Summary: It’s more than Hostess’ “Greatest Comeback in the History of Forever”
Rating: M (2,870 words)
Author’s Note: The REALLY Losts are satires of the series written with much affection, eye rolling, and winks. And can be somewhat risque’.
A Bittersweet Memory of Two Pink Snowballs
A REALLY Lost Episode (a Tribute to Proust)
Prelude:
“And suddenly the memory revealed itself: The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before Mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane.”
Marcel Proust
“Et soudainement la mémoire s’est indiquée: Le goût était celui
du petit morceau de madeleine que le dimanche matins chez Combray
(parce que ces matins je ne suis pas sorti avant la Masse), quand je
suis allé dire bonjour à elle dans sa chambre à coucher, ma tante
Léonie avait l’habitude de me donner, le plongeant d’abord dans sa
propre tasse de thé ou de tisane.”
Marcel Proust
“And suddenly the memory revealed itself: The taste was that of the little chunk of Hostess Snowballs which on Sunday nights at nine at the Ponderosa (because on those nights the Cartwrights were together and Joe or his brothers did not go out on Sunday nights), when Joe went to say “Dead Mama! I love you!” and the Cartwright family all ate snowballs, dipping it first in cocoa.”
“Et soudainement la mémoire s’est indiquée: Le goût était celui
du petit gros morceau des Boules de neige d’hôtesse qui le dimanche nuits
à neuf chez le Ponderosa (parce que ces nuits les Charrons
étaient ensemble et Joe ou ses frères n’est pas sorti le dimanche
nuits), quand Joe est allé dire la maman de â€oeDead! Je t’aime
toute de Cartwright la famille a mangé des boules de neige le plongeant
d’abord en cacao.”
**********
The Opening Scene of A Bitter Sweet Memory Of Two Pink Snowballs:
The thought of hopelessness was briefly replaced with a fleeting feeling of panic and as he struggled to fill his lungs he knew this breath would be his last.
His last breath before heaven?
His last breath before Little Joe Cartwright inhaled deeply and smelled her tropical fragranced perfume, (coconut, to be exact) and embraced her and kissed her more and more and more. And MORE!!
MORE?
Mooooooore!
The only panic was how much more he could stand this before he melted into a steaming lust puddle on the wooden floor of the school house.
“OH BAYbee!” Joe gasped breathlessly.
“WOWza!” she answered. “This is far better than I imagined in my wildest imaginings! You are quite a kisser, cowboy!”
“Teachers are really good to kiss!” Little Joe grinned pulling Desiree Robebleue closer. “Reallllllllly goooooooood!”
“Yes, we make you do it over and over again, until you get it correct!” declared the lovely young schoolmarm wrapping her arms around Little Joe.
“Oh! Miss Robebleue!” Joe gasped lustily. “I never knew staying after school could be so WONDERFUL!”
“Call me Desiree!” said the young teacher as she hugged the handsome young man closer and ran her long fingers through her handsome former student’s tangled curls.
“Yes, Ma’am…. I mean Desiree!” Joe said as he hugged the shapely blonde beauty closer yet. Joe was a really good hugger having observed his older brother Adam for the last sixteen years. “Life doesn’t get better than this!”
Joe Cartwright was having the best day he ever had in school. And so was his teacher, Miss Desiree Robebleue. She decided then and there that Little Joe Cartwright was indeed her favorite student. Miss Robebleue and would miss him, now that he had graduated. In a few days, she would leave town for good.
“Wow!” said Joe coming up for air “No wonder Adam went to college.”
“No wonder!” said Desiree.
Neither Desiree Robebleue nor Joseph Francis Cartwright would ever have imagined that June day would end so very remarkably.
**********
The Commercial Break
(Symbolically, high horse power revving Chevy on a tall, straight, rocky pillar silhouetted against the blue western sky with a deep voiced announcer with a cowboy accent telling the audience to buy one and FEEL the power.)
**********
Burning Map & Credits
The four Cartwrights ride up to the rousing Bonanza theme and the audience holds it‘s collective breath to see who of the quartet is first. Though there is absolutely no connection to which star appears first in the credits on a particular week and who is the featured Cartwright, legendary superstition has spread through the land that whomever is first, is the featured cowboy in that week’s episode.
This week it is….. MICHAEL LANDON!!!!
MICHAEL!!!!!! LITTLE JOE!!!! Women squeal from coast to coast at 9 O’clock Eastern, 8 O’clock Central Time.
