Chapter the Third.

Only an unfortunate accident prevented me from making the Shah of Istanistan one of our staunchest allies, and I look back on my time at his court with moderate satisfaction, in spite of my hasty exit from the court and the country.

Istanistan is a rugged and mountainous country: mountainous because it was so made by the Creator, and rugged because the natives lay down rugs wherever they go. The weaving of rugs is the largest national industry. Since the rugs are well made, they last for generations; and since Istanistan, isolated as it is, has no trading relations with other states, the rugs accumulate much faster than they wear. In the capital city of Notsobad, rugs cover all the streets. Rugs are laid down on all the highways radiating from the capital; rugs are laid in the yards of the simple but comfortable cottages of the farmers; the very cattle stand on rugs to graze. Nearly everything that stands still long enough has a rug thrown over it, so that eventually the whole country is rugged.

When I arrived at the border I found it unguarded, with only a fading dashed line drawn across the rug to indicate that I was leaving Duvetistan and entering Istanistan. From there the journey to Notsobad took me over rugged mountain passes and through lush rugged valleys, until at last the minarets and maxarets of Notsobad came into view.

The guards at the city gate were all asleep, and I wondered whether I ought to trouble them at all. I recalled, however, the oft-repeated precept of my mother, who, when I was a small child, lost no opportunity to tell me, “When entering the capital of a remote mountain kingdom, always awaken the guards at the gate and ascertain whether there may be any quaint local ceremonies called for on the occasion.” A mother’s wisdom is not to be disregarded lightly. I therefore gave a loud whistle (which my mother had also taught me), awakening the guards, who at once proceeded to drape a light and intricately patterned carpet over my shoulders. Thus suitably rugged, I was conducted straight to the royal palace.

The palace was a maze of high-ceilinged passages, the ceilings having been built high so that the best productions of the native weavers could be displayed on the walls and suspended from the rafters as well as on the floor. With the aid of an unerring guide, however, I made my way quickly to the royal audience chamber, where I found the Shah himself seated before a colossal loom weaving a colossal rug.

“The people of Istanistan rejoice as one man at the arrival of our distinguished guest,” the Shah said, still flinging the shuttle with marvelous dexterity. “Or, as we understand is the proper formula in your own native land: What ho, old chap, and all that sort of rot.”

“Her Majesty sends her personal regards,” I replied, “and has asked me to inform you that she particularly desires the friendship of the Istanistani people.”

“Well, that’s frightfully decent of her,” said the Shah. “Of course, any alliance we might enter into would depend on her performance in our competitive examination.”

“Competitive examination?”

“Yes. You see, my late father, may his name be blessed, dedicated his reign to placing all matters of government and diplomacy on a rational basis. It was his persistence that created the rational society Istanistan enjoys today, in which favoritism is unknown, and merit is the only criterion by which appointments are made and alliances formed.”

“But I had understood, from what little information has reached us about your delightful country, that yours was a hereditary monarchy.”

The Shah smiled broadly at this observation. “Indeed it is, most worshipful old bean. Astute of you to point out what might be a fatal contradiction in the whole gosh-darn system, as it were. But my father, peace be upon his crumbling remains, considered that conundrum and worked out the solution. When the time came to produce an heir, he chose my mother by competitive examination, so that I could not fail to inherit the qualities necessary in a monarch from both familial lines.”

“Ah,” said I, “so there was no need of a competitive examination in your case.”

“Oh, but indeed there was. I was subjected to numerous examinations.”

“But against whom did you compete?”

“I competed against myself. You see, I was required to score better each time I took the examination, so that, in a manner of speaking, my best self would be chosen in the end.”

“That must have been very difficult.”

“Well, not really, O highly respected old fellow. You see, my father was careful to explain his plan to me thoroughly, so you may be sure that I botched the first few tests royally, so to speak. Since the test was substantially the same each time I was examined, I was able to show continuous improvement. I do believe my father, may tranquility be upon his bleached bones, designed the whole enterprise to teach me the value of thinking in the long term.”

“Your father the late shah must have been a man of great capacity,” I said. “But, if I may be so bold as to inquire, what sorts of questions did he put on your examination?”

“Oh, it was not an examination of questions, most rightfully esteemed old top. It was what you might describe as a practical exercise.”

“Some sort of martial endeavor, then?”

“In a manner of speaking, since it is what makes up the chief employment of our army. I was tested on my proficiency in weaving.”

“In weaving? Oh, I see.”

“Yes, the requirement was very simple: I was required to weave a flying carpet.”

“Flying carpet? But I thought flying carpets were mere myths—a fantasy from the Arabian Nights.”

