Big Stinking Memories

Part 4
A Few Hours In Nowhere: Chappell Hill, Texas- The Town that Time Forgot!
      The Van Gogh-Goghs entered Texas. We knew things would be different here in Texas, where grass ate cows and chairs sat on human beings. When we crossed the border, we threw away everything we knew and all the old rules because we knew they no longer applied. Then we got pulled over for littering and the cop made us pick up all the old rules and everything we knew and pack it back in the van. But we had the last laugh as three days later we snuck the garbage bags of everything we knew into a dumpster behind a Circle K. Man, was that everything we knew getting ripe by then! Whew!

      So then, simply because we had seen a town in Texas called Chappell Hill on the map, and since it was only several hours out of the way, we thought, "We're just stupid enough to do it!" So we arrived in the small, out-of-the-way town. It was pleasant, nice, picturesque, even, so we took a few pictures. We bought ice cream at the general store from an authentic old person. We poked around in the antique store. We performed a skit right on the sidewalk so we could still claim we had performed in Texas in case the Big Stinkin' International Improv Fest people caught on to the sketch comedy vipers in their midst. We had a sody pop. We wandered right into the middle of a city council meeting and asked for spare change. We read a plaque commemorating the local university, which closed in 1855 when all the students died of yellow fever.

      All seems swell when suddenly, out of the dusty mists of time, up drive several cherry classic fifties cars, replete with tail fins. Greasers with poodle skirted chicks jump out and start doing the twist, or possibly the mashed potato. Suddenly, a tight lipped guy in a fifties suit and skinny tie steps into the frame and starts muttering "Picture, if you will, a comedy group, stopping in a small town, a small town trapped in time like a fly in amber, a town that time forgot, a town where ..."

      Then, Rob, the most media-astute of the Van Gogh-Goghs, realizes the danger we're in. "It's a 'Twilight Zone' episode, guys!" he screams, "Run for the van! We've got to get out of here before Serling finishes his clause-laden opening sentence!!" Did we make it out alive? Or were we trapped forever in a bizarre time warp?! Ha! Ha! Wouldn't you like to know! We Van Gogh-Goghs will never tell! We'll carry the terrible secret of Chappell Hill, Texas to our graves! Our graves, I say! So, as we're driving to Austin on the last leg of our journey, we suddenly realize that if we had stayed in the town in the 1950's, we could have made a fortune betting on sports games and presidential elections that we already knew the outcomes of. Rob is angrily demoted from driver to spare tire. And from then on, we would all regard Texas with much more wary eye, checking everything for some possible easy money to be made by taking advantage of local disruptions in the space-time continuum.

Back to Part 3!

Back to the archive page

Onward to Part 5!