Mom and I have been reading through a bunch of her old Boppo letters. This particular one was from June of 1951, shortly before I was born. (As Boppo apparently expected me to be a girl, in his mind he refers to me by my working title, "Cherry Jean." - However I I'd always been told that Dad's working name for me was "Martin Gale.")
At any rate the back side of his page was blank, so upon receiving this, I guess Mom allowed an enterprising Curley Spatano to fill the space with doodles with a bright red pencil. Apparently he has travelled across time to sketch out few early designs in hopes that Lt. Cherry Jean could have a "womb with rou." (The one at the top seems like it could be a seaper.) I think the sketch at the top right may be a detail for a landing gear that was sub-contracted by BKH.
Lt. Gary (Cherry) Mac
[See response below picture.]
Austin Bot Lloyd Bruce deHelyarch Hallock responds:
Ah, yes! Curley Spatano will, indeed, have drawn this series of images in the dim and distant past, and he has, perforce (I just like that word), assigned me the task of explaining it all. So here goes.
As you may have guessed, there is more here than meets the eye of the semi-astute beholder. What we're actually looking at is part etiological tract and part magical talisman. First of all, please understand that this astonishing pictographic document must be read from bottom to top. This unorthodox sequencing was employed for reasons probably incomprehensible to anyone unaccustomed to non-linear timeframes, so please just take my word as an ultra-sard-forever that this is so.
Now, with those basic principles elucidated, I shall endeavor to reveal the actual meaning of the document.
The bottom drawing (1st in the series) represents the great multi-engine mother ship, pregnant with the promise of delivering many new rougers into the world. The numerous ova and spermatozoa represented by the circles and lines within the fuselage make this perfectly obvious, so no further explanation is required.
The next drawing up shows an unborn future-rouger fetus-soul (FRFS) emerging, in the symbolic form of an airplane, from the dark clouds of mystery, the veil from which we all emerge and to which we must someday return. The cryptic lettering at the rear of the fuselage is the yet-unformed name of the new being. The number "664," which appears above the airplane in the guise of a flock of birds is not a curse or variant "mark of the beast," but simply an apotropaic device that Curley employed to ward off untoward names for the soon-to-be-born baganine. Also note the wad of gerp balled up behind the propeller. This is typical of unborn baganines and is nothing to worry about, as they all get over it (see next drawing).
The 3rd drawing (second from the top) shows a more advanced FRFS. There's a lot going on here. First note the "664" charm remains in place, a good sign. Just above that, the rectangle with the squiggles inside is a cutaway showing that the newly forming rouger has finally got his gerp in order. All seems well, but a definite wall of some kind looms ahead. And beyond that wall, we see the tines of a fork in the stream of time. Yes, there is a choice to be made here. Will this FRFS become a girl or a boy rouger? It seems a cruel thing, but every proto-baganine must decide before he or she is born into the world whether his rouing career will be better served as a boy or a girl. (see next drawing).
The final drawing (at top) reveals that all will, indeed, turn out well. Yes, thanks to Curley's retroactive intervention, the FRFS will emerge from the womb like a powerful Roltin-esque roucraft. Furthermore he will grow up to be an ultra-berry-berry boy baganine bearing the name of "Got," which is clearly spelled out in "rounic" letters above the (on second thought, somewhat gronky looking) Roltin-esque roucraft. And furthermorethanthat, despite the ungainly appearance of this Roltin-esque roucraft, the young soul will be headed for -- not a detail of a landing gear, as some have posited -- but a shining ace medal to be won, after much travail, on a cool morning in the distant future in the skies above the hard pavement of the South Lamar K-Mart parking lot.
Whether Boppo was right and Gary would have fared better as Cherry, only Curley Spatano, the navigator of alternate timelines, can tell, and on this matter he is (for now) silent. But it seems clear that Curley had his reasons for intervening as he did.
A side note: Tice the style of the circles throughout this series of drawings. All of them, including the one on the ace-medal-landing-gear, seem to have been drawn in a clockwise direction and closed at about 10 o'clock. I currently tend to draw circles counter-clockwise and close them at 2 o'clock. I don't know if this has anything to do with my left-handedness, but Curley, of course, is ambidextrous. I would however draw your attention to the little potato thingy just below the ace medal. It seems to be a baganinish attempt at a circle, and it closes closer to 2 o'clock. Go figure.
Another aside: I have always habitually drawn airplane profiles with the nose facing right (another artifact of my left-handedness, I suppose). I remember Dad admonishing me against this at an early age, insisting that it violated standard engineering-drawing practice.
~ABot
