How the Camel Really Lost his Hump

Back in the olden days, before umbrellas, there lived a rich old man with a really big head who, one rainy day, finally got sick of his head getting wet all the time. So he marched right over to the nearest haberdashery with his mighty chin set in fierce determination, stormed through the door (actually he had to turn around sideways a couple of times and sort of ease through the door while pinning his nose back with his index finger), and said to the man behind the counter, “By God! Make me a waterproof hat this instant!”

The fellow behind the counter hemmed and hawed, and looked at the old man’s head from a couple of different angles, took out his tape measure and thought for a minute, then threw the tape measure into the waste basket and shook his own normal-sized head sadly.

“Sorry sir. What you ask is impossible.”

The big-headed rich fellow started to stew, and then he fumed, and then he worked himself into a terrible rage, and he cussed and hollered and shouted and bellowed, and the whole shop shook with the force of his ire, on account of his giant sinus cavities were so cavernous and acoustically resonant.

Meanwhile, the fellow behind the counter had eased a .45 out from beneath the register, and was just about to blow his own brains out to escape the fury of old big-head’s wrath, when he saw a camel walking by on the sidewalk outside through the shop window.

“Eureka!” shouted the hat seller. “Excuse me!” And he ran out of the shop, sidled up to the camel, and exclaimed in a quavering voice, “Please! How much for your hump?”

The camel looked him over carefully, and thought for a minute. Then he thought a little more. Finally he said, “Sixty bucks, a case of gin, and that papier-mache manikin you’ve got in the shop window.”

“Deal!”, exclaimed the shopkeeper. So the camel got his stuff, and the shopkeeper took the camel’s hump, turned it inside out, stitched an eight foot long beaver felt brim on it, and sold it to mister angry big-head moneybags for $17,000.00.

Meanwhile the camel, sans hump, hopped a train to Belmont, plunked down his $10 fee, and entered himself into the race.

When he got over to the stables he opened his case of gin and got all the horses to gather around to try his super new ‘Super Vitamin Racing Wonder Tonic’. The horses, being as dumb as horses invariably are, said “Okie Dokie”, and drank up all the hooch until there wasn’t a drop left.

Then the camel went over to the ticket window and put his remaining $50 on himself for the trifecta at 500,000 to 1 odds. He tied the papier-mache manikin to his back, and loped over to the starting gate.

When the starting gun blew, the camel jumped out of the gate with his camel hoofs blazing, while all of the horses just sort of wobbled and fell over without taking a step, except for one stocky horse with a pretty high alcohol tolerance who actually managed to make it out of the gate to stumble about three yards down the track before he, too, wobbled and fell over.

Meantime, the camel was tearing up the track as only a camel can. After several minutes of hard running (interrupted only by a couple of quick smoke breaks and a ham sandwich and a cup of joe) he rounded the final turn and lurched across the finish line!

Then he ran back and lurched across the finish line again!

And one more time again, even!

And so that is how a camel won the Belmont Stakes, made 25 million dollars and, after a lifetime of prudent investments, became a multi-billionaire, cured polio, and won the Nobel Prize. And then he married Anna Nicole Smith.


The End