Uncle Fun and Sparky Land

Happy Friday, devotees of pointless serialization:

   You may recall that our story of Sparky Lost and Found had taken us to the North Funsville Rural Concession Dump (East Annex), where we encountered an old black-and-white television set which spontaneously produced this image:

   You may not recall it, either. In any case, you know about it now.

   I’m accustomed enough to unusual occurrences, but even I had to wonder what had happened to imprison Sparky in a half-century old cathode ray tube. The smell of smoke and the sight of flames leaping from Science Boy’s hip pocket furnished the beginnings of an answer.

   It seems that Science Boy always carries a device for detecting disturbances in the fabric of reality, and something had made its circuits overload. After Moose had beaten out the flames with a nearby car fender, Science Boy repaired his malfunctioning reality gauge (his shattered pelvis would have to wait to be repaired). Taking a series of readings from the immediate vicinity, he determined that Sparky’s experiments with do-it-yourself rocketry had blasted a pathway through to an alternate dimension, one in which Sparky’s life essence had become jumbled up with television transmissions from the distant past.

   As if to confirm this hypothesis, the image on the TV screen snapped out of phase…

   …then resolved itself with Sparky standing next to Rod Serling.



   The episode of The Twilight Zone that followed came out a little differently than I remembered:

   “Maybe we can get him out by changing the channel,” Moose suggested. We all agreed that anything was worth a try. Besides, Gunsmoke was on next, and I’ve never been too keen on westerns.

   A click of the dial gave us an episode of Sgt. Bilko with a new addition to the motor pool platoon:

 



   Before the half-hour was over, thanks to Sparky, Colonel Hall had been promoted to five-star general, and was appointed to replace William Westmoreland as head of American forces in Vietnam. None of us thought it was worth sticking around to watch the news to see how that worked out, so we changed channels again. The Ernie Kovacs Show, as so often happened, featured an appearance by the Nairobi Trio—joined this time by a guest artiste:

   We stayed on this channel through to the next program—The Untouchables. We sensed that something might be amiss when we saw Eliot Ness led away in leg irons just after the opening credits.

   Al Capone and Frank Nitti may need to start working another side of the street…tune in next time to see if Sparky hangs ar0und in Gangland long enough to go toe-to-toe with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

Uncle Fun