à-tête with Congressman Alamo Jones aboard The Ayes of Texas, cruising far from prying eyes midstream in the Potomac River.

  What had gone wrong was that when the work-over rigs of the West Texas-Hohokus, New Jersey, Oil Company and the Midland, Texas, & Cicero, Illinois, Oil Company had drilled down another couple of hundred feet, and then another couple of hundred feet and finally a total of about another one thousand feet, all the drill bits had encountered was more rocky sand.

  Chapter Three

  When Vibrato Val had telephoned Alamo and let it be known that he and Tiny Tony wished to confer with him in confidence and at the earliest possible moment about a matter of some importance to them all, Alamo suspected that it had little or nothing to do with the nation’s business.

  If it had something to do with the nation’s business, he cleverly concluded, he would have been summoned to either Vibrato Val’s or Tiny Tony’s office right there on Capitol Hill. Neither Vibrato Val nor Tiny Tony would have felt it necessary, as they did now, to meet with him aboard The Ayes of Texas for a midnight cruise up the Potomac in a rain storm.

  Although he, of course, immediately responded with what he hoped sounded like enthusiasm to Vibrato Val’s little suggestion, the truth of the matter was that attending the annual reunion of Former University of Texas Marching Band Pom-Pom Girls, the high point of the Texas social calendar, which was being held this year at the Shamrock Hotel in Houston, did not strike him as particularly thrilling.

  Ida-Sue, as Alamo thought of it, had sort of a flair for dealing with Vibrato Val and Tiny Tony that he just didn’t have. They seemed to more or less understand each other, despite the vast difference in language.

  But there was nothing to be done. As Ida-Sue herself was always saying, Alamo reminded himself, “You’re a congressman now, dummy, so try to stop kicking clods.” Certainly, Alamo reasoned, there was no reason he shouldn’t meet with two other congressmen for what Vibrato Val had described as a little chat.

  Ida-Sue had taken Eagle Eye MacNamara, Alamo’s Executive Director of Media Relations, with her to make sure that her speech to the assembled former pom-pom girls received wide coverage in the Texas press. That worried Alamo at first, until he concluded that since the meeting was going to be confidential, he probably wouldn’t need Eagle Eye’s services.

  Alamo was waiting at the rail of The Ayes of Texas when the small power boat splashed through the fog and rain and pulled alongside. He had put on his captain’s hat for the occasion, and his blue blazer with the brass buttons and the white flannel trousers.

  “Welcome aboard, mates!” Alamo said as Vibrato Val and Tiny Tony climbed up the stairs (or “ladder,” as it is known in yachting circles).

  Neither Vibrato Val nor Tiny Tony responded to his greeting, save for a “follow me” motion of his hand on the part of Tiny Tony. They led Alamo Jones to the main cabin of The Ayes of Texas and took seats at the mess table, above which hung nearly identical oil portraits of two scantily dressed young women waving pom-poms.

  “You’re not too bright, Jones, you know that?” Tiny Tony said. “With what’s been going on lately, hanging up pictures of two bimbos isn’t what you could call smart.”

  “Tony ... I can call you Tony, can’t I?” Alamo began.

  “Congressman Bambino to you, Tex,” Tiny Tony said.

  “Those are portraits of my wife and our little Scarlett,” Alamo said.

  “You’re kidding!” Tiny Tony said.

  “I wouldn’t kid you, Congressman,” Alamo said. “Perish the thought!”

  “Huh,” Tiny Tony snorted.

  “Well, gentlemen,” Vibrato Val boomed, “shall we get down to business?”

  “Good idea, Val,” Alamo said.

  “That’s Congressman Vishnefsky to you, Tex,” Tiny Tony said. “You’re a newcorner around here.”

  “No disrespect intended, sir.”

  “Watch it in the future,” Tiny Tony said.

  “How may I help you gentlemen?” Alamo asked.

  “Let me put it to you this way, son,” Vibrato Val said sonorously. “You’re something of a disappointment to us both.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” Alamo said.

  “We saw a future for you, Tex,” Tiny Tony said, “a brilliant future.”

  “You really could have been somebody around the Hill,” Vibrato Val added.

  “We thought you were o
ur kind of people,” Tiny Tony said.

  “I was even thinking of putting you up for membership in the Congressional Breakfast Prayer Meeting Club, Incorporated,”* Vibrato Val said.

