November 9th, 2024
Dear Mr. Fudd,
I was excited to see your latest correspondence. I know your time is precious as you attempt to bless this world with your beautiful words at an unprecedented scale this holiday season. I wish you much success in this endeavor. I hope the residents of Bliss, Idaho or wherever else your messages end up are as grateful as I am for your poetry.
I have some bad news, the bonsai tree stand in the Hobby Lobby parking lot appears to have migrated south for the winter. But don’t despair. I have an update.
The bonsai tree road stand is operated by a man from Houston that goes by the name of “Thunder Kim.” If you’d like to call him, his number is 832-687-7676—he made sure I had it in case I needed any assistance after I purchased a bonsai tree of my own.
I don’t believe Thunder is his real name, he is very Japanese. He imports all of his bonsai trees from Japan to Houston, and then drives them up to Omaha. I asked him why Omaha? To which he laughed, smiled, and nodded in the manner that Japanese people do who do not have a strong command of the English language.
The ages of his bonsai trees ranged from four years to 26 years old. For each year of age that the Japanese juniper had, Thunder charged an additional $10. It felt like a fair deal, and he gave me complimentary care instructions. I made sure to pick up a copy for yourself. I hope you find them helpful, but this is the extent of my bonsai tree knowledge. If you have further questions, I’m sure Thunder wouldn’t mind if you gave him a call.
Much obliged,
C.S. Beaty
•••
While traveling in non-English speaking countries, I love taking photos of poorly translated English instructions. As someone who spent his first year of fatherhood trying to parent in a foreign language, I’m empathetic to the struggle, but seriously. Bad translations are the best.
Just consider the gondola I rode in Guam that could have said, “please remain seated and do not throw anything outside,” but instead chose to instruct me, “Do not change Seat and Dump outside, please.”
Or the sign in the lobby of a Peruvian hotel that read,
Let’s do that your permanency is agreeable and pleasant TAKE CARE YOUR PERSONAL OBJECTS the hotel don’t know responsibility for losses or steal due that we are in public areas. The management
•••
With a subpar translation, the message isn’t just lost, it becomes an entirely new thing. The challenge of piecing together the meaning of the original text becomes its own activity, and as long as the stakes aren’t too high