Ulanpip

Smudge Anthony started out as a sailcloth-waxer, but by the age of 12 he had graduated to the stevedoring profession. At this he labored for uncountable years. However, he was cast out of Local 5129155 after being misdiagnosed with a case of Shallow Ankle by a doctor whose lingering eye didst gaze upon Smudge's union card. Aghast at learning of his Ankle, Smudge sold the card to the doctor, who promptly donned a fake Smudge Anthony Action Mustache and went to work unloading ships, which is a much more noble profession. The mustache fooled nobody at the docks, however, as every man among their noble company also wore Smudge Anthony Action Mustaches, to ward off the brisk Forpisquarrie needlin' frost. They cast the doctor out after beating him soundly about the brainstem with boathooks, and Smudge was told not to return. Thus, he embraced his betrayal, warmed by the knowledge that his ankles were not Shallow, but cooled by the temperatures, which averaged eight or nine kelvin in Smudge's dugout. He pooled some blood and teeth and bought a fishing boat, the "Ol' New Sally", which he home-ported in his boyhood home port of New Naxahuassetport. Despite never having had a child, Smudge was burdened by crippling child support payments, and so he was compelled to put to sea in conditions that kept all the other fisherman wedged up inside their boilers. Due to this financially-motivated monopolization of the high seas, Smudge managed a good catch almost daily, and he was soon able to buy not only a functioning hat, but a new Caprice made out of iron, poo, and barnacles. With this, Smudge could now take his iron lung everywhere, and so he began to investigate what things were more than three yards away from the sea and Ol' New Sally. To Smudge's great and terrible shock, land not only went on for several miles inland, but indeed several thousand. Rather than living on a meagre sandbar, as he had assumed, Smudge lived on a continent that was rated in the top ten of all continents, size-wise, and bountiful with all sorts of things like crow meat, Germans, stores that sell you Famicom games, and a viable pen-ink industry. Smudge had never heard of any of these things. He put Ol' New Sally up for sale and loaded up the Caprice (now christened New Ol' New Sally) and put a hesitant tire to highway. Smudge Anthony's sea-skin does not permit him to experience the full daylight to which you and I are accustomed, because he was raised in, and indeed by, the thick coastal fog native to the region that extruded him, and so he must travel at night. But if you are driving on County Road 124 or Highway 8A or Route 53 after the sun goes down, and you pass an old Caprice the color of iron and poop, wave in vain at Smudge Anthony, the Highway Stevedore.