Luke Laubhan

I Came in a Budget Rental Truck

I have a vague idea of how I came to be from Oklahoma.  Centuries ago, sometime after Christ, a group of German barbarians pulled themselves up from the dirt, started roaming  the countryside, pillaging.  They called themselves Laub-Hunne: leaf men.  After a while, the Laub-Hunne tired of plundering and converted to Judaism.  They ditched their bearskin, started wearing tapered pants and yarmulkes.  They migrated to Russia, populated the Volga river bank, fiddled, whittled, and made vodka out of tundra potatoes.  Before long, they turned into Russian Orthodox, a prerequisite for intermarrying the lithe, raven daughters of Tsar’s kingdom.  They bore tiny Laubhanovich’s and Laubhanova’s.  Cross-bearing men in furry шапки rode in on big horses, though, burned down their buildings.  They loaded boats and sailed for America, settled in Oklahoma on land won in land runs, and became “Laubhans,” real American Protestants.  They coaxed wheat from the prairie, fixed fried chicken and rhubarb pie for Sunday supper, fought the Krauts for their country.  But not a lot happens on the Plains.  All there’s to do is linger in the Wal-Mart parking lot and plot to move.  That’s what I did.  I don’t know where I’m taking my people now, or what we’re becoming next. We live in Seattle.