“Quite the contrary. In such a mountainous country as ours, flying carpets are an essential part of the machinery of good government. When the monarch must respond to an emergency in a distant province, such as a cracked sidewalk or a temporary shortage of estimated-tax withholding forms, a flying carpet is a positive necessity. To weave a carpet that will respond with proper sensitivity to its operator’s commands requires dexterity and patience, and is therefore the very best indicator of a weaver’s skill. My early efforts, if, O most correctly well-regarded old stick, you will pardon a craftsman’s pride, were bad. I made quite sure of that. In every aesthetic sense, of course, they were entirely irreproachable, for I cannot abide ugliness. But as transportation they were unfit for purpose. It is not too much to say that they were just awful. They were fit for nothing more than covering floors, and to such uses they have been put.”

“But I say!” I said. “If this is so, then the money we spend on horsecars and railways and things of that nature is simply wasted! If skilled weavers can make carpets that fly, then of what use is laying miles of track when I can simply say, ‘Rug, take me home!’ ”

Suddenly I felt a sharp jolt in my abdominal region, as if my stomach had dropped several feet.

“Oh dear!” I heard the Shah’s voice saying from somewhere below me. I realized that the ceiling was considerably closer, and the floor was a good bit farther away than it ought to be.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I’m afraid you’ve set it off,” the Shah called up to me. “You were standing on my third attempt, you see. An improvement over the first two, but it only does one thing, and nothing will make it do anything else.”

“What shall I do?”

“If I were to presume to give advice, most thoroughly exalted old thing, I should probably say ‘Hang on.’ ”

No sooner had he spoken than the rug lurched backward and shot like an arrow through the high corridors of the palace, past sleeping guards, and out the front gate. Once in the open air, it rose with incredible velocity. I could see the city of Notsobad receding over the horizon; and soon the mountains below me gave way to the vast plains of Tartary, and then the more familiar lands and seas closer to home, until I found myself descending precipitously and at last entering my own parlor by way of my own front hall.

Since then the rug has had an honored place on my parlor floor. It goes without saying that it is beautifully made; but as a means of transportation it is limited by the fact that it can transport me in only one direction, and I must roll it up and carry it with me if I intend to have it fly me home. I have recommended to Her Majesty that we should mount another expedition to Istanistan and perhaps institute a profitable trade in more versatile flying carpets; but the railway interests are against it, and I believe Her Majesty was not altogether pleased with the notion of being subjected to a competitive examination. Nothing has been done to push the matter forward, therefore, and I do not believe I shall be making another trip to Notsobad in the near future.

This single chapter of an otherwise unknown memoir, written in a pocket memorandum book with the title “Memoirs, etc.,” on the cover, was found in a steamer trunk purchased at a St. Vincent de Paul store in Monessen, Penna. It is not known whether any other chapters are extant, or indeed whether any others were ever written.

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Many times I have asked myself whether it would not be best, after all, to leave this tale untold. I have given myself different answers on different occasions. Yes, I have said on one occasion (March 24 of last year), it would be better, but you have seldom chosen the better course, and no one expects it of you now. On another occasion, I answered, The truth will out, and it might as well out of you as of anyone else. On still another occasion (my aunt’s seventy-fifth birthday), I answered, I have been an adult for some time now, and I can do what I like. I have these conversations with myself often, but probably not as often as you think.

When I came home from my last trip to the Arctic, I decided that the time for exploring had passed, and I would devote myself to recording my many adventures. Instead, I found myself on a ship bound for the Antarctic. I had mistaken it for the No. 71 streetcar, you see. But once I was aboard there was no turning back, so the Antarctic adventures must be added to the catalogue, where they neatly balance the Arctic ones, although the latter include fewer penguins. Then there are the tropical adventures, the sea stories, and my time spent on a still-nameless desert island with no one but my valet and the Edgewood Symphony Orchestra for company. I have lived a full life, and though it may seem at first glance that my adventures are disconnected and episodic, yet you will find, if you have the patience, a principle of unity among them, a stream that runs through them all and makes the disparate episodes one single story.

My story, like every story, begins with the creation of the world. For the sake of brevity, however, let us begin a little later than that. I might begin with the prodigies that accompanied my birth, but any reasonably complete astronomical almanac should supply the relevant details. I might begin with my education, but it was not different in any remarkable way from that of any other young person with an unusual destiny: the classics, the better class of modern European languages, a smattering of the Polynesian dialects, and enough of anatomy not to embarrass myself too badly in a surgical theater should the occasion arise. I shall therefore leave those early periods of my life to the reader’s imagination or research, and instead begin with my discovery of the island that bears my name.

