The Amarillo Peccary-Buttocks – oops, sorry, I mean the Amarillo Globe-News (the Amarillo Peccary-Buttocks is a completely fictional newspaper that belongs in an entirely different sketch) is to be congratulated for a perfectly charming piece by Virgil Van Camp last Friday.
In it he writes about why he reluctantly joined the Lions Club and his first unwilling assignment to deliver little boys home from the Crippled Children’s Camp. From that inauspicious beginning he rose to become director of the camp, president of the Lions, and maintained perfect attendance for 39 years.
As we read this latest chapter in Van Camp’s auto-hagiography, we cannot but wonder that we stand in the shadow of a giant among men, that we are blessed to live in the same age as this great humanitarian. We can only marvel how selfless he has been in deed, how virtuous in character and how modest in nature. Surely he is amongst that august pantheon of panhandle nobility.
We who think him ignorant find none here, for it is all about him and therefore what he still remembers. We who think him a racist bigot find none here, for there are no references to colored people, Muslims, Mexicans, or Democrats. There is no fault, no blemish, nothing to criticize. If only all his other columns had been as equally pallid and innocuous.
I just hope all the children Virgil took for a ride were accounted for. Then again maybe they didn’t let darkies in his Crippled Children’s Camp.
In it he writes about why he reluctantly joined the Lions Club and his first unwilling assignment to deliver little boys home from the Crippled Children’s Camp. From that inauspicious beginning he rose to become director of the camp, president of the Lions, and maintained perfect attendance for 39 years.
As we read this latest chapter in Van Camp’s auto-hagiography, we cannot but wonder that we stand in the shadow of a giant among men, that we are blessed to live in the same age as this great humanitarian. We can only marvel how selfless he has been in deed, how virtuous in character and how modest in nature. Surely he is amongst that august pantheon of panhandle nobility.
We who think him ignorant find none here, for it is all about him and therefore what he still remembers. We who think him a racist bigot find none here, for there are no references to colored people, Muslims, Mexicans, or Democrats. There is no fault, no blemish, nothing to criticize. If only all his other columns had been as equally pallid and innocuous.
I just hope all the children Virgil took for a ride were accounted for. Then again maybe they didn’t let darkies in his Crippled Children’s Camp.
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