Once there was a Baker with a show-window full of cakes and
pies and other goods,
Who, contrary to the Fairy-story-type Baker, did not live in a woods.
While it may be nothing about which to brag,
This Baker was named Albemarle and lived on the main drag.
He was a successful Baker, but he developed a one – track point of view
When he became obsessed with the idea he was going to figure out how to eat his cake and have it too.
He tried everything–all sorts of distractions,
Like devouring part of a cake and leaving behind just fractions.
The harder he tried the more disgusted he became,
For whatever method he’d use the result was much the same.
“This,” he was wont to shout, “Calls for Herculean measures,
as Edison or Eli Whitney might say.”
And with maybe just a little more than undue hesitation, he
started rising at 3 instead of 4 and increased his quota
to 2 glasses of buttermilk a day.
If this were merely a success story, our Baker would have been
rewarded for his pains, but with alases and alacks,
We must herein concern ourselves only with facks,
Vlhich is so very hard on young folk starting out in life,
sodden with ideals–
But off the sermon and back to the man who added pies and sticky
desserts onto the ends of meals.
After several years of trying, his nerves were beginning to wobble,
For the cake he had left always seemed to disappear in direct
ratio to the amount he would gobble.
But finally his little girl, who had been working hard at it for better than 7 years,
Decided she’d grow up to be eight rather than stagnate and remain in arrears.
So for the party momma threw for the little 8-year-old elf,
Poppa baked the largest Birthday Cake he’d ever dreamed up,
quite outdoing even himself.
The masterpiece was finished all but decorating,
And he was standing with the Alemite gun {or with whatever they use to decorate cakes in his climate) in his hand, speculating,
When the Big Idea claimed him, and taking up quantities of lickydab
and goo,
He put the proper numeral on the aforesaid gem and so Eighted his cake and had it too.
by Ray Romine Tuesday, September 9, 1947
