Declaration of Independence

by

Fifth Estate # 42, November 15-30, 1967

“Is life too dear or peace too sweet as to be purchased at the price of…slavery?…I know not what course others may take, but for me, give me liberty, or give me death.”

—Patrick Henry

Eddie Steamshovel, Tod Damone, Bob Bob Bob and Soap Xhead spent Tuesday mornings scrubbing tobacco stains off their knees. They wrote the Declaration of Independence. Once when Eddie Steamshovel was by himself in a tavern beer cooler in Michigan he took out his Raisin Bran Detecto-Code Flasher. These men were weird and had grown up with the usual pre-revolutionary superstitions like doing the Monkey and Frug would give you Anthrax.

“Tod Damone, I want you for my sweetheart,” said Bob Bob Bob, as Tod Damone rolled away in a cloud of reefer smoke. Eddie and Soap Xhead were playing Canasta on the wicker table. They had tall cool drinks made from Gin and pineapples and wore white cotton suits waiting for the mail boat to come in. This was Africa!

Bob Bob Bob was looking out the window at the unbroken countryside. He smoked some reefer and decided that the Declaration should state all men are created equal and that all men have certain rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It was good to have marijuana legal, he thought. He knew the Declaration should provide a just and fair Government. When a Government was unfair with its people it was time to plan a new one. Even Abraham Lincoln said that. Bob Bob Bob decided to include a long list of ways in which the Mother Country had been unfair and mean to the Colonies. He got the rest of the men together and they all got in the stagecoach like Eskimos and went to George Washington’s house where George had a field of grass and the men got blasted and Jefferson went staggering home and wrote the mother fucker.

Top