Chronicles of Anytown: 51 - Jerx's Jokes & Novelties

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Chronicles of Anytown: 51 - Jerx's Jokes & Novelties

Written by dimenno

Tuesday, 19 December 2006

By Doree Lang, Town Historian, Anytown Historical Society

Jerx's Jokes & Novelties is not an easy place to find. First of all, the street it's supposed to be on doesn't appear on any map. I had to ask the local Police for directions on how to get there. I finally learned that it is situated at 1400R (for 'rear') Sulfur Spring Avenue, which, as it turns out, is a dead-end dirt road directly behind the Short Stop Filling Station (“When You Have a Blowout Invite Us to Your Flat”), and just outside of the precincts of the Treasure Island Amusement Park (on a former site of the Black & Black Traveling Carnival). But when you do finally find it, there it sits--an Anytown institution, Jerx's Jokes & Novelties. (The first word is invariably pronounced as 'jerks'; the apostrophe-s was only added recently in a belated acknowledgment of syntactical exactitude.)

The owner and sole proprietor of this shop, a man who, as it turns out, is very well-known to the townspeople, both on the Island and also in the Downtown, Old Town, and Uptown districts, prefers to be referred to, in print and in person, as “J.” He will even tell you as much when he first meets you: “How do you do, just call me “J.”, thank you very much. You can stick a period in there if you want.” He is a man with an accent which sounds both nasal and clipped, as befits an old-time “Carny” (he was, in his youth, a Barker or “Talker” at Black & Black). But he is also capable of displaying a courtly, even old-style European charm, particularly when placed in the unfamiliar role as escort to a member of the 'fairer sex' (“We don't see too many high-toned Dolls like you in a dump like this, Miss--y' don't mind if I call you 'Miss'?”).

His shop, or “dump” as he affectionately calls it, is crammed--literally--up to its rafters--and these are high; Jerx's Jokes & Novelties is now housed in a former Quonset hut--with thousands and thousands of items for sale. In years past, items of this sort were available, if at all, only by sending away to companies that advertised their wares in comic books and magazines of the lower sort, generally under the rubric, “Not Available in Any Store!” In addition to the usual vulgar stand-bys (“X-Ray Spex”, “Hot Pepper Gum”, “Poo-Poo Cushion”), J. also offers an unusual array of life-like rubber masks and costumes; it should, therefore, go without saying that, just before Halloween and Christmas are when he does what he calls a “land-office” business; in fact, during the three or four days before those holidays, he keeps his establishment open twenty-four hours a day. (“Sleep is for sissies,” is his laconic reply, when asked how he manages to accomplish this feat.)

If J. likes you, he will lead you into his back room, where you can browse through his “museum” of exotic items and curios, most of which (fortunately, as we shall see) are not for sale. These items consist, in the main, of products taken off the market due to their hazardous, even lethal, potential. The packaging on some of these items--many of them dating as far back as 1890--often tell their complete stories, but, if not, J. will, often unsolicited, fill in the details.

Item one: “Blind Man's Eyedrops--An Hilarious Optical Allusion.”

J: “These say on this here package that these drops will not result in permanent blindness, but unfortunately, come to find out, that wasn't strictly true! I think that these here were taken off the market around 1970.”

Item two: “Radioactive Hand Buzzer.”

J: “Saay, don't get too close to this one! Usually, I keep it behind lead glass. It ain't gonna be safe to get too close to this baby for at least another hunnert years! It does give off a nice glow, in the dark though. I think this baby was taken off the market in--1938? 1939? I wanna say 1938. Anyway, that's the date on the package, and I don't think any more were made after that.”

Item three: “Hot Mercury Chewing Gum”.

J: “These'll clean yer dentures! Hah! They'll cure yer clap for ya too, if you'll pardon my French.”

Item four: “Baby Made a Boom-Boom”

J: “We still sell these, you know, only we call 'em 'Baby's Messy Diaper.' And now they're made of plastic, y'know, not--Oh!--I'm sorry, Miss--you shouldn't look at this one if ya got a sensitive stomach….man, that was one sick baby!”

Item five: “M-80 Exploding Loads.”

J: “These here see, these you would put in a cigar, see, to teach a lesson to moochers. Trouble is, that's a quarter-stick o' dynamite you got there, enough to blow a guy's head off. I think later on they used these during the war. This one's from about 1935.”

Item six: “Dancing Jigaboo Mask”.