A close up of Joe! JOE!!! JOE!!!
His green eyes twinkling like precious emeralds, he grins roguishly at the camera but every female in the audience knew he was smiling DIRECTLY at her and only her. Every single female in the audience between 5 and 123 sighs and feels her heart race, except one woman in Billings Montana with bunions. She was distracted when her beagle, Cleo, overturned her foot bath and short circuited her Magnavox 16 inch black and white TV. Sadly, she was immediately electrocuted and assumed, as her hair stood on end and blue sparks shot out of her toes, that it was a personal love message from Little Joe Cartwright.
WOWza
Cleo assumed it was a love message to her from Cochise.
**********
The Title of the episode: A Bitter Sweet Memory of Two Pink Snowballs.
The Ponderosa Ranch
Morning
Earlier that very day
(Flashback harp and flute music: bloookpieppe boooleee boooleee boooleee sproing sproing bobobo booboooooooo lliiiieeououuuooooolll aaaaLLLllllll by David Rose)
Hop Sing, having finished serving the Cartwrights a hearty, manly cowboy breakfast, is in the Ponderosa kitchen packing lunches for them. Hopefully, he can shove those cowboys out the door and still catch the last bit of “Good Morning America” on the not-yet-invented television.
At his last salary review with his employer, cattle baron Ben Cartwright, Hop Sing negotiated for the not-yet-invented TV in the kitchen between the black iron stove and the red water pump. If Hoppy hustled with the dishes and slopping the pigs and setting the bread to rise, he could catch “Regis and Kelly” and have another cup of coffee from his Mr. Coffee Java Machine before he had to start on the laundry. The Cartwrights had LOADS of laundry. He had a load just from Adam’s black shirts…good thing that boy slept neked.
“MmmMMMmm! I love those Hostess snowballs! YUM!” said Hoss as he walked in to the Ponderosa kitchen. He had just finished his favorite breakfast — 3 eggs and bacon and fried potatoes and Lucky Charms cereal all mixed in an omelet (it was also the favorite breakfast of Leprechauns).
Hoss eyed the cellophane-wrapped snack cakes on the kitchen table. “I like them Snowballs lots more than the Twinkies you give me in my lunch, Hop Sing. How’s about you swap ‘em.”
“Hands off, number two son! “ Hop Sing swung the damp dish towel like a horse whip and slapped Hoss’ hand. “Those prepackaged Hostess treats are only for boys in school for lunch! Only exception is Twinkies for Tuesdays! Only Little Joe still in school. You get a whole apple pie in your lunch. Turkey on rye bread, Russian dressing and apple pie. Mr. Cartwright gets fresh fruit. Doc Martin order. Fruit and low-fat Yogurt! LOW-FAT! Four ounce. No more!!”
“Fresh fruit? Yogurt?” Ben turned up his nose as he walked into the kitchen. “That is hardly a cattle baron lunch! No brownies? Or cookies? No beef or pork products?”
“No brownies! No cookies! Fresh fruit!” Hop Sing shook his head and put an apple in his employer’s lunch sack and efficiently folded over the top. “FRESH FRUIT!”
“No peach turnovers? Roast beef! Jerky? Fried Chicken? Butterscotch pudding? Blueberry cobbler?” Ben asked hopefully. “That yogurt doesn’t sound particularly manly or filling.”
“Matter of fact that sounds sort of sissy, Pa,” Hoss snickered.
“NO! Fresh fruit. Low-fat yogurt and FRESH FRUIT! Doctor said you fat and irregular! Enough filling food make your heart stop! WOMP! Fresh fruit for roughage!” Hop Sing added. “Low cholesterol too!” Hop Sing patted Ben’s stomach that had recently started oooching over his gun belt. “You look like Buddha or Ed Asner. Make sure you bring back spoon.”
Ben nodded obediently. “I’ll bring back the spoon.”
“No snowballs for me either?” Adam asked. He eyed the cellophane package of two round plump pink marshmallow covered soft springy cake rolled in glowingly vivid artificially colored pink coconut. The two cakes sat voluptuously globular in the package. Hostess Snowballs were so sweet and spherically alluring. The image of Lotta Crabtree dancing somehow sprung into Adam’s mind and into his black silk boxers.
