Local Colour

LARRY’S LETTER

                                                                                                                HOGAN’S ALLEY, Jan. 31.

DEER TIM. – That opium smoke that I was telling ye about last week an’ the Joss –eradicating cigar what I took, got in their work foine, an’ instead ov cursing Wong Foo, ‘tis meself that’s blessing him.  There must ov been some boyle as well as brimstone in me stomack before I smoked the cigar, an’ whatiever was wrong wid me brane the opium settled it, for I can drame to the most beautiful drames evir since.  I gave won ov the cigars to Porcupine Billy, an’ he tells me that it worked loike a charm, an’ cleared everything out ov his system that interfered wid his invintive janius.  Billy goes about now in his Sunday clothes, an’ says that in future he’s going to develop the mussels ov his brane an’ do no more manual labor.  The rest ov his days’ll be spent on invenshuns.

…

I had a letter from Tom Carey the other day, Tim.  He has a job on the railway that there building up be Goat River, an’ he tells me that there’s a big town springing up at the landing.  They calls it Kalama.  That’s a quare name, but Carey tells me it was an Italian what gave it to it.  A few ov the boys he says, got a bottle ov whiskey into the camp, an’ so bad that they were all giving it the worst name they could think ov.  It was tangle-foot, an’ sure-deth, an’ fire-water, an’ liquid brimstone, an’ everything that was bad.  An Italian dropt in, an’ Carey axed him to have a dhrop of calamity water.  The Italian went back to his camp an’ towld all his friends about the drink ou – he couldn’t think ov calamity-water an’ called it Kalama-water.  They went looking for the Kalama-water, an’ when they found it at the landing they called the place Kalama, an’ the name stuck to it.

                                                                                                LARRY FINN