
(Mercifully) Short Stories

Blue Moon in Zanzibar
When the Santa Fe Railroad at last completed its iron highway across the desolate eastern reaches of California’s Mojave Desert, the company work crews and their families drifted away to other tasks, leaving the little towns that had been built for them to begin a long, slow spiral into economic decay. The bars closed and the schools and churches fell silent and everything became coated with the fine dust of the Mojave, dust that had been kicked up by the gleaming locomotives as they raced by in the night, ignoring the towns that once loved them.
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Today, many of these hamlets still exist. Some are abandoned, and others still boast a handful of ancient, weathered residents. The towns even retain their original names, which they got because of a clever idea the railroad men had long ago. It seems the Santa Fe named each of the towns along this particular route in alphabetical order from west to east, starting with the letter “A.”
If you’re a traveler in these parts and you’re the logical, orderly sort, you can get started in Amboy and head for Bagdad. It’s only a few miles. After that there’s Cadiz and Danby and eventually you’ll find yourself in Essex, then Fenner and Goffs and so on. You can keep right on going, in fact, until you get all the way to Zanzibar.
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“It’s a good thing the Chinese didn’t name the towns out here,” said Darlene, the waitress at the Zanzibar Cafe, as she poured Chelly a cup of coffee. “I hear they got over 50,000 letters in their alphabet. Can you imagine 50,000 Zanzibars?”
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Chelly stared into the unsolicited cup of black liquid before him and activated Remo, his computer implant. Just as he suspected, a beverage made from the tiny fruits of a shrub grown in the planet's tropical zones. Remo's read-out said the fruits are dried and roasted and then ground into a coarse powder through which hot water is poured, leaching the consumable molecules into a glass receptacle. Optional variations on its final preparation, continued Remo, include the addition of a sweet, crystalline substance extracted from a grass-like plant—also grown in the tropics—and the incorporation of a white liquid that is culled from the glands of domesticated animals that possess an intelligence level just slightly below that of the humans.
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“How can you stand to wear that jacket, mister?,” asked Darlene. “It’s hot enough to peel paint off a barn out there today.”
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Chelly looked self-consciously at his leather jacket. “It ain’t so bad,” he replied in the local vernacular. “After all, I’m from Hell.”
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Had Chelly been able to read the expressions on the faces of these creatures, he would have realized that it had been a mistake to scan the Gideon’s Bible in his hotel room for reference information on the humans, rather than relying on the Nebunet or his own cerenetic database. He had felt it important to read the religious tome simply because it was imperative that he learn as much as he could about these beings. After all, ever since his Lyrig Skyvessel had crashed in the Mojave while running medical supplies (quite illegally) from his home world of Stol to the Scaraboon rebels on the planet Ferth, it looked as though he might be spending a good deal of time with them.
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A human in dark blue clothing who was sitting in a nearby booth seemed to take an interest in this last exchange with the waitress.
He got up and walked over to Chelly’s booth.
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“What’s your name, boy?,” asked the human.
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“Jesus,” said Chelly. He quickly scanned the creature and its attire: slightly overweight for a human, three years old (Stolian years were equal to about seventeen earth years), and a shiny, oval-shaped chunk of metal pinned to his uniform with the inscription "Zanzibar Police Department" on the front. A tiny bit of the being’s most recent meal was still clinging to its chin.
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“Jesus from Hell, huh? You got business here in this town, ‘Jesus’?”
“No, just passin’ through.”
Officer Ben, as he was known by the residents of Zanzibar, looked out the large plate glass window fronting the diner. “I don’t see no vehicle out there but my own and the folks who work here. Now just how’d you git here?”
“Hitchhiked,” said Chelly. Chelly had spent hours on the Nebunet the previous evening doing his homework. No one in the galaxy was going to stump Chelly when it came to human modes of transportation.
Officer Ben walked slowly from the far side of Chelly’s booth to the side Chelly was on without taking his eyes off the drifter. Chelly pretended to be unconcerned and began using a fork to “eat” his coffee.
The officer leaned forward and, with his face only a few inches from Chelly’s ear, coolly asked “You an American citizen?”
