VAN WINKLE HAD TO TINKLE

It happened years ago that an old man named Rip took a trip to Sleepy Land where he doze and was in repose for twenty years. It appears Old Man VanWinkle got drunk on booze and lay down on a hill to snooze. When he awoke his beard was two feet long and his clothes were tattered which didn't matter because he was the slob of the Town of Handymedown..

Rip fell asleep and awoke on Christmas Day with a headache that could choke a horse. Of course, after all those years in a somnolent state first he had to urinate. He was consumed by thirst but his bladder was about to burst so the urge to pee came first.

On that cold day in December, a day the town will long remember, he began. First a drop, start and stop, then a dribble and a drip and old Rip waited for the anticipated flow. You should know, when it began, no man alive could survive the rush, the flush, the endless stream, that poured and poured into the valley of the town.

Flood filled the lowland ground and a surging stream knocked down every tree and house, drowned every mouse, boats of every size capsized. People who survived climbed the church steeple and prayed for the flood to subside. God complied and it did and as the flood slowly receded townsfolk needed to know how it began. Then they spotted Rip up on a hill and watched until he dripped dry.

With a sigh of relief he addressed the distressed in a speech quite brief:
"When you gotta go you gotta go."