OLE PLAYING POSSUM, Ky. - Donald Trump is starting up a small industry in this small Kentucky town, once a coal mining center for the local area. About a decade ago, 300 high-paying coal mining jobs were lost here and the small village has seen better days.
"We liked what he said, Mr. Donald, about bringing all our coal mining jobs back and he got a great deal of votes from Kentucky and our neighbors in West Virginia, too. Nobody seems to care about us and when Mr. Donald told the world he'd bring each and every one of our coal mining jobs back, with compounded interest, well, let's just say we met our best buddy ever," said Oscar Good, who worked in a deep mine near Ole Playing Possum for the better part of 20 years. After the coal industry vanished, Good was forced to take a job at a neighbor's farm.
"Let's just say there's a lot more money digging for coal than herding chickens and geese," Good told The Spoof.
Oscar Good and about 460 people from Ole Playing Possum and the surrounding environs waited in 20-degree temps on New Year's Day in the quaint town's square. A large statue of an opossum, about the size of a Silverado, stood right before a gazebo. The opossum appeared to be dead, but was only "playing possum," or pulling the instinctive trick of this species of marsupial to act dead so any predator might just leave it alone.
Donald Trump was making a surprise visit to their little hamlet and the townsfolk were excited. A band featuring some banjos, dulcimers, an old stand-up stringed bass, and an ensemble of pretty soprano singers sang such Appalachian staples as "Rocky Top, Tennessee," "Cold Kentucky Rain" (an old Elvis Presley crowd pleaser), and "I'll be baptized in the wide, deep river with my dear Molly".
Trump's arrival time was set at 10 a.m. and he didn't arrive until 4 p.m., yet, the devoted flock of his Ole Playing Possum faithful remained, eagerly awaiting his arrival. Trump jumped off a long bus with LET'S MAKE THIS WHOLE FREAKING NIGHTMARE GREAT AGAIN painted in blood red on the pasty white bus and the first thing people saw was that orange mop of follicles flying around like a bastardized forest fire raging - a surreal and somewhat frightening sight, indeed.
Donald Trump wasted no time waltzing right up to the makeshift podium that awaited him. A little old lady in the front row handed the President-Elect a red baseball cap with the inscription screaming out in bold white letters: LET'S MAKE OLE PLAYING POSSUM GREAT AGAIN, HURRAY FOR KENTUCKY KLEPTO*GRAPH!
"Look at this crowd, oh, just look at all you beautiful people," Trump said. "I always like to visit the Garden State. Yes, my company, Kentucky Klepto*Graph, will be built right on Main Street between your village library and the Ole Playing Possum Courthouse."
"You tell 'em, Big Daddy!" a hefty man in bib overalls wearing an old Army jacket with worn staff sergeant stripes yelled from the front row.
"I like this guy. He's obviously a coal miner from way back," Trump said with his winning smile while he gave the grinning goliath his famous thumb's up sign.
"Now let me tell you what Kentucky Klepto*Graph will be all about," the President-Elect said into the mic, in a more serious tone. "It will be a coal-fired milling machine - a labor-intensive monster - that will burn all those Obamacare documents. At least 200 workers will be needed to shovel the coal into this gigantic oven. The other 100 people will use wheelbarrows to haul into the factory all those Obamacare documents. And there will also be office workers, security personnel, foremen, safety officials, a fully staffed paid fire department under roof, and of course, my team of overseers. Overall, I expect at least 500 people to work at Kentucky Klepto*Graph," he said.
"And oh, I'm expecting to do a lot of business with Russian President Vladimir Putin who will be sending all the bogus money he will confiscate once his own personal cash-printing machines are fine tuned and in order. We'll be burning all that old red, Rusky currency in the Kentucky Klepto*Graph oven, too. Believe me, there's plenty of stuff to burn and there will be a lot of work. So you won't have to worry about staying busy after my plant opens."
"Now there's a down side to it all," he said in a somber tone. "All those black-lung benefit papers will also be thrown into the oven. Burn, baby, burn. It's time for Ole Playing Possum to get back to work and quit hacking and coughing. Get over it. We'll hire a nightshift to burn all those black- and white-lung benefit documents. But we will make Ole Playing Possum great again, I guarantee it," Trump said to the open-mouthed, astonished crowd, then he walked back to the long bus, disappeared into the smoky dark windows of the vehicle, and the monstrosity wheeled out of town and into the distance of the Appalachian hills.