Now, this question threw Chelly off guard. Given his youthful appearance and his long hair and leather jacket, he’d expected a question like “Show me the merry-wanna, boy.” As a matter of fact, Remo--who was capable of continuous mental interaction with its host--had given the chances of being posed such a question a whopping 89.6% probability rate. Unfortunately, what the Remo unit had failed to take into account was Officer Ben’s concerns--not about drug smugglers or foreign nationals invading the United States--but about aliens of a very different sort. This was especially true given the remoteness of his jurisdiction.
“You bet I am!,” answered Chelly.
Officer Ben stood straight and slowly walked back to the far side of the booth as if Chelly’s response had deprived him of his chance to move in for the kill. Somehow, though, Chelly didn’t think the ordeal would end there.
“Who won the World Series in 1957?,” the man suddenly blurted out.
“What?”
“I said, ‘Who won the World Series in 1957?’ If you’re an American, you oughta know the answer to that.”
Remo came through. “Why, it was the Milwaukee Braves,” said Chelly.
“And the year before that?”
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“The New York Yankees, of course. It was their 17th world title.”
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“Oh yeah?,” said Officer Ben casually, “Who’d they beat?”
“They beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, in the seventh game, by a score of nine-zip.”
This was too easy, thought Chelly. His remote unit, which actually wasn’t that remote, since it was implanted inside his brain, could instantaneously access its own database or link up with the Nebunet, the Free Galaxy’s very own collective database of each and every known fact in the universe. Remo would then display the information on what an exo-anatomist would probably call Chelly’s retina, where only he and Remo could see it. Nobody in the entire universe was going to stump Chelly in American trivia.
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The information relating to earth in both Remo’s database and the Nebunet had been tirelessly collected over the decades exclusively by monitoring earth’s television and radio broadcasts. And that means every broadcast from every station: every song, every newscast, every commercial, every ball game, every soap opera and even every radio talk show conversation (whether the participants knew what they were talking about or not) since the 1920s. It was a formidable arsenal of information.
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“Who won the Oscar for Best Director in 1948?,” asked Officer Ben.
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“John Huston, for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Bogie was in that one.”
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“Very good,” said Officer Ben. “And did Bogie win an Oscar that year?”
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“Nope. Humphrey Bogart didn’t win his first Oscar until 1951. That was for his role in The African Queen."
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Just then, the jukebox started making a clicking and a whirring noise. The music machine had decided it was time for a song.
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“Bom-b-b-bom, b-bom-b-bom-bom, b-b-bom-b-b-bom, a-dang-a-dang-dang, a-ding-a-dong-ding, blue moon, blue moon, blue moon...”
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Officer Ben smiled. “Name the song and the band.”
“‘Blue Moon’ by The Marcells,” came the response. “But they didn’t write it. The original goes way back...” (He had to bite his tongues to keep from saying “way back by earth’s standards.”) “Come on. Give me something easy. You’re killin’ me here.” He was getting cocky now.
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“Think you know something about old time Rock and Roll, do you?,” asked Officer Ben. The restaurant employees were gathering, at a distance, no doubt enjoying the spectacle. Besides, there wasn’t anyone else in the joint.
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“What was Elvis Presley’s first album called, with RCA records?”
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“Easy,” said Chelly. “It was called Elvis Presley. Got any more?”
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“What was the first Rock and Roll movie soundtrack?”
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“It was for the movie Rock Rock Rock released in 1956. It featured a collection of songs from Chuck Berry, The Moonglows and The
Flamingos, to name a few. Tuesday Weld was in the movie and I think it’s about time that I started asking a few questions.”
Officer Ben straightened up from his attack stoop. But he filed no protests.
"Where did Roy Orbison grow up?,” asked Chelly. Now the penny loafer was on the other foot.
“West Texas. A town called Wink,” came the reply. “Lead singer for The Platters?,” asked Officer Ben.
“Tony Williams. Who recorded ‘In the Still of the Nite?’”
“The Five Satins,” said the officer. “True or false: Chuck Berry once served time for Grand Theft Auto.”
Typical cop question, thought Chelly--and a trick one at that. “False. It was Armed Robbery. Three years. Back to Elvis: how much did RCA pay Sun Records for Elvis’s unexpired contract?”