“Mr. Adam get poppyseed chocolate cake! I make special for you,” Hop Sing smiled. Adam was the one responsible for Hoppy getting the not-yet-invented cable hook up in the kitchen as well as an extra week off each year with full pay. Hop Sing love ESPN and Walker Texas Ranger on cable and there was going to be a Jackie Chan/Charlie Chan festival next week.
“With dark chocolate icing?” Adam smiled appreciatively. “And organic blackberry filling?” He loved black clothes and black food and Johnny Cash music. Adam Cartwright invented Goth.
“Everything is organic. This is 1858! Pumpernickel and black caviar sandwich too!” Hop Sing said wrapping each Cartwright’s lunch. “And not-yet-invented thermos of black coffee!” He handed Adam his black leather lunch bag. “Bring back thermos!”
“What do you have for me?” Little Joe yawned. He hated school and was nearing the end of the term as well as graduation. The new schoolmarm was a pretty young thing but Joe would far prefer working as a cowboy and breaking horses and rounding up cattle or even being shot at dawn at Fort Churchill for looking like Angus Borden to sitting in the Virginia City School House. Rumor had it that the schoolmarm was hardly older than the students. She had been appointed only because her uncle was superintendent of schools and the previous teacher, the former Miss Abigail Jones, had run off with Hank Meyer, one of the Ponderosa hands. They were living in a condo in Branson, Missouri while Hank pursued his career as a Country Western Lounge Singer.
“Oysters en brochette…for Little Joe!” Hop Sing pointed out the Tupperware package. “Bring back Tupperware.”
“Oysters!” Ben Cartwright gasped. “That boy needs no encouragement from the mythological aphrodisiac powers of oysters!”
“It’s New Orleans cuisine, Pa,” explained Adam who loved the food net work on not-yet-invented TV. “Emeral cooked them last week.”
“You know how Little Joe loves New Orleans food,” Hoss said sneaking an extra apple and nectarine into his lunch sack as well as a handful of taco chips and some lingonberry fruit rollups.
“My mama was from New Orleans,” Joe said automatically. “My beloved dead beautiful mama! It is, as the French author Marcel Proust would say a Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past).
Adam rolled his eyes and picked his teeth.
Ben sighed wishing he could have more than fresh fruit and that Marie hadn‘t croaked. “I know your mother was from New Orleans. I was there, son.”
“Joe get a muffuletta sandwich and Package snowballs!” Hop Sing said hurriedly handing the boy his brightly colored metal lunch box. “Big lunch for growing boy!”
“Careful with the not-yet-invented thermos, Little Joe!” Ben cautioned.
“PA! I ain’t a kid!” Joe rebelled. After all, he was sixteen and feeling his oats.
“And you, Mr. Cartwright, tomorrow you get lettuce and tomato wrap! Healthy, low fat and roughage!”
“And a can of pulque to drink?” Joe grinned hopefully.
“No pulque!” Ben shuddered.
“Beer?” Joe tried
“No beer! Little Joe go to school. No beer!” Hop Sing shoved the boy towards the door.
“Brandy? Rotgut?” Joe suggested as his brothers pushed the reluctant scholar towards the front door. “Kool-Aid from Hastings, Nebraska?”
“MILK for growing boy!” Hop Sing shouted. “You bring back Tupperware from oysters or I go back China, Little Joe!”
The Cartwrights were finally gone. Hop Sing let the dishes soak. He poured himself a cup of coffee and turned on the not-yet-invented television to “Good Morning America”. Chris Cuomo was interviewing opera singer turned rap star, Thomas Bowers. “Peace at last!” Hop Sing meditated on Robin Roberts who sang along with Bowers in an impromptu concert.
**********
The School House
That Very Afternoon
Little Joe unwrapped the lunch that Hop Sing had lovingly made and packed in his brightly decorated Aladdin “Bonanza” lunch box. He devoured the oysters, gobbled down the sandwich and traded the thermos of milk to Mitch Devlin for his very green lime Kool-Aid. The beverage matched Joe’s eyes.
“Two pink snow balls!!!” Joe sighed longingly looking at the package of Hostess snack cakes. He gently patted them. “Yum!”
Joe adored them…. they reminded him of his beloved dead mommy…so round, so pink, so soft. He had few memories of Marie Cartwright. His mother died when he was an infant or a small child or less than five, depending on who wrote the episode. Two pink Hostess snow balls pertly packaged in clear rattlely cellophane. The boy quickly unwrapped his dessert.
