It was a strange-looking device that
rattled down the street in my home town
back when I was a boy.
The old folks said it was from the devil.
But younger folk, those with open minds,
wanted to give it a chance --
so the strange thing was not run
out of town on a rail.
Instead, it was allowed to rumble
into the gazebo at City Park,
where it hummed and hissed,
belching out a noxious black smoke
from the smokestack on top.
There was a Victrola horn on the side,
and as soon as the strange machine
was settled in the gazebo a harsh
mechanical voice began tickling
our ears with balderdash and
innuendo.
My mother tried to keep me away from it,
but after dinner I snuck out my bedroom window
and went down to City Park to listen.
The machine told us that Mrs. Johnson,
a school teacher,
was secretly married to Nikita Khrushchev.
Our Town Hall was full of wormy
catalpa seed pods,
to be sold to Mexico at a huge profit by
the mayor and city council.
Mr. Plummer, a veterinarian, licked
fire hydrants at night.
And my own dad, Fred Palazzolo Sr.,
hoarded matches.
"It's a dirty lie!" I yelled at the horn.
Then I threw a rock at the darn thing.
It went down the smokestack and
a minute later huge glowing red sparks
came flying out of the machine
as it burst at the seams.
We all ran screaming back to our homes
before that dratted disinformation machine
exploded -- destroying our beautiful town
gazebo.
Don't ask me why, but all the prominent citizens
in town turned against the old folks
who had warned us in the first place
about the strange machine --
so those prominent citizens
had every single solitary senior citizen
hauled off to the county poor farm.
That's why I never got to know my grandpa Palazzolo.
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