Once upon a time, there was a family man and hop farmer who gave the best foot massage in Upstate New York (like his father before him), named Farmer Todd. He sang for his local church choir, sounding like Neil Young and Al Green had a baby, and refused to sell his hops to West Coast breweries.
He preferred to make IPAs from his own locally-sourced hops because of upstate New Yorker farmer pride (represent, represent, represent). Farmer Todd always told his five sons, “The way to unlock the gene glow in a gal is to rub her feet like a magical genie lamp, which is the most direct passageway to her heart-filled embrace of your slowed-down metabolism and all your warts, inside and out, too.”
Farmer Todd, like Ben Franklin, believed that good people drank good beer, so he dedicated every day of his life to making the finest IPA beer, because just growing hops to sell them like another one-dimensional hop peddler pusher man with nothing else to sell was boring, and a not family business he could bequeath to his five gorgeous, hardworking, ultra-chiseled sons with as much innovative pride.
Every day before the sun set over his hop stud farm, Farmer Todd would give his yoga instructor wife Crystal a foot massage, which turned her into orgasmic mush every time, opening her up to the prospect of banging out more kids to keep their hop stud farm open to tap for more non-stop business.
Until one day, five days before Halloween, when The Whino Witch of Croton Falls ran through Farmer Todd’s hop fields of green with her orange and pumpkin foot rot fungus, which infected all the hop vines on his farm, wiping out any chance of their sole cash crop growing again.
She did so because she got banned from a yoga class when she used to be a famous winemaker in Ithaca, NY (known for making ice wines) because her feet grossed out the clientele. So she was banned, which his yoga instructor wife, Crystal, enforced. The Wino Witch of Croton Falls had never gotten back on her feet again until now.
Because of this widespread, accelerated, hop farm-plagued fungus foot pandemic caused by The Whino Of Witch of Croton Falls, Farmer Todd had no way of keeping a roof over his family’s head (which included five boys all named after his favorite hop’s varieties; being Angus, Apollo, Atlas, Bravo, and Flyer).
So, during his morning run through the back trails of his former hop farm fantasy land, he’d taken notice of The Whino Witch of Croton Falls flashing her naked, gross, purple, green and orange feet on a tree swing.
She says, “Farmer Todd, did you teach your five sons to give foot massages with the same orgasmic conjuring technique you use on your bitch yoga instructor wife every day before sunset?
“If so, you just need to tell your five studly sons to massage my discolored pumpkin-sized bunions, one for each day of the week, during the week of Halloween, and I’ll bring your hop farm roaring back to life again, in no time.”
Because of that, Farmer Todd told his five sons to make The Whino Witch of Croton Falls welcome in their hands, unless they wanted to starve to death or were willing to sell enough blood to buy an apple tree in the hope of turning that into a batch of hard cider to sell at the local Farmer’s Market, which was tad girly-sweet for their collective tastes.
Because of that, each massage the five sons gave The Whino Witch of Croton Falls helped ignite her glow gene inside, which made her feet return to a beautiful, inviting form again as her transformation from The Whino Witch of Croton Falls to The Fairy Hop Queen of Croton Falls became complete.
Later, Farmer Todd foots the bill for his five sons to open up their own hop brewery farms, knowing they’ll be able to keep growing toward profitability as long as they keep The Hop Fairy Queen’s feet happy during the hop farm footsie scare week of Halloween every year, when all her sordid past emerges through a disgusting outgrowth of fungus and warts on her feet as punishment from the Tree Spirits of Lake Oswego, for making her canoe sink into the water during one her drunken diatribes against the local Hophead Indians.
Their buffalo burgers are too bloody for her taste, in addition to her being racist against Native American Indians for refusing to dry and cover her wet feet in moccasins whenever she hopped out of the waterfall for a midnight skinny dip, and for playing the ultimate Indian giver on Halloween. She used to give away blue cheese to little Indians trick or treating, to inject their Buffalo burgers with funkier, less gamey heft, only to demand they give back her mini-wheels of blue cheese if they didn’t tickle her feet with their headdress feathers in return. All this while lying about being a half-breed Indian, calling herself “Tickle Foot With Feathers.”
The moral of the story is: don’t be an Indian giver, or you’ll be cursed with ugly feet which will turn you into a cold, whino witch queen, scaring away any potential suitor from ever trying to soften your bitter, angry, nasty heart again.
Michael Kornbluth
Do It All Dad Year Podcast Blog 