J: “Well, I ain't one o' them bleedin' hearts, here, don't get me wrong, but I stopped selling these--I wanna say around 1991. They're still popular in certain parts of the South, though. And every now and then there's still people comin' in here wantin' to rent it from me, sayin' they want to wear it to a surprise party. No thanks! My name is “J.”, not “Race Riot Man”! Bill Cosby asked me one time that when I finally get rid of it would I give it to him 'cause he'd like to put it in a museum he's thinking of starting. Someday I just might take him up on it!”

Item seven: Book: “Report From Iron Mountain”

J: “Lib'erian over at the Treasure Island Public Lib'ery gave this to me. Says it's a fake, but I dunno. Some pretty innarestin' stuff, if ya know how to read in between the lines!”

Item eight: “Genuine Bee Venom.”

J: “This was a really slow seller, so I moved it in back. Turns out that very few people actually WANT genuine bee venom.”

Item nine: “'Pez' Dispenser in the Shape of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover” Ca. 1960

J: “Boy Howdy, I'll tell ya, this one was taken off the market in a HEARTBEAT!”

Item ten: “Real Third Eye.”

J: “I have NO idea what this is.”

Item eleven. “Plastic American Cheese.”

J: “Too many people were actually buying this and eating it, saying it tasted delicious, better than the real thing. Actually, it is pretty tasty. Every now and then I catch myself biting into one….”

Item twelve: “Hemorrhage Powder.”

J: “This one was actually putting people in the hospital. A real shame, though--the profit margins on this stuff were huge. It was made from coal tar, see, and factories were actually paying us to take it off their hands….”

Item thirteen: “My Little Particle Accelerator.”

J: “Didn't actually work.”

Item fourteen: Book: “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

J: “Some people say this book's a fake, but I dunno. Makes a lot of sense to me.”

Item fifteen: “The Soot Candle.” Made in China.

J: “EPA pulled this one from the shelf in 1972 when it was discovered that the “soot” was actually depleted plutonium. Wouldn't stand too close to this one, either. It's OK for me, though--I don't really want no more kids.”

Item sixteen: Book: “The Drunken Chef.”

J: “Very popular novelty item. Local Fire Department begged me to take it off the shelf.”

Item seventeen: “Lightning Rod Hat.”

J: “This was the other one the fire department didn't really like. Still have people coming in here and asking me if I still sell 'em, though.”

Item seventeen: “Burning Tire Capsule.”

J: “This one never really caught on. Y'see, you were supposed to light this little capsule, and it would give off the stench of burning tires. Well, first of all, nobody really much cares for that smell in the first place, and second of all, the reason it smelled like burning tires was because it was made of exactly the same stuff that tires are made of. So where's the humor?”

Item eighteen: “Mace Gum.”

J: “Y'know, some of these novelties are just plain sick. Y'know what I mean?”

Item nineteen: “Hot Jesus Spunk”

J: “I have NO idea at all WHAT in hell THIS is. I swear to God, I don't even know how it got here. You believe me, don't you?”

Item twenty: “'Mystery' Package.”

J: “I'd like to show you what's in this, but then I'd have to kill you. No, really, I'm serious.”

With that, J. reached behind his back and produced an extremely realistic looking plastic machete. “Looks real,” he said, with his head down but his eyes looking up at me, his face suddenly contorted by a peculiar grin, “don't it?”. As I scooped up my notebook and slowly backed away from J. and made my way out of the back room and slowly backed out the Quonset hut housing Jerx's Jokes & Novelties and then ran for my car as fast as I could--thank God I had worn my flats--and practically flung open my car door and jumped into the front seat and slammed the door shut and hit the lock and stabbed the key into the ignition and the turned it, saying to myself in a state of abject panic, “comeoncomeoncomeon startstartstartstartSTART!damnit!START!” I glanced at my rear view mirror and thought I saw J. coming up to the car wearing a wolf mask and waving his plastic machete and knew he was going to think I was just plain skittish but as I floored the accelerator and got the hell out of there fast, I knew that in fact I had made the right decision in choosing to terminate the interview and get while the getting was good.

I can't say that the police hadn't tried to warn me in their own fun-loving way, for when I had stopped in at the station and asked them for directions on how to find the place, they had asked me if I didn't want to be fingerprinted “in case we need to identify the remains.” At the time I thought they were joking, so I refused. Now, maybe they were joking, but still--I think they actually DID take my prints because they offered me a glass of water and it seemed to me that they then took the glass and set it down in the corner with what I thought at the time was extraordinary care….

Well, let's say, just for fun, that if they had found my headless and mutilated corpse, I guess--I guess the joke would have been on me!

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