November 6, 2003
Former Yugoslavian premier Sloboat Tuchina is enjoying his new career as assistant minnow specialist at my worm farm.
"I'm entirely comfortable serving as an apprentice to the master baiter," he told my son, Fatso. "Life is better in Michigan. I'm anonymous again. It's such a relief being out of the torchlight."
Tuchina and his wife, Regina, arrived in The States shortly after their former country club fell to capitalism. In addition to his serf-like existence at the farm, the onetime despot has also taken up rugby, lacrosse and voyeurism.
"You couldn't do any of this stuff in Belgrade," he told The Detroit Times. "Everything is vague in southern Europe. They're not Socialists, they're Socratic and sickly. Pasty-skinned, ethnic cleansing partisans remain intent upon ruining what was once a glorious, uplifting society. All that's left now are crumbling statues of Napoleon's horse and swarms of disease-ridden pigeons. It's ghostly, almost verboten."
From the perspective of happy employer, I am glad to inform readers Tuchina has earned a permanent place on our staff. His bilingualism distinguishes this ardent worker and gives him a huge leg up over our mostly-Hispanic team members, none of who speak English and few of who snort Peruvian.
Overall output has increased exponentially and total worm-count is expanding two-fold every ten minutes since the arrival of this occasionally garrulous night school dropout. Furthermore, our worms are fatter, sweatier and actually happier since the incorporation of Serbia.
The new minnow helper seems to be raising all ships including the Queen Larry.
Tuchina joined Bulgarian-born cellists Les Brown and Mary Ford in performing Midwestern logging songs at a special brunch hosted during Leap Year by comedian, Gissele McKenzie. Their version of the classic, "Too Late For Timber," was as moving as anything I ever heard, with the possible exception of the Concorde jet.
Ms. Ford's evanescent soprano reached unprecedented heights during the Third Measure (that I missed due to a prior engagement) and Les Brown's virtuosity was difficult to ignore except for when he fiddled the rosewood bridge over muddled slaughter.
"I play for my muse then my muse pays my dues," Tuchina told The Fargo News. He cited urban renewal and agrarian reform as top priorities and dropped a bombshell on North Dakota's smallest weekly when he announced he was not only a supporter of Hungry but also an ardent and occasionally obnoxious advocate of being hungry.
"I am literally starving," he told relief workers at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club. "What's for dinner?"
Club secretary, Condo Lease, A Right, told Tuchina to take a slow boat to China, provoking this strange response: "Huh?"
Gardeners at the posh suburban enclave gathered gaggle-like around Tuchina's rented Yugo sedan and flicked personal follicles, hair samples and other controversial matter upon the unusually small vehicle's kid-sized windshield.
"We don't wish anything bad on Tuchina," one rather handsome worker told me, shortly before the lights went off and most of the hockey players went back to Kosovo.
"We just want him to remember us subliminally. Unquestionably, the Ducks are better off with Federov."