The Return of Oscaloo (Part 2)

The place was an early 1960s fever dream. 

After opening the utility closet and getting past an ersatz circuit breaker, Alice, Diedrich, and Chief Grady walked down a narrow, murky staircase that must’ve descended three flights before finally getting to that hatch, which was a simple doorway with a four-number combination code—it being 1-2-3-4. When they opened the door and walked through it, they found themselves smack dab in the middle a paved street.

And what they saw was a world onto itself. It was just one room, but it was as expansive as a football stadium. The walls and the extraordinarily high ceilings were painted baby blue with fluffy cumulus clouds artfully scattered about. The street was lined with sidewalks and houses—the lawns made out of AstroTurf and each yard cordoned off with white picket fences. What immediately struck the eye about this street were the houses on one side that were identical to that of the other—as though there was a mirror down the middle of the street.

The street was free from cars, but there were people walking down the sidewalks, standing in their yards and chatting. Even though the yards were AstroTurf, there were two men who appeared to be mowing their lawns. (Turns out those men were operating lawnmower-shaped AstroTurf vacuums.) Kids were riding up and down the street on bicycles, often in pairs. In a yard nearby there were two boys—identical twins—dressed in identical maroon and yellow polo shirts and blue shorts. They were tossing a red and white beach ball at one other. As if simultaneously sensing the presence of the outsiders, they both in unison turned to look at Alice, Diedrich and Chief Grady and waved, grinning from ear-to-ear.

Each house was even outfitted with mailboxes. They had come at just the right time to witness mail service in action. There wasn’t one mailman but two of them walking down the sidewalks on either side of the street. They weren’t walking in perfect unison but close enough for government work. They wore tan wide-brimmed hats, light blue button-down shirts, blue shorts and black knee-high socks, and they were whistling. As they walked closer to the strangers, it had become apparent that they were identical twins as well. The mailmen eventually spotted them and said, in unison, “Howdy friends!” with a bleached-white grin before opening another mailbox and putting in a couple of letters.

The reason for the existence of so many twins stemmed from the Oscaloosan Compact, which stipulated that all child conceiving must be done with the assistance from an experimental fertility treatment known as Arteimetacin, which pretty much guaranteed the birth of twins. That, plus the intrinsic weirdness of this society, made it customary for twins to not only wear the same clothing but also do the same activities. They also tended speak one another’s sentences.

The other feature of the Oscaloosan Compact that allowed the society to function as it stood was for the male descendants of the society to continue on with the professions of the original settlers—and as long as everyone continues to perform their role in that society, their basic needs—food, water, clothing, housing—would be met.

Alice, Diedrich, and Chief Grady weren’t standing there too long before they were greeted by two remarkably attractive identical twin brunette women who looked 30s-ish and wore garbed pink horn-rimmed eyeglasses, blue pencil skirts, and high beehive hairdos with pink ribbons on mirror opposite sides.

“Hi,” they both said in unison. They spoke with the most genteel Southern Belle accents imaginable. “Welcome to the Oscaloosan Preservation Society.”

“I’m Mandy,” the one on the left said.

“I’m Sandy,” the one on the right added.

Diedrich and Alice let their mouths hang open out of a lack of anything to say. Chief Grady turned around, bent over, and started to dry heave.

“Oh dear,” the twins said in unison out of concern for the chief as they brought their hands to their lips.

Diedrich, being completely non-cognizant of Chief Grady’s troubles, continued to stare at the women with his mouth agape.

“Um, I’m Rick,” he said.

Alice noticed that her son was ogling them, and punched him in the arm. However, Diedrich interpreted the punch to only mean his mother was kvetching about him introducing himself as Rick instead of his birth name.

“But my friends call me Diedrich,” he continued. A little stream of drool ran out the corner of his mouth, which he suddenly realized and wiped up awkwardly with the back of his wrist.

Chief Grady turned back around and gasped and said “I’m OK!”

The twins grinned.

Then Mandy said: “So I’ve heard there was no nuclear winter up there after all…”

And Sandy continued: “…and we were down here all this time for nothing?”

There was some awkward silence until Alice nodded and said: “That would appear to be the case.”

Mandy and Sandy then said in unison: “Well isn’t that a drag?”

Then Mandy said: “Come with us, please…”

And Sandy continued: “…the mayor of the Oscaloosan Preservation Society would like to have word with you about the conditions on the surface.”

That was when Chief Grady excused himself went back up the stairs, as he couldn’t quite handle the scene. That had more than anything else to do with him being African-American, and this place didn’t seem so much as creepy as it did intrinsically dangerous. 

He figured it was just as well, anyway—how he would even start with the paperwork on this was daunting by itself.

Alice’s and Diedrich’s main disconnect with this underground society was only their differing socioeconomic backgrounds. Alice grew up in a trailer park. She managed to upgrade herself to a home (albeit one in disrepair) to her raise her son. Since then, of course, Diedrich had done fairly well for himself in the technical field, and he was able to buy his mother the sort of house he felt she deserved—even if all she seemed to want to do with it was fill it up with teacups.

