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"Come
and bring the beasts .. ah, … snortle pop ..
horses … and follow me," said Burrbear.
He led them down a dirt path along the river
where you could see the work the beavers were
doing on the flam, as they called it. "The
flam controls the flow" said Burrbear. "Fantastic!" shouts
J above the roar of the overflow.
It was only about mid morning but certainly time for
a little something of some sort. After walking down
the winding path for about a quarter mile (like Granma’s
road coming in to her place) they arrived in an open
circle, oh about 100 feet wide, in the middle of the
dark green trees they had seen before. Granma could
now see that they were yummy avacado trees. Her eyes
weren’t as good as they use to be, being 129 and all.
J was licking his chops also. On the way they had passed
some tall, spikey grayish-purple things sticking up
out of the ground. G now saw one headed her way. It
was a pineapple, carried in a platter by one of the
putty-tats. She soon found out it was not called a
pineapple, not in Timbuktoo, of course. . And why in
the world do we call them pineapples anyway? They don’t
look like apples; they don’t come from apple trees;
they don’t even come from pine trees! So they
aren’t really pine-apples at all!
Here they called them "sweet ‘taters. Well, they
WERE sweet, and here they grew underground like ‘taters,
so that was a pretty good name for them, I guess. G
noticed now that they weren’t yellow inside either;
they were light pink, kinda like grapefruit. They all
sat around a stone table in the middle of the circle
of trees. The putty tats put down platters of sweet
‘taters and avacados. Granma went to Mober and got
a big papaya out of the basket, carefully, so as not
to squish any Chips.
The ‘ole beavers eyes lit up. "Slurpppy poooof
badooom … you’ve come from the top of Mangoes End,
you have!" "Yep, yes, Your Highness, that’s
where we came from all right," said G. Burrbear
hadn’t seen a papaya in a Marshie’s age he said. Must
be something like a ‘coon’s age’ thought G. G was pleased
that she had something to share. J got out his trusty
pocket knife and cut slices and put them on the platter.
Burrbear carefully collected the seeds to plant them,
just in case one might grow among the avacados and
sweet ‘taters.
"So, Your Royal Majesty, Burrbear, what’s
the name of your lovely village here?" asked
G, looking at Burrbear. "Varooom plunkin" said
Burrbear. G wasn’t sure if he was just trying to
talk or if that was the name of the place. He didn’t
say anymore, so she figured that must be the name
of the place. But after a couple of avacados, he
said, "FlamFlow. This place is called FlamFlow." he
said as he eyed the papaya. "Go ahead, Your
Majesty, the King is always first. The papaya is
a gift for your hospitality," said G. Burrbear
raised his bushy eyebrows, "jossss-spital
…teeee?" G explained the best she could: "Your
Majesty's generosity, being friendly, and all that."
"Oh" he said.
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