We had set sail from the port of Sailport, intending to reach the Fortunate Isles by late September. I was a young man, green in years, and was therefore brought in as the ship’s botanist; but you can imagine my disappointment when I found that, apart from a few strands of kelp dried on the anchor, there was not a green plant to be found on board the entire ship. I spent most of my time, therefore, either memorizing Gruenteufel’s Flora of the Undiscovered Tropical Isles (5th ed.) or observing the clouds, since the species, behavior, and complex mating rituals of clouds have always fascinated me.

On our sixth day out of port, we were hailed by a barque returning from the Fortunate Isles, whose crew being entirely Slovakian (though she was sailing under a Ruthenian flag), I was called upon to act as interpreter. They informed us that the Fortunate Isles were under quarantine for an outbreak of agoraphobia in a highly contagious strain; that the main harbor at Blessed Shore, the capital, had been filled in by the outflow of a pesky volcano; that the secondary harbor at Allswell was infested with ship-eating squid; and that the governor had lost the islands to the Spanish in a poker game.

Under these circumstances, it was clearly futile to continue on our present course. Thinking I might spare the captain some trouble, therefore, I gave the helmsman the order to come about hard to starboard, whereupon we immediately ran aground on an island I had not noticed on our right hand.

It had perhaps been an error to give the order without first checking for islands in the immediate vicinity. However, as our captain remarked, what’s done is done, and our unexpected grounding would give us a chance to catch up on some of the miscellaneous repairs to the ship that needed doing, such as the gaping hole near the prow caused by our unexpected grounding. The captain delegated a certain number of men who were familiar with the arcana of duct tape to perform the repairs, while I was to lead a party to the interior of the island, which did not appear on any of our charts, to see whether anything botanical was to be found there.

The walk through the open forest was delightful, and I was happy to be able to check off several species in Gruenteufel, which, since I had discovered the island, could be removed from the sixth edition of the Flora of the Undiscovered Tropical Isles. I observed that certain signs along the way indicated human habitation. One such sign, for example, was a pair of pictographs resembling a fork and knife rendered in white on a blue background, with an arrow pointing to the right. With natural curiosity directing us, we decided to follow the arrow, and soon found ourselves in a clearing around which were arranged a number of huts, on each of which was a sign bearing the image of some sort of comestible—a pig was roasting at the sign of the pig, at the sign of the pineapple a pineapple was turning on a spit, and so on. Presiding over them all was what I guessed must be the chief’s hut: it was a good bit larger than the rest, with a tall wicker dome reminiscent of that on the Basilica of St. Peter at Rome, and a prominent portico whose roof was supported by palm-trunk columns terminating in palm-frond capitals with the fronds turned down into a very passable rendition of Ionic volutes.

Making our way to that splendid edifice, we made our presence known and were greeted by the chief himself, whom we recognized at once by the superior height of his top hat, which was artistically woven from grass and feathers. I found that he spoke a dialect that was very close to pure classical Polynesian, so that we were able to understand each other perfectly; furthermore, he was the very model of affability and good breeding. He told me his name, which was Hunter of Musk-Ox on the Frozen Tundra (a family name whose meaning had been lost in the mists of antiquity), and politely asked mine. But when I told him my name was Milo Pettigrew, he was speechless with astonishment, and it took him some time to recover his normal loquacity, during which I wondered whether I had inadvertently committed some dreadful trespass against local etiquette.

“But that us the name of our island!” he said at last. “Mai-lo-pe-ti-ga-ru!” Then he laughed heartily, and I joined him. It was indeed a remarkably amusing coincidence, but not altogether, when I thought about it, a surprising name for an island. In the more refined dialects of classical Polynesian, the phrase Mai-lo-pe-ti-ga-ru may be roughly translated “Prime Beachfront Real Estate.”

That is the story of how I came to discover the island that still bears my name to this day. While our ship was undergoing the necessary duct-taping for several days, I was able to check off all the plants in Gruenteufel that grew on this now-discovered island, so that Prof. Gruenteufel was able to publish a considerably thinner sixth edition. I also showed the chief how he might profit by setting up a nursery to grow the native species of tropical plants, hitherto unseen in the civilized world, and sell them to the luxury horticultural trade; so that now Milo Pettigrew Island is the only island in the South Pacific inhabited entirely by millionaires. I have not visited personally since our ship, resplendent in its new hull of bright silver duct tape, pushed off from the beach; but from travelers’ reports I understand that there is a somewhat unflattering statue of me outside the entrance to the chief’s hut, which now covers eighteen acres and is built of imported Italian marble.

We were talking about the names of Pittsburgh alleys a while ago—or rather ways, since there are officially no alleys in Pittsburgh. Our friend Father Pitt points out another interesting name from a 1923 map. (It appears that, on current maps, this is regarded as a continuation of Diaz Way.)

It is a curious fact that there are no alleys in the city of Pittsburgh. Like most facts, this one is not true except in a meaningless technical sense: that nothing in Pittsburgh is officially called an alley. Some alleys are called “street” or “avenue” (for that matter, many a concrete or wooden stairway is called “avenue”), but the usual name for an alley is “way.”