“Two luscious pink Hostess snow balls!” Joe sighed. He extended both his hands, palms down and squeezed the pink orbs affectionately. “Oh mommy!!! MOMeeee! Why did you die!??” Joe wept as he unwrapped the dessert. His tears ran out of his Heineken green eyes and the drops plunked noisily on the cellophane wrapping of his Hostess Snowballs.
Plink plunk.
Pa had told him that his Mama was a hostess in a Gentleman’s Gambling Club in New Orleans when they met. Marie and Ben fell instantaneously in love and were quickly married. Mama was a sweet, round, HOSTESS and hostess made yummy, sweet, round, snowballs.
“OH OH OH!” Joe wept into the two round snowballs. “My dead dead dead dear dead sweet mommy!” His tears cascaded down the sides of the pink cakes and ran into the cleavage between the two rounded sweets.
The new schoolmarm, lovely, sweet rounded Desiree Robebleue, seeing Little Joe’s distress came close and hugged the adorable and handsome young man to her ample, sweetly coconut perfumed boobies. Had she met Little Joe Cartwright at any other venue (i.e. a church social, barn dance, internet cowboy dating site), she would have instantaneously fallen for his good looks and roguish charm and tight tan trousers , but she was the new schoolmarm. Despite being only forty-three days older than Little Joe, Desiree couldn’t cross the line between teacher and student.
Could she?
Would she?
Of COURSE!!! Who could resist a Cartwright? Not Desiree Robebleue
“Oh My! Miss Robebleue! Did I ever tell you how you remind me of my dead mom?” Joe’s hot lips quivered. “My sweet dead mom?”
“Tell me, honey!?” she said. “Call me Desiree!”
The rest is a REALLY Lost really really Lost, really really Lost Episode.
**********
The Next Week
Little Joe Cartwright graduated with high honors and a half a package of Hostess Snowballs tucked in his shirt pocket next to his heart… the souvenir of his last afternoon in school and Miss Desiree Robebleue.
That very morning, Miss Robebleue had left town on the early stage with a smile on her face and a nibbled snow ball in her purse. A job as a pastry chef instructor awaited her in San Francisco. Hop Sing had clued her in and Mr. Ben Cartwright had paid for her stage ticket and Adam wrote her a glowing reference letter and Hoss carried her trunk.
“A hussy.” Ben muttered under his breath as the stage coach rounded the turn out of Virginia City.
“But what a hussy!” Joe sighed nibbling on his pink snowball.
“Wowza!” sighed Adam and Hoss from behind their hands so their father wouldn’t hear.
Post script/Epilogue
Ten seasons later:
Executive Producer’ David Dortort’s Production Notes Purchased on EBAY:
Candy Canady’s favorite lunch – Canned peaches eaten straight from the Mason jar with a Bowie knife.
Will Cartwright’s favorite lunch – Either Tacos and refried beans in a “Zorro” lunch box with tequila or freeze-dried space food and Tang in a “Lost in Space” lunch box.
Roy Coffee’s favorite lunch – Anything served on a tray that he can get bonked over the head with.
“Tasty Pastry With Desiree Robebleue” is the top rated show on the cable Food Network. She has a remodeled Victorian Mansion in San Francisco. She makes millions on her tasty pastry.
Adam has changed his name to Trapper John MD but still sleeps neked. He lives happily in San Francisco and enjoys tasty pastry.
Hoss still works hard and enjoys his apple pie with Bessie Sue Hightower. He has made a secret fortune from investing in hot air balloons, gold finding machines, feather wings, internal combustion engines and is supporting a young inventor, Bill Gates, in his latest invention. Hoss uses his vast money to subsidize orphanages, the Special Olympics and animal shelters worldwide as well as rallies for world peace.
Ben Cartwright has lost weight and is quite trim. He does yoga and pilates regularly in a gym that was built on the whirling second floor of the ranch house. He recently appeared on “Good Morning America” to discuss successful single parenting with Diane Sawyer. She was very impressed. He is fitting into the same trousers he wore in season two. Diane Sawyer was impressed about that as well.
Hank Meyer and Thomas Bowers are touring together with Lisa Marie Presley and Britanny Spears in “Grease!”.
….And for the rest of his life, every single time, Joe Cartwright sees a package snow ball he thinks of his dead mom, and his last afternoon as a school boy.
A bitter sweet memory of two pink snowballs.
*****End*****
Tags: Family, tongue-in-cheek
