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how it works

TITLE: SoSo | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
02/16/20
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Uncle Beazley should have been the unfunniest man in Chicago. A pregnant walrus waddled with more elegance and held its belly in with more dignity. The red handlebar mustache grew like a bush over his nose and mouth but he still managed to stuff the hole in his face without hindrance. A green knit stocking, he must have found at a church bazaar, flowed down his back ending in a stream of yellow tassels. Big green rubber boots completed his outfit even when the heat threatened to melt a hundred pounds off his backside.

What made him funny was the two dancing Pomeranians which hovered around his legs like pigeons looking for birdseed. From the time I watched them hover outside the door of a Starbucks I was hooked. They took cuteness to another level. The bright keen eyes of the “little brown fox” watched my every move with vigorous panting while the fluffy snow-white stood immobilized like a marble statue, hardly breathing.

The moment Uncle Beasley stepped out of the door they bounced like jack-in-the-boxes. “No, no, SoSo” he squeaked. The two stopped. “Flow, flow, SoSo” he ordered and the two twisted in circles as if chasing their tails. Cookie crumbs drifted onto the green boots and the pups licked them off with hardly a break in the action.

The big man noticed me standing by the iron bench in the garden. “Like the show?” he asked from somewhere out of the red bush plastered around his nose. I nodded, trying to hold my chocolate ripple cone a little longer in front of my face.

“Name’s Uncle Beazley. This is So and So.”

I nodded.

Without waiting, he shuffled over to the bench and hunched over. “Go, go, SoSo” he gurgled. The two pups bounced onto the bench and up his back until reaching his shoulders. They sat proudly in place staring at my cone. It wasn’t long before a dozen children gathered pointing at the sight.

“Stand by me,” Uncle Beazley whispered. I shuffled a few feet in his direction. “Bend near the bench,” he said. I moved my neck an inch forward. “Ho, ho, SoSo,” he ordered and the pups leapt from his back, onto the bench and then up on my back. I panicked, dropped my cone, straightened and then tripped over the green boots.

The roar of laughter from the children mixed with the yapping of the Pomeranians who slurped up my abandoned sweet. The belly hovered over me and I rolled away, drawing more laughter. The pups scrambled over me jumping back and forth as if I was a rolling barrel. When I stopped, they perched on my back as if this was all part of the act. Applause echoed off the buildings around the courtyard.

“They like you,” he gurgled. “Where are you from?”

“Ghana,” I said.

“Is that near Chicago?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” I said. “I wasn’t born here.”

A guttural giggle gathered momentum from the deepest part of Uncle Beazley until it burst out in an ongoing roar of laughter. A woman nearby began to laugh, then a child and then others until the whole square was smiling and laughing. The Pomeranians did their jack-in-the-box routine and I retreated to the bench wondering what had gone on.

Uncle Beazley pulled out an old accordion, sang a few songs and then shared a story about someone I’d never heard about before. A man who welcomed children of all kinds. In time I would come to know about Jesus but somehow, I’ve always kept a picture of Uncle Beazley and his Pomeranians in the back of my mind.

When I told my mom about Uncle Beazley, she said he must have been a clown. He was definitely not like any clown I’ve seen since.

Uncle Beazley bought me another chocolate swirl and guarded me from the pups. He took up most of the bench but we sat soaking in the sun patting So and So.

“Why do you call them So and So?” I asked.

The big man nodded, raised his bushy eyebrows and smiled. “Suppose I want them to know I like them the same,” he said. “My mama used to call everyone she talked about ‘that ol’ so and so.’ The day after she died of cancer, I found these two abandoned in a dumpster and the names seemed to fit.”

I only had one summer in Chicago but meeting Uncle Beazley and his pups there changed my eternity.

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