It has occurred to Dr. Boli more than once that the standards for naming these “ways” are different from the standards for naming streets. Street names usually have to have some marginal attachment to meaning. Sometimes there is a theme: the Mexican War Streets, for example, are so called because they are named for battles in the Mexican War; the streets in Bellevue are named for Civil War generals; the streets in West View are named for universities and colleges; and so on. Sometimes streets are named for trees or flowers. Sometimes they are named for things that used to be there, like an old estate on which a city neighborhood was built.

But “ways” seem to be named as often as not by flipping open a dictionary or encyclopedia at random and pointing at a word blindfolded. Here, in no order at all, is a list of “ways” in Pittsburgh whose names have at various times struck Dr. Boli as odd or amusing:

Woolslayer Way
Cabinet Way
Lycurgus Way
Asteroid Way
Sewer Way
Pitcher Way
Crooked Way
Gypsum Way
Equator Way
Comet Way
Fred Way
Urn Way
Telegraph Way
Vanilla Way
Relic Way
Livery Way
Alhambra Way
Asterisk Way
Parody Way
Archon Way
Alcove Way
Lunar Way
Pandora Way
Appian Way
Plummet Way
Revision Way
Highnote Way
Investor Way
Pontoon Way
Minor Way
Repeal Way
Petite Way
Caress Way
Rope Way
Brim Way
Press Way
Boer Way
Saturn Way
Cameo Way
Betty Jane Ralph Way
Quartz Way
Legion Way

Now, for the sake of absolute honesty, Dr. Boli will note that one of those odd names has a foundation in history. Rope Way was a rope walk two hundred years ago: a rope factory was set up next to it, and a long straightway was necessary for pulling the strands straight and twisting them together. Perhaps some of these other ways have similar histories: perhaps they ran past manufactories of asteroids or betty jane ralphs. But Dr. Boli does not know those histories, so the names remain inexplicable to him.

Five Famous Buckets You Must See Before You Die.

The Old Oaken Bucket, located at the Woodworth House in Scituate, Massachusetts, inspired the famous song by Samuel Woodworth——

The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well.

This remains one of the most famous songs ever written about a bucket.

The Devil’s Bucket, northeast of Dead Armadillo, Texas, is a hole in the ground, approximately twelve feet in diameter, whose shape gives it an uncanny resemblance to a large bucket.

King Ethelbeard’s Bucket, a large golden vessel encrusted with precious stones and elaborate Saxon filigree work, is used by Queen Elizabeth to water her petunias. It may be viewed by the public at Buckingham Palace every year on Bucket Day.

The Amazing Farmer’s Bucket Theme Park in Qianxinan Buyei, China, has as its centerpiece a three-hundred-foot-tall mechanical figure of a farmer carrying a bucket. Riders ascend an elevator to the shoulder and slide down the interior of the arm into the bucket, and the “farmer” dumps them on his “garden.”

The George Jasnorzewski Memorial Bucket Truck in Grant Borough is used every year to place the Christmas decorations on the borough building. It is named for Mr. Jasnorzewski, who tragically died at his desk in the borough building while filling out the requisition forms for a bucket truck.

Probably not in South Africa.

—

In Porto-Novo, Benin, laundry cannot be hung out to dry until it is blessed by the Archbishop.

Any resident of Coosawhatchie, South Carolina, who ambles across the highway in less than four and a half minutes is socially ostracized and has to move to Ridgeland.

In Cleveland, every April 1, traffic police amuse residents by enforcing the no left turn signs.

Capes are seldom worn in Cape Town.

In New Delhi, it is customary to give cabinet ministers gifts of socks with gold clocks in the hope of favorably influencing their decisions. It never works.

When a freshly married couple in Yoshinogawa, Japan, reach their new abode, the bride is carried across the threshold by an Amazon Prime delivery driver.

It is considered poor manners to wave frantically with the left hand while falling from a tall building in Dubai.

This old Polish school is located in a neighborhood called the South Side Flats.

Photo of a Vatican City teller machine by Seth Schoen, who has released it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

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In one country in the world, you can use a teller machine in Latin, which makes Dr. Boli happy. The Google translation of the words on screen (click on the photo to enlarge it) makes him even happier. Dr. Boli knows that Google Translate’s Latin translations tend toward the surreal, so he had to find out what Google had to say in this case. Dr. Boli interpreted “Inserito scidulam quaeso ut faciundam cognoscas rationem” as something like “Please insert card for operating instructions.” But Google interprets it as “I beg you to do anything you know them to the character of a card inside the mouth.” That is much more poetic than Dr. Boli’s interpretation.