The Brilliantly Rainbowed Adventure

- Chapter 37 -
The Call of the Frog

        Frogstick awoke again, writhing in an unseemly quagmire of moribund misery. The pleasant surroundings only served to amplify his sorrow.
        Clear bars of golden sunlight illuminated a cluster of dust motes that drifted aimlessly in the middle of the room. A glance at the window revealed a glorious sunset that could be clearly seen beyond the bars that lined the top of the wall above the gator-filled moat, a sunset that seemed to unwittingly mock his incarceration with its casual display of its own power and unfettered beauty.
        The phone rang. It was the same silky voice that had plagued poor Frogstick earlier in the day.
        "Comfortable?" the voice purred, "Dinner's in the freezer. Call if you need anything. And oh, by the way," he added, "you're locked in tight, buddy, so don't even waste your time thinking about escaping." Frogstick was stunned by the gall of this joker.
        "Let me go!" he cried, "I want to be free!"
        "You stupid yokel," responded the voice, "freedom is relative."
        "Tell that to another prisoner!" hollered 'Stick as the phone clicked dead.
        Searching through the house, Frogstick found some Florida World promotional literature in a drawer. It featured a pictoral section touting something called The Great White or Black Southern Male Stereotyporama. This is how the brochure read:

It's hard to belive it, but Florida was once a part of the Old South, that tradition-bound smear upon the memory of our nation. Quaint cries of "Howdy" and "G'bye, y'all" once graced the air of this urban peninsula as the simple native folk went about their humorously primitive business.

Dynamically altered by the influx of morally and intellectually superior Northeasterners, the old-time Florida of quaint cracker culture has been remarkably well-preserved at Florida Worlds' finest attraction: The Great White or Black Southern Male Stereotyporama.

At the Stereotyporama, visitors can observe these now-harmless numbskulls in the midst of a realistic but appropriately deodorized setting, singing country music, whittling, "eatin' chitlins" and dancing to the laughable squawks of a non-union fiddler.

        The last words in the brochure snapped the final straw for poor old Frogstick Gutchins.
        "Non-union?" he cried, "Non-union?" He grabbed a chair and flung it at the window. The chair broke to pieces against the plexiglass pane with a resounding crash, and the splinters rattled to the floor in the sudden silence.
        "My granddaddy was a Wobbly in the Sutter Mine Strike of '43," he roared. He siezed the coffee table and heaved it after the chair. It likewise shattered against the window, not knowing what else to do. "Uncle Bill was a card-carrying Teamster. My dear, sweet mama served hard time for the USLGW in the Milltown-Cummings Thread War!"
        Frogstick rent his shirt in the agony of his torment. The official union label could clearly be seen on the remnant of his tattered collar.
        "Non-union?" he cried, "NON-UNION?" He drew a deep breath.
        "THIS MEANS WAR!!!" he cried with all his might. The words rang out from his lips like the high toll of freedom peeling from the Liberty Bell (a registered trademark of Liberty Belle Juice Megaglomerate, a proud sponsor of the Florida World Olympics).
        The power and the volume of Mr. Frog's Wild Cry was immense. It echoed through the empty streets of Florida World like the shout of an ancient warrior preparing to slay a dragon.
        Miles away from Frogstick's prison island, our crew had set up an early camp in a hidden glen within sight of the main, engulfing entrance-mouth of the mammoth Florida World complex. We were quietly sitting around a small fire, toasting mushrooms stuffed with crab meat, cleansing our mouths between nibbles with sips of a robust yet subtle California merlot. We were deep in thought, or in a passable imitation thereof.
        When Frogstick sounded his defiant cry, his primal call-to-arms, a tremor ran through our universe. We heard his valiant challenge as a clear, bell-like sound in the distance, a mysterious sonic anonomaly from far, far away: carried ever-so-faintly in our direction, borne on the breath of a favorable wind.
        A confused, distant hub-bub followed this keening clarion-call. Somehow, in some way, Frogstick had struck a fatal nerve inside of the darkened universe of Florida World.
        All of Florida World sensed that something was awry. The evil empire quivered uneasily, full of the echoing noises of troubled shouts and braking monorails.
        Like a great monster that suddenly apprehends the inevitability of its mortality and is provoked to rage and confusion as the sword of a mighty warrior draws nigh, causing it to stir in troubled thought and to arise hastily, full of the bile of its hatred, so Florida World was stirred to the very core of its being. The emergency alarms sounded, and the great monster panicked as the powers in charge of Florida World sensed the unsettling presence of an unbowed freedom in their midst.