Legacy

We have all heard of Scrooge, the mean spirited, tight fisted old scoundrel.  The only friend he had in the world was his pet monkey.  He doted on that monkey.  Even though Scrooge was tight and hardly ever burned coal in his cold office even in the dead of winter; he did have a little coat made for his pet monkey.

 

Why not, no one wants a monkey to be cold, just people, and they can provide their own coat or coal.

 

Last summer Scrooge was getting rid of his old unwanted stuff from around his house so he said, and that’s why he had a yard sale.  As he so smugly told Bob Cratchet it was cheaper than paying to have it hauled off and it made him some money from stupid people.

 

The next day after the yard sale Scrooge told Bob Cratchet he had one item left that didn’t sell so out of the kindness of his heart he was giving it to him as a bonus for hard work.  It was an old, but different, cracked sugar bowl with a slot in its lid.  On its side was scrawled by hand a small sign that said “For Rainy Days”.

 

Scrooge said maybe it will be an incentive for you and scowled. Bob took it home.  Bobs wife half grinned but put it on top of an old cabinet.  Every couple of months when it was possible, Bob’s wife would put a pence or two in it.  She hoped that maybe  in a few months she might be able to save enough to buy Tiny Tim a new crutch as he was outgrowing his old one a bit.

 

One night six months later at about 2 a.m. Bobs wife got up to get a drink of water for Tiny Tim and about jumped out of he skin when she saw a monkey fooling around with the sugar bowl.

Well she scared the monkey as bad as the monkey scared her.  Poor Monkey ran over to the fireplace and scooted up the chimney slicker than a whistle.  She got Bob out of bed who wondered what all  the ruckus was about.  She explained that a monkey with a little red coat was monkeying around with her sugar bowl and ran up the chimney when she caught him at it.

 

Bob said, that sounds like Scrooges monkey, it has a red coat.  Immediately Bob’s wife started to lose it, she said no wonder Scrooge is rich; he’s trained his monkey to rob people.  Then she ran over to the sugar bowl just knowing her six pence would be gone.

 

Bobs wife almost fainted, not only was her six pence still there, six schillings had been added. She was astonished beyond words. She couldn’t hardly form the words to tell Bob, but she finally got it out.  Bob said something mighty peculiar is going on here and we are going to get to the bottom of it.  How Bobs wife asked.

 

Real simple he said, I’m going to invite Scrooge to supper and tell him to bring his sweet little monkey with him as Tiny Tim would like to see a monkey.  Bobs wife said, how do you know he will come.  Bob said that’s easy, did you ever know Scrooge to pass up a free lunch.  That got a laugh.

 

Well Scrooge and his monkey showed up all smiles.  The meal was good and Tiny Tim enjoyed the monkey.  Then over an after dinner cup of tea, Bob and his wife confronted Scrooge, the jig was up, Scrooge had been caught red handed doing something nice.  Scrooge protested his innocence, he admitted he’d trained the monkey to do that by using an identical sugar bowl at his house along with a too scale model chimney.  But he didn’t do it to be nice.  Scrooge claimed he was part of a government covert operations scheme for which he was being extremely well paid to see if monkeys could be used to plant or extract things in enemy territory. Bob said what enemy?  Scrooge said he didn’t know, but suspected it was more of an exercise in being prepared than anything else.  Bob and his wife were very suspicious about the validity of the explanation, but had to accept it for lack of another.

 

Scrooge left for home and was heard muttering to himself as to how hard it was getting to maintain an image.