THE UNFULFILLED LONG JOHN

Before I left for Mexico I had a very fine meal at a Vietnamese place where they serve chicken and fried potatoes over rice. With lots of scallions. It was delicious, as I was frequently reminded by the rich belches that accompanied me out the door after paying for the meal.
Such a meal demanded a fitting end, a simple but hearty dessert. Luckily there was a Byerly's Food Store just around the corner. Now up here in the Land of Ten Thousand Pot Holes nothing spells 'swank' like Byerly's. They are the creme de la creme of supermarkets for the upscale food enthusiast and they have a superb bakery. I waddled into their place and made a bee line for the pastry section. Sunk deep in thought, I ignored the blue-haired grandmothers shoving past me and the gentrified clerks yakking on their cell phones as if Wall Street hung on their every word. The crullers looked good. So did the cinnamin kringles. I was on the point of ordering a poppyseed kolache when my greedy eye alighted on the Bavarian Creme-filled Long Johns. For just ninety-cents. "That's the ticket" I exclaimed to myself, beckoning the bakery girl over to me with an imperious wave of the hand. The girl was swarthy and wrapped in some kind of shower curtain burnoose; undoubtedly a Somalian. Nothing wrong with that I thought benignly as she pulled out my long john, wrapped it in tissue, put it in a bag, and handed it to me. It takes all kinds to run a bakery, and if she wanted to traverse half the globe in order to fill me full of sugary calories on a fine day like this so much the better. Live and let eat, that's my motto.
I paid for my goodie and took it out the door, already relishing that filling. Those Bavarians sure know how to wallow in a good, thick, tasty creme. With visions of jolly fat Bavarians stomping away in vats of creamy froth I began to unwrap my long john.
That's when it all began to unravel.
The girl had wrapped the long john too firmly with the tissue. As I peeled it off most of the chocolate icing remained glued to the tissue, not the long john. I've had this happen to me before, so I didn't panic. I gingerly patted the tissue paper as I continued to remove it from the long john; that way most, but not all, of the icing stays on the top of the long john. I was not distraught, merely a tad disappointed. Still, there was all that yummy filling to look forward to.
My first bite was dainty. No need to rush the pleasure. Just the tip of the iceberg. No filling yet, but that often happens with these things -- undoubtedly that pregnant bulge in the middle of the pastry contained the mother lode. I could take it like a man and survive a few more cremeless bites to hit the jackpot. But a few more bites led me to nothing more than an arid waste of sweet dough. Not a drop of filling was to be had for love nor money. Now I began to panic. I took several big bites, then stared unbelieving at the heel of my long john. There had been no Bavarian creme, not even a molecule.
Indignantly I walked back into Byerly's, straight on to the pastry section where the Somalian girl was staring off into the distance remembering a long lost swain or camel perhaps.
"See here" I began, "I don't like to roil the waters of international felicity -- (I often talk that way when I'm in high dudgeon) -- but you have sold me a pig in a poke, the opposite of a Trojan horse, in short, a Bavarian Creme-filled Long John without any Bavarian creme in it!"
I waited for her abject apology. I waited in vain. She silently stared at me as if I had antlers growing out of my head. At last she deigned to speak:
"You want to buy another one?"
I gave her my Franklin Pangborn #2 withering look -- gauranteed to cut anyone but a megalomaniac down to size -- and icily asked to speak to her manager. With a vast shrug that indicated the inbred fatalism of the Bedouin she sauntered into the back of the bakery.
Instantly out popped a round little man, all pink and moist, with gold-rimmed spectacles perched on the very tip of his button nose. A character right out of Dickens, was my first impression, though I later amended that to Dostoyevsky.
Not waiting for him to cry "Ere now, what's all this, Ducky?" I waggled the heel of my counterfeit Bavarian Creme-filled Long John under his cute little nose and succinctly gave him my tale of woe. At the end of my narrative he ran the tip of his tongue back and forth between his lips as if he were a cat savoring the last of Tweetie Pie.
"You must have got a plain long john" was the brilliant deduction he finally came up with. "If you wanted creme-filled you should have specified."
"But I did order a creme-filled one and I saw the gal take one out and give it to me!"
"You just said there was no creme in it. You sure you know the difference? Maybe you got a maple-iced one. These long johns can be hard to tell apart."
Not caring to bandy any more words with the man, I quietly and patiently asked either for a refund or for the real McCoy.
He did the tongue business again, then shrugged like the Somalian girl and pulled out another Bavarian Creme-filled Long John for my inspection. We both peered at it intently. The tell-tale little puncture wound on the end gave promise of the good stuff inside so I thanked him profusely and carried my hard-won prize away.
Do I have to spell it out for you? Nothing. Nada. Bupke. It was as empty of creme as the last one.
This time I would brook no more shennigans from these people. They call themselves bakers, I huffed to myself as I strode back inside Byerly's -- they couldn't bake themselves out of a paper bag. Hah!
Disdaining further debate I merely ordered another Bavarian Creme-filled Long John from the girl. Taking the bag from her hand I slowly pulled out the long john in front of her. By this time Mr. Pickwick had joined us from the back. As they stared at me, mesmerized, I smartly broke the long john in two to hoist them on their own petard.
The proof, my dear Watson, would be in the lack of pudding!
That Bavarian creme sure makes an awful mess when it's spattered all over counters and glass cases. I offered to help them clean it up but as they were busy consulting the store manager about calling the police I just pulled up stakes and silently stole away.
Next time I'll get a rice krispie bar. And I'll get it at the Piggly Wiggly.