Damn, all the stuff I read in Sigmund Freud about the interpretation of dreams (last autumn and winter), which flew right over my head, came back home to roost. That's the way some of us learn; we absorb material, and then sometime later out of the blue, like Saul on the Road to Damascus, we get around to understanding it.
I dreamed I was sitting in the waiting-room of Victoria Station in London, watching hordes of Obamaite primitives crowding the ticket-windows, pushing and shoving and handing over money.
There was a guy sitting next to me, wearing a homberg, an umbrella crooked on his elbow, working a crossword puzzle.
He got stumped at something, and looked at me quizzically.
What's a 15-letter word for 'Democrat'?" he inquired.
I immediately recognized my fellow alum Skins.
"'Capitulationist,'" I replied.
Skins went back to working the crossword puzzle, while I watched the crowds at the ticket-windows.
Finally I asked my fellow alum, "Hey, where do you suppose all these primitives are going? There's enough of them to fill up six or seven or fifty trains, and they seem awfully anxious to get tickets."
Skins told me the Obamaite primitives were buying tickets to the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
Oh, I said.
Then I thought of something, pointing to a news article on the other side of the page from where my fellow alum was working the crossword puzzle, RAILWAY TRESTLE OVER CREDIBILITY GAP IN PERIL OF COLLAPSE.
"The train has to cross over the Credibility Gap to get to the Big Rock Candy Mountain," I told him.
"I know," said Skins; "it should be interesting. You want to go along, to watch?"
Sure, I said.
We walked out to the railway platform, following the Obamaite primitives to their train.
There was a puffing steam-locomotive, Obama in an engineer's hat at the trottle, smiling and waving to the Obamaite primitives rushing to get aboard. There was the usual coal-tender behind the locomotive, after which followed nineteen long passenger cars.
Obamaite primitives were pushing, shoving, cursing, stuggling to get on the train. It was pointless to find seats, long ago taken, and so they stood in the aisles, and hung out the windows. There were some atop the cars, out in the open air. There were others hanging onto the rods underneath the cars.
"Uh," I don't think so, I said; "this looks w-a-a-a-a-y too crowded to be comfortable."
Not to worry, Skins said; "Wait here, and I'll be back in a few minutes."
A few minutes later a yard-engine backed a twentieth car onto the rear of the Big Rock Candy Mountain Express; one of those first-class parlor-observation cars complete with kitchen, dining room, lounge, bar, upholstered reclining chairs, and open at the end, if one wishes to go outdoors while the train is moving.
My fellow alum came back. "That's where we're riding," he told me.
Wow, I said; "this is first class all the way, and seats in these cars don't come cheap."
"Can we afford it?"
Not to worry Skins said; "it's rented exclusively to us, and it's already paid for."
Pointing to the Obamaite primitives jammed into the other passenger cars to where the windows were bulging outward, he explained, "they tithe me, and there's plenty in the till to pay for this."
Oh. Okay, I said.
A porter laid out a red carpet for my fellow alum and I to board the train, and once aboard, we were cordially greeted by the conductor and the maitre d'hotel. We made ourselves comfortable, and with a jerk, the Big Rock Candy Mountain Express, Obama at the helm, started off.
It was a pleasant trip, through the verdant green meadows, gently flowing rivers, and antique castles of Gloucestershire, but eventually the scenery changed, and we were chugging through the Himalaya Mountains.
When Skins got up to use the men's room, I noticed there was a cuspidor by his chair, and even though it had an ample opening, quite obviously my fellow alum was a poor aim. So as to not make him look bad to the porter, who would have to clean up the mess, I shifted over to my fellow alum's chair.
I suddenly got worried. "You know," I reminded Skins, "the Credibility Gap's a steep abyss, several thousand feet deep, and man-eating crocodiles at the bottom."
"Don't worry," my fellow alum said; "we're okay."
Oh, I said.
I couldn't see the front of the train, by judging by the mileposts along the line, we were approaching the trestle over the Credibility Gap. Despite Skins's confident reassurance, I started getting nervous.
Then it happened, without us seeing it.
Obama and steam-locomotive and coal-tender got over the trestle to the other side, but then the trestle broke, and the first passenger car snapped off the coupling from the tender, starting to descend, pulling the rest of us down with it.
At the same moment, the conductor pulled the air-brake on the final car, the observation car, our car.
This car pulled to a screeching burning halt, and the nineteenth passenger car, the one just ahead of us, snapped off the coupling, swirling down the abyss with its brothers.
Skins and I got off, the porter again laying down the red carpet, to go look and see.
Standing at the edge of the precipice, we could see Obama, his engineer's hat in the air, smiling and waving as he and the locomotive-and-tender proceeded on its way from the other side.
Looking down Credibility Gap, the abyss several thousand feet deep, my fellow alum and I watched as the passenger cars and Obamaite primitives turned and twisted and somersaulted and gyrated and spun on their way down.
"Oh my," said Skins.