  (* The Congressional Breakfast Prayer Meeting Club, Incorporated, owns and operates facilities (including a steam and sauna room, a massage parlor, restaurant and what is euphemistically described as a “lounge”) on Northwest K Street. Although the club is open twenty- four hours a day, breakfast is not served. Nor, with the exception of the Deity being asked to grant special favor vis-à-vis the outcome of dice or the next card to be dealt, are prayers often heard. Membership in the club, however, does permit congressional receptionists to inform constitutents that the congressman they seek, whose hangover precludes his presence on the Hill or upon whom Lady Luck is smiling at the poker table, is “at the Breakfast Prayer Meeting.”)

  “I would have liked that,” Alamo said.

  “And then this!” Tiny Tony said.

  “And then what, sir?”

  “It’s a good thing for you, Tex, that you’re a member of Congress. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’d have to think of you as nothing more than a lousy con man,” Tiny Tony said.

  “I don’t quite follow you, sir,” Alamo said.

  “We trusted you, Tex,” Vibrato Val said. “We even gave you money, didn’t we, Tony?”

  “I personally gave you fifteen hundred dollars,” Tiny Tony said, “my entire refund for my March unused stationery allowance.”

  “But that was an investment!” Alamo responded, having finally gotten a rough idea of what was being discussed.

  “An investment? You make money from investments, not lose it!” Vibrato Val said.

  “Sometimes, Congressmen,” Alamo said, “you lose money when you make an investment.” He had heard that in Europe.

  “Civilians might make investments that lose money,” Tiny Tony said, “but not congressmen.”

  “You led us to believe it was a sure thing, Jones,” Vibrato Val said. “It’s not nice to lie to your betters.”

  “These things happen all the time,” Alamo tried to explain. “You don’t always find oil when you sink a hole.”

  “Don’t try to confuse the issue, son, with a bunch of extraneous details,” Vibrato Val said. “You’re dealing with a couple of experts in confusing the issues. You just stick to the facts. And the facts are that we put money in your oil deal because we trusted you, and what happened?”

  Alamo opened his mouth to speak, but Tiny Tony beat him to it.

  “I had a call from Texas this morning, that’s what happened,” Tiny Tony said. “And you know what I heard, Tex?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I heard that my oil well was a dry hole—that’s what I heard. Now, how could something like that happen, Tex?”

  “Well, that’s probably because there’s no oil down there,” Alamo said.

  “Do I look like a dummy, Jones?” Tiny Tony asked. “The kind of a congressman who’d give you his entire March stationery refund to drill a dry hole?”

  “No, sir,” Alamo said firmly.

  “And you know what I got in the mail today, son?” Vibrato Val said, sadness in every syllable.

  “No, sir, I don’t,” Alamo confessed.

  “I got a little bag of sand—that’s what I got. A little bag of sand. It wasn’t even a full bag of sand. And it had a tag on it. You know what that tag said, son?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It said, ‘Well Sample, Midland & Cicero Well Number One, Twenty-Thousand Feet’—that’s what it said. Do you know what that means, son?”

  “Yes, sir,” Alamo said brightly. “That means they took a sample of what the drill bit was running into at twenty thousand feet.”

  “What it means, son,” Vibrato Val corrected him, “is that Vladimir Vishnefsky, out of the goodness of his heart, put two thousand dollars of his hard-earned money into your stupid hole in the ground—that’s what it means.”

  “Gentlemen,” Alamo said, “I understand exactly how you feel. But put your minds at rest. I’ll have certified checks refunding every nickel delivered by messenger just as soon as the banks open in the morning.”

  “Like hell you will!” Vibrato Val said. “You sold me an oil well, and I want an oil well—one with oil in it.”

  “What kind of dummies do you take us for?” Tiny Tony said.

  “Let me put it to you this way, son,” Vibrato Val said. “Just ask yourself this question: What kind of a career is a none-too-bright clod-kicker going to have in Congress once the word gets around that he’s been selling dry oil wells to every senior member?”

  “Taking advantage of their trust in him as a fellow solon?” Tiny Tony added. “Promising his fellow statesmen an oil well and delivering a lousy little bag of sand?”

  “It’s not as if you were fleecing the public, son,” Vibrato Val said. “We all do that. But even someone as dumb as you should know that fleecing a fellow congressman is a no-no.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” Alamo Jones said. “To straighten out this unfortunate misunderstanding ...”

  “There’s no misunderstanding, son,” Vibrato Val said. “We understand perfectly.”

  “What I was going to suggest, sirs,” Alamo said, “is that you sell me your oil wells. I’ll pay you whatever you think they’re worth, and you’ll have a check just as soon as the banks open in the morning.”