As they followed the twin brunettes down the sidewalk, Diedrich was quick to notice that they were, in unison, swaying their hips as they walked in rather slow and hypnotizing fashion. It made them seemed rather like old fashioned airline stewardesses. Alice saw what his son was watching and gave him a harsh tsk-tsk with her tongue, but he didn’t care to heed it. 

As they continued down the sidewalk, they encountered scores of smiling men, women, and children stopping to wave at them. They passed by an old fashioned corner grocery store that advertised Wonder Bread. Teenaged grocery delivery boys—two sets of identical twins wearing saddle shoes, blue jeans and button-down shirts came jogging out of the back of the store, bustling carts of groceries—delivery orders they were bringing to houses. They also passed by a school—there was football practice going on. 

What Chief Grady had correctly sensed and what Alice and Diedrich had observed was that this community was 100 percent Caucasian.

They entered the Oscaloo Preservation Society’s City Hall where there was a mural that seemed to document the history of the underground society. There was a painting of what looked like Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev both with red, laser cat eyes, and fangs for teeth standing in front of a nuclear bomb that was pointed at a map of Florida—a dotted line drawn in an arch from the tip of the bomb to Oscaloo. Then next to that there was a depiction of hundreds of men and women with tears in their eyes, all lined up to go inside City Hall. It was a scene that seemed modeled (perhaps plagiarized) after Robert Lindneux’s renown 1942 painting The Trail of Tears that depicted the forced removal of Native Americans from their ancestral lands in the 1830s. Except these were Caucasian people in pastel colored clothing, cardigans—some of whom were driving to City Hall in Cadillacs. Next to that there was an American Flag with a quote underneath stating “For the preservation of our priceless American culture.” - James Ward Farmer, the founder of the Oscaloo Preservation Society.

The twin brunettes opened the doors to the mayor’s office where there were two large wooden desks facing the door. Seated at the desk were identical twins—mid-40s, in full suits and ties, and blonde hair in a flat-top buzz that was starting to dull with gray. They looked like they were finishing writing something down on white pieces of paper with fountain pens when they looked up at the strangers and in unison said: 

“Hi, we’re the mayors of the Oscaloo Preservation Society.”

“My name is John Farmer…” said the man on the left.

“…and my name is Jonathan Farmer,” continued the man on the right.

“At long last,” John said, “we have contact from the surface.”

“We are forever in your debt for finding us and appraising us of the situation on the surface,” Jonathan said.

“We heard that nasty old Castro didn’t end up bombing us after all,” John said.

Alice furrowed her brow. She was a teenager in 1962 and all she remembered of the Cuban Missile Crisis was that she and her classmates had to practice hiding under their desks in case there was a nuclear explosion.

“Well no,” Alice said carefully. “Preventing nuclear war with Cuba and Russia was considered one of John F. Kennedy’s big successes.”

John and Jonathan said Pfffft in unison when Alice mentioned Kennedy’s name.

“As soon as that guy was elected, we knew the country was headed for trouble,” said John.

“It wasn’t just nuclear fallout we were shielding ourselves from,” added Jonathan.

“It was also the existential threat that Communism,” continued John. “We knew the election of Kennedy was just the first step down that road.”

“In fact, we refused to have outside connection, lest the message of Communism leak through our system,” said Jonathan.

“If only we’d entrusted the teacup to someone other than…” said John.

“…someone named Warner Merrick,” continued Jonathan.

They both shrugged and said in unison: “I guess he was upset that we’d left him to die up there, or something.”

Alice and Diedrich then looked at one another and twisted their lips. They then proceeded to explain to John and Jonathan the history of the United States ever since 1962—from the assassination of John F. Kennedy, to the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump—and other such events.

They considered what Alice said while stroking their smooth shaved chins.

“Huh, I guess we didn’t…” said Jonathan

“…have anything to worry about up there…” continued John.

“…after all,” concluded Jonathan.

 

~*~

 

It was a Biblical scene—twins wearing pastel clothing walking side-by-side out of the Oscaloo City Hall, ready to rejoin the society they’d abandoned in 1962. Not only had they repopulated Oscaloo, but they revitalized and refunded their abandoned old businesses—such as at The Pink Cafe and The Oscaloo Funtimes Park. They also re-purchased their old mansions and remodeled them—of course restoring them to their mid-century architectural and interior design standards. The story of this underground society resurfacing ended up making national headlines, bringing a ton of tourists back into the town. The sales of Jell-o and pink lawn flamingos had skyrocketed not only locally to Oscaloo but nationally as well.

Diedrich ended up getting a good raise and was allowed to help design some new rides—a flamingo-themed steel rollercoaster that had three loop-de-loops and he helped engineer a device that turned the water of the log jam pink. He was able to purchase his mother an even larger house so that she could expand her teacup collection.

Chief Grady ended up losing his next election, but he figured that was just as well—he’d never really cared to finish up the paperwork anyhow.