“Thirty-five grand, plus another five grand bonus for Elvis himself. How old was Franky Lymon when he sang ‘Why do Fools Fall in Love?’”
“Thirteen. And the song was originally titled ‘Why do Birds Sing So Gay?’ Franky’s group called themselves The Teenagers and they practiced their art by singing on the street corners of Harlem. Most of them were black, but there were two Puerto Ricans in the group as well.”
Darlene’s eyes rolled skyward like a pair of cue balls headed for the corner pocket.
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The contest raged unhindered throughout the better part of the afternoon and by the time the desert sun had started its long, fatal descent into twilight, red with the wind-blown sands of the Mojave, there was still no end in sight. The questions continued to sail back and forth like mad ping-pong balls and the answers chased after them like small dogs. Neither one of the two had missed a single question, and it was becoming less and less clear to Chelly what this madness was all about.
They talked about the concert tour “The Biggest Show of Stars for 1957,” which featured Fats Domino, Clyde McPhatter, a Canadian teenager of Lebanese descent named Paul Anka, the Everly Brothers, the Bobbettes and the Drifters, to name a few. They quizzed each other about Chuck Berry’s Gibson 335 guitar and the Fender Stratocaster and Fender’s four-string electric base, the guitars of choice for the “rockabillies.” They discussed Ritchie Valenzuela, whose last name was changed to “Valens” so that the disc jockeys could pronounce it, and how he’d died in a plane crash in ‘59 with Buddy Holly, along with a heavy-set Texan named J.P. “Jape” Richardson, a.k.a. the Big Bopper, who found himself on the ill-fated flight only because Waylon Jennings had been kind enough to give up his seat to the man.
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“Who was the lead guitarist for the Johnny Burnette Rock ‘n’ Roll Trio?,” asked Chelly.
“Paul Burlison. The group played on Coral Records, a subsidiary of Decca. ‘Get a Job’ by the Silhouettes was first released on what label?”
“Junior Records,” replied Chelly. “But it got picked up by Herald Ember after the first 9,000 copies were sold. Why didn’t Elvis release ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ as a single after he first recorded it?”
“Because he didn’t want to step on Carl Perkins’s ‘Blue Suede Shoes,’ so to speak,” said the officer. “Elvis didn’t want his version of the song to eclipse the version put out by his friend, Carl. Elvis did, however, eventually release it as a single. Sing the second verse of ‘Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong.’”
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“I’ve got a girl by the name of Rama-Lama-Lama-Lama-Ding-Dong,
She’s fine to me, and her name is Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong,
You don’t believe that she’s mine, all mine."
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“Actually,” continued Chelly, “it differs from the first verse by only one word. In the second line, the...”
Officer Ben threw up his hands. “O.K. I’ve heard enough,” he said.
Chelly breathed a sigh of relief.
Officer Ben motioned to the two cooks who had been leaning up against the counter with their arms folded across their chests.
“Take him away, boys.”
Chelly’s three hearts leaped into his throat. “Wait a minute!,” he protested. “What are you doing? I’ve answered all your questions!”
“That’s right, boy. You’ve answered them, all right. You’ve answered more questions than any human could answer. A human would have to be nuts to know as much about ‘50s Rock and Roll as you do. You, sir, are an extraterrestrial! Get rid of him, fellas!”
Officer Ben was beaming. “Them Stolians! Gets ‘em every time!”
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You idiot, thought Chelly. This had all been a trap. It was true. A real human would have been stumped by these questions long ago. Including a human cop...
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“Yeah, and just what planet are you from?,” hollered Chelly. The diner got deathly quiet.
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“What the hell do you mean, ‘what planet am I from?,’” asked Officer Ben. “Earth, you idiot!”
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“Yeah? You answered as many questions as I did. And what kind of cop uses fry cooks to haul away criminals? Besides, a town the size of Zanzibar couldn’t possibly have its own police department. This area’s under the jurisdiction of the Inyo County Sheriff’s Department and they don’t even know this town exists anymore. That’s why I’m hiding out here.” Chelly motioned to Officer Ben’s gunbelt. “And that’s the damnedest looking nine-millimeter I’ve ever seen.”