  “What do you take us for, Tex, a couple of crooks?” Vibrato Val asked.

  “You didn’t really think that Congressman Vishnefsky and I would actually take good money for a worthless oil well, did you?” Tiny Tony asked.

  “Of course not,” Alamo Jones said firmly. Then he added, “But if you don’t want money, what do you want?”

  “Only what you promised, son,” Vibrato Val Vishnefsky said, “an oil well.”

  “With oil in it,” Tiny Tony added.

  “One that we can see with our own eyes,” Vibrato Val said. “Everything has to be on the up-and-up.”

  “How am I supposed to arrange for that? Alamo asked.

  “You’ll think of something, son,” Vibrato Val said. “Just let us know when—at your convenience, just so long as it’s within the next two weeks—we can go look at our oil wells.”

  “More specifically, son,” Vibrato Val added kindly, “at the oil coming out of our oil wells.”

  Alamo Jones knew there was only one thing to do: bring the problem to Ida-Sue. He would have gone ashore with Vibrato Val and Tiny Tony, but they said they didn’t want to run the risk of anyone seeing them in the same boat with him, so he had to wait until the motorboat put them ashore and then returned for him.

  But just as soon as he was able to reach the Park-Sheraton penthouse, he called Ida-Sue at the Shamrock in Houston.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Ida-Sue greeted him. “I’ve been trying to get you for hours.”

  “We’ve got a little problem, Ida-Sue,” Alamo said.

  “My God, is it all over Washington already?”

  “Is what all over Washington already?”

  “What Scarlett has done to shame and humiliate me before my friends,” Ida-Sue said. “Before all of Texas! Before the world!”

  “I don’t quite follow you, Ida-Sue,” Alamo said.

  “I thought you said it was all over Washington.”

  “You said that, darling,” Alamo replied.

  “Don’t argue with me, Alamo,” Ida-Sue said. “You know how upset I get when you argue with me.”

  “Sorry, darling,” Alamo said. “You were telling me about Scarlett. What’s Daddy Davy’s little girl been up to now?”

  “Daddy Davy’s little girl just shamed and humiliated her mother—that’a what she did!” Ida-Sue said.

  “Well, darling,” Alamo said soothingly, “girls will be girls, you know.”

  “Shut up, dummy,” Ida-Sue said, “before you really make me angry.”

  “Like I was saying, Ida-Sue,” Ala
mo went on, “we have a little problem.”

  “I don’t know what your problem is, Alamo,” she replied, “but you can take my word for it, it’s nothing compared to my problem.”

  “You haven’t even heard what mine is,” Alamo replied.

  “Don’t argue with me, you clod-kicker!” Ida-Sue replied rather excitedly.

  “What exactly is your problem, Ida-Sue, honey?”

  “I can never hold my head up in the presence of any member of the FUTMBPPG again.”

  “Ida-Sue, honey, what’s the FUTMBPPG? It seems to have slipped my mind.”

  “Former University of Texas Marching Band Pom-Pom Girls, dummy. I’ve told you that and told you that!”

  “And what did little Scarlett do to embarrass you, Ida-Sue?”

  “The creme de la creme of the annual FUTMBPPG reunion is the mother-daughter banquet, Alamo. You know that. The only people who get to sit at the head table are FUTMBPPG mothers whose daughters are now UTMBPPG’s themselves.”

  “I know,” Alamo replied.

  “I’ve been looking forward to this since Scarlett was born,” Ida-Sue said.

  “I know,” Alamo said.

  “You won’t believe what that ungrateful daughter of yours has done to me, Alamo,” Ida-Sue said.

  “What did she do, Ida-Sue?”

  “She was supposed to meet me here at the Shamrock at nine o’clock this morning,” Ida-Sue said.

  “I thought the banquet was set for tonight, Ida-Sue.”

  “It is. We were supposed to spend the day rehearsing.”

  “Rehearsing? Rehearsing what? How to eat? What is it, a Japanese banquet with chopsticks?”

  “You’re really dumb, Alamo, you know that?” Ida-Sue replied. “Dear old Daddy was right about you. He said you were the dumbest man he’d ever met.”

  “That’s not very kind of you, Ida-Sue,” Alamo said. “But we digress. What exactly were you supposed to rehearse all day, I mean, since it wasn’t how to eat with chopsticks?”

  “Texas, Texas, rah-rah-rah, of course,” Ida-Sue said. “What else?”