KinSource - Tale of the Week - Flying Machine In Young Man's Ear?

KinSource

Minnesota Tales

New Richland Star, December 22, 1916, p. 1

FLYING MACHINE IN YOUNG MAN'S EAR?

Waseca Young Man Went to Physician to Have The Thing Removed.

Did you ever have a flying machine in one of your ears? Awfully unpleasant sensation. It's bad enough to have an innocent mosquito absent-mindedly wander into you auricular organ. Or a fly. Or a rank bit of gossip that you can't dislodge. But to have a flying machine or aeroplane, one of those things that Lincoln Beachey and Santos-Dumont were wont to encircle the clouds in, perambulating through the inner recesses of your aural appendage is infinitely worse. It's positively aggravating. In this town is a certain fellow who has one bad failing. Periodically he becomes obsessed with a cruel idea of making the poor distillery employees work overtime. He becomes possessed of one of the niftiest little thirsts ever. And so it was last week, my hearties. And then the devilish thing happened. Some fairies came and put a flying machine in his ear. But he retained his presence of mind and sought a doctor. Entered he the doctor's sanctum. The doctor turned inquiring. "I've got a flying machine in my ear," he said. "Just say that over again, slowly and distinctly," said the physician. "A flying machine in my ear, I've got," repeated the man. "Does it hurt any," said the man of medicine, thinking that perhaps he meant that an insect of some kind had got into his ear. "Only when the fairies pull on it. They're the ones who put it in," he said. And then the doctor tried vainly to remember the telephone number of Sheriff Fischer's residence. But the aeroplane was bothering badly and something must be done. So the doctor took his patient into his inner office and with an ear massaging instrument commenced the strangest operation in the annals of surgery. And at the completion of the operation, the doctor was relieved to find that Sheriff Fischer and Deputy Wadd were waiting to take the poor patient to the place ful, homelike county institution presided over by the former, where malicious fairies with aeroplane-secreting proclivities are not allowed to enter. - Waseca Journal-Radical.