How to grow white mushrooms.

 (based on a news story by Christopher Mims, WSJ.)

I worked real hard over the years

 to afford a home on Lake Minnetonka. 

They don't go for nickels.

Still, once I was moved in

I felt that I had gotten a bargain.

The crystal blue water.

The soughing pines all around

my property.

On stormy nights the waves

slapping crazily on the rip rap.

Imagine my consternation, then,

when one morning I awoke

to find an ocean going vessel

run aground on my beach.

I called 911.

They sent the police.

The police sent for the 

Coast Guard 

from Duluth.

When they arrived

they told me it was

an automatically piloted

ship.

Autonomous,

they called it.

No skipper, no crew.

All done by FM signals

or some such thing.

But how,

I asked them,

did the blame thing get

onto a freshwater lake

and crash on my beach?

They shrugged their shoulders.

Coulda been a high tide

said one guy.

 "Thank you, Captain Peachfuzz"

I told him sourly.

It took 'em a month to get

the hulk towed off my beach.

By then it was Christmas.

I was all alone in my house

on Lake Minnetonka.

My family and friends

mostly didn't believe in

wearing masks.

So I didn't join them

for Christmas

or invite them over.

But Christmas Eve

there was another wreck on my beach.

This time it was a tanker,

filled with eggnog.

Autonomous again, so no crew.

The eggnog dribbled out of the tanker

and froze on the rip rip,

making everything smell of nutmeg.

But there was a stowaway.

I caught him creeping out of the tanker,

covered in eggnog and shivering.

"Come on in, friend" I told him.

"Nobody should freeze to death covered

in eggnog."

I had to help him inside. He was almost gone.

I washed him up and put him to bed.

Then sat in the living room by the

lighted Christmas tree, reading

Martin Chuzzlewit.

The next morning when I 

went into his room

he was gone.

He didn't leave a note

or anything.

Just three lumpy woolen socks

and an open can of Vienna Sausage.

When they finally got the tanker

hauled off my beach it was spring.

The eggnog killed all the fish.

Must've contained alcohol.

I sold the house, my fine house,

to some Welch salvors. 

Then moved into a cave

to grow white mushrooms.