Mumbo Jumbo Gumbo

Hampton’s Landing, Ohio, is one of those quiet, sleepy, little towns you hear about but never see. That’s because they only exist in the minds of fiction writers and Hollywood producers. Politicians talk about them as if they were real but they did that about their core convictions too. Televangelists act like they live there while asking for your money. There was never a Hampton connected to the town and there couldn’t have been any landing. The only waterway was Colley Creek running through the middle of town. It was, at one time, the main sewer line too. Still gives off an odd odor now and again. People say it from the drunks at Kal’s Bar and Grill.

On this particular morning, there wasn’t a sound except the occasional dog barking, the few cats meowing, and a squeal of two from a rat just as the cat ate it, causing the meowing, causing the barking. All this woke up the occasional husband who would plead, unsuccessfully, “Please, honey?”. But, Mumbo Jumbo was wide awake and ready to go. It was Mumbo Jumbo Gumbo day, the day Mumbo Jumbo made his famous concoction that had people lined up for hours in front of his diner

Jumbo’s Eats.

He tested the final concoction on the carp he kept in his pond. If they didn’t go belly up, he served it. If they did cash in, he served it anyway. He just wanted to know how potent it was on any given day. After all, he had to live with these people.

Mumbo Jumbo already had the huge gumbo pot bubbling away with wild onions and certain other roots he’d dug up. He glanced around at what he had and decided to start with the deer he’d found a couple of days before. The deer didn’t look like it had been hurt and it didn’t look like it had starved to death. Mumbo Jumbo didn’t have any idea how the deer died and he didn’t much care, either. That deer was pretty ripe but Mumbo Jumbo couldn’t tell from the smell. Mumbo Jumbo hadn’t been able to smell anything since his college days when he’d sniff anything. Then he was young and dumb. Now, he was older and dumber.

He sliced a little bit off the deer and gave it to a rat. The rat refused it. That should have told Mumbo Jumbo something, and maybe it did and he wasn’t listening. Mumbo Jumbo grabbed that rat and forced the deer meat down its throat. The rat stared at Mumbo Jumbo. Maybe it glared at Mumbo Jumbo. It didn’t matter. That rat was still stuffed to the gills with ripe deer. The rat didn’t react so Mumbo Jumbo went to work cutting the deer up and adding it to the gumbo. He then decided to go with some mushrooms he’d picked that morning. First, he’d test them out on the rat to be sure they were mushrooms.

Okay, the mushrooms are good whether they were mushrooms or not. In they go. He thought about saving a few of the mushrooms for himself but decided not to. He had given up drugs years ago. The hallucinations had turned into bad dreams and scared Mumbo Jumbo clean. Neurotic and unstable, but clean.

Mumbo Jumbo threw the dead rat in for that natural, wild flavor people loved so much about Mumbo Jumbo Gumbo. He cooked that gumbo all day long, just as his mother, Mama Jumbo had taught him. Mama Jumbo had been making this gumbo all her life, canning it and selling it at her stand on Rt 66.

One day, as she was looking the other way, a truck loaded with horse manure tipped over on her. Bye-bye, Mama Jumbo. Mumbo Jumbo always thought of Mama when he was cooking up the gumbo. He thought putting her in a pot of it would have been a better memorial than, “smothered in horse crap”. That made her sound like an entree.

The next things to go in were the frogs; large, plump, juicy ones Mumbo Jumbo snatched up out by the creek. Mama Jumbo said to always add the frogs because “they have magical kinda powers”. This is from a woman who’d nail Mumbo Jumbo alongside his head for telling the little kids about the boogie man.

“I ain’t gonna hear that kind of talkin’ from my very own boy. That’s the Devil’s work, you hear me, boy, the Devil’s work!” she’d say as she whacked him. Mama was a huge woman and Mumbo Jumbo would be deaf for a while after a clouting from Mama Jumbo.

Mumbo Jumbo didn’t believe that frogs had magical powers. He loved his Mama dearly but he suspected that Mama didn’t have all her power connected. Mumbo Jumbo always just sort of nodded at her when she said stuff like that. He figured she had a few circuits shorted out. Her somewhat odd way of dying just confirmed it to Mumbo Jumbo. Who else would go out by being clobbered by a load of manure?

Mumbo Jumbo added toads to the gumbo as well. He figured, if frogs added something to the flavor and effect, then the toads might too. If they didn’t, so what? Toads were just as easy to catch as frogs and no one knew either one was in the gumbo.

Mumbo Jumbo would cut up sow’s ears so the “folks have something to chew on a while. Folks like to chew a bit and these old sow’s ears keep them chewing a while”. Mumbo Jumbo replaced the sow’s ears with slugs. For one thing, slugs were easier to come by. They also were very, very chewy. Plus, they added texture to the gumbo to thicken the broth. And, Mumbo Jumbo didn’t have to cut them up first. They already were bite-size.

As the gumbo cooked away it drew the attention of flies. They would buzz around the kitchen. Occasionally one would fall in. Mumbo Jumbo never knew exactly how many flies took a header into the gumbo pot or care, Roaches, on the other hand, depended on their size. H'd throw the little ones in but not their mamas. He figured the flies would cook down to nothing anyway.He always said no two Mumbo Jumbo Gumbo’s were ever exactly alike

When the gumbo was cooking, folks around town started cursing the odor from the creek. Drunk this early in the day. Retards. The cops would look and never see anyone using the creek for a bathroom. They thought of setting up a surveillance camera but the Mayor said that was too stupid even for Hampton’s Landing. Besides, who wanted to watch someone...

The only person in the area who had never tasted Mumbo Jumbo Gumbo was Mumbo Jumbo.