“Officer Ben” looked down at the Churilik 3000 resting awkwardly in his gun holster. The notches carved into the handle represented cities, not individuals.
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“You’re a Tchichnee, aren’t you?,” said Chelly. “You all are! I’ll bet this whole town is nothing but Tchichnees. I heard about you and your fellow malcontents in the Tan-Tan splinter group wandering around the Hellnik Department, looking for a nice planet to hide out on.” Actually, Chelly wasn’t too sure about this last part, but Remo was laying 5-to-1 odds it was true.
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Officer Ben studied Chelly for a moment before turning once more to the cooks. “Tsa-Hinhin fu’lek,” he said. “Hector” and “Alberto” obediently walked towards their charge-to-be.
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Chelly grinned. He knew the Tchichnee language when he heard it. “Well, I’ll be damned. Welcome to earth, baby!” He laughed the kind of hysterical laugh that the bravest of us emit when the end is nigh and all hope is lost.
The two Tchichnee cooks grabbed Chelly from behind and yanked him out of the booth. As they dragged him towards the kitchen, Darlene erased the words “Yankee Pot Roast” from the Daily Special blackboard and scribbled in its place “Stolian Stew. It’s out of this world!”
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“You know, officer,” said Chelly as he was being dragged across the linoleum, “somehow this doesn’t seem real sporting to me. I mean, why stop the game now? I didn’t miss any questions, did I?”
Whatever else you could say about the Tchichnees, they were an honorable species when it came to giving their quarry a fighting chance. In fact, the famed Tchichnee Code of Honor gave them no other choice. Chelly also knew that no Tchichnee could refuse a challenge. “What’s the matter, officer?,” he said. “Afraid I’m going to stump you?”
Hector and Alberto instinctively stopped in their tracks and looked to Officer Ben for a response to this provocation.
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Ben looked around at the faces of his fellow Tchichnees and then quietly sat back down at Chelly’s booth. He took a sip of coffee and stared out the window for a moment. “Park it,” he said finally, motioning for Chelly to retake his seat.
Hector and Albert released their grip on the Stolian smuggler.
“That’s more like it,” said Chelly. He jumped to his feet and straightened out his ruffled jacket before sliding back into the booth. “I knew you were having too much fun,” he said. “Now, isn’t this a little more like the Tchichnees we all know and love?”
“Stuff it,” said Officer Ben. “Here’s the deal: we stick to early Rock and Roll. No movies, no sports, no nothin’ else unless it relates somehow to the music. Miss a question and you wind up as tonight’s Blue Plate Special. Understand?”
Chelly nodded and looked warily around the cafe at the “employees” staring at him: Darlene, the counter waitress; Sally, the dining room waitress; Hector and Albert, the cooks; Fred, the manager; and a little guy by the name of “Lonnie” who washed the dishes. All of them, no doubt, were Tchichnees or their alien cohorts and all of them, no doubt, were within easy reach of an impressive array of weaponry. Escape was not an option.
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“Stump me,” continued Officer Ben, “and you walk.”
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As the night wore on, the trivia got more trivial and the particulars got more particular. The two strangers seemed to be seeking the Rock and Roll equivalent of pi to the 100 billionth place--information that reflected realms of knowledge that were no less than Governmental in their uselessness. And still, neither one missed a question.
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By the time the last-quarter moon was rising yellow and ugly over the sorry protests of the coyotes, it was 3 a.m. and Remo had been trying for several hours to come up with an end-game scenario that might get him and his host out of this ordeal-by-trivia. After all, Remo’s fate was inseparably tied to that of Chelly.
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“O.K., Remo. What’ve ya got?”
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“Well,” wrote Remo on Chelly’s retina, “now just bear with me for a moment. In case you haven’t noticed, the Tchichnee has not raised any question relating to any fact or event which occurred after March 17, 1964.”
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“Yeah, so what’s that prove?,” thought Chelly. “We’re playing early Rock and Roll trivia. What would you expect?”
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“No, I mean, even in the first few questions before the ‘50s Rock and Roll trivia segment. The Tchichnee started his trivia questions with the ‘57 World Series. It’s far more likely that a human in 2024--or an alien impersonating a human in 2024--would bring up a more recent World Series. Besides, there are lots of ways to phrase questions about ‘50s Rock and Roll songs and personalities concerning events that happened well after the 1950s, like the Tchichnees’ abduction of Elvis in 1977, for example. Follow me?”
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“I guess, but it doesn’t sound like much.”
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“Well, my records show that the Tan-Tan splinter group left the planet Tchichnee three earth years ago. Now, it’s well known that the Tchichnees don’t have access to the Nebunet. They refused to alter their software to match that of the rest of the galaxy so they stayed out of the database construction and have not cooperated in any way with the Nebunet Project. Their knowledge of earth is confined to what they’ve gathered through their own radio and TV surveillance of earth.”
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“Keep writing.”
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“Just suppose that these guys don’t have any post-March 17, 1964, information on earth in their databases.”
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“But you said they left Tchichnee only three earth years ago,” thought Chelly.
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At that moment it hit him. “How far is the planet Tchichnee from earth?,” he asked in his thoughts.
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“Approximately 60 light years.”
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Chelly had a mental go at the arithmetic, but Remo was way ahead of him. “Given the Tchichnees’ hyper-light speed travel capabilities,” said the computer, “and assuming that these guys headed straight for earth after leaving Tchichnee, which is unlikely, the last earth broadcasts that these here Tchichnees could have possibly added to their database would have originated from earth on, let’s see, July 8, 1965.”
“What’s the possibility,” thought Chelly, “that these Tchichnees here in Zanzibar have updated their earth-info databases since?.”
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“Are you kidding?,” said Remo. “Out here in Zanzibar? Without so much as a telephone in the whole town? I’ll lay seven-to-one odds they haven’t yet.”
“Last question,” said Officer Ben.
“Whadya mean, ‘last question’?” asked Chelly, jolted from his internal conversation. “I still haven’t missed anything yet.”
“The Tchichnee Code of Honor is only so honorable,” replied the officer. “Your turn. And you’d better make it a good one.”
Until now, Chelly had been counting on the Code to allow him to leave the joint as a whole being, as opposed to leaving it morsel by morsel in the bellies of its patrons.
“Come on, Remo,” thought Chelly.
“I’ve got it!,” said the computer.
Chelly grinned as he read Remo’s findings. “Getting back to the plane crash that killed Valens, Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper,” said Chelly, reading from his retina. “Name the song that hit the charts in 1972 that memorialized this tragic event.”
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Officer Ben’s jaw dropped and somewhere a plate crashed to the floor. The officer looked helplessly to his fellows in the restaurant, all of whom stared back at him with equally-quizzical stares on their faces.
Chelly could just hear the gears grinding away.
Fortunately for Chelly and Remo, those residents of the galaxy who had decided to become a part of the Nebunet Project had continued their pursuit of information from all species in the galaxy, adding to the network’s database byte by byte over the years. Fortunately, these beings had added to that database the song ‘American Pie’--not a Rock and Roll song from the 1950s, but, indeed, a song about 1950s Rock and Roll and the afore-mentioned plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly and company. And, fortunately, the Tchichnees had thought themselves too good to participate in this great galactic effort to universalize and share such information. Fortunately, the Tchichnees had no knowledge of the Don McLean classic that was released in 1971 and which topped the charts in ‘72.
Chelly raked his pockets for enough cash to cover the $27.36 bill presented him by Darlene, but Officer Ben waved him off. “It’s on the house,” he said.
The Stolian smuggler then put his leather jacket back on and began to walk towards the door. This reminded him of another old song, one that had originally been recorded on Chess Records by cajun Robert Charles Guidry, a.k.a. Bobby Charles. Like the songs of many black artists in the 1950s, this particular piece had remained relatively obscure until finally achieving “respectability” through its 1956 release by a white band, in this case none other than Bill Haley and the Comets. In fact, thanks to Bill Haley, the title of this song was destined to become a household phrase for decades to come.
Chelly stopped at the door and turned towards Officer Ben. “See you later, alligator!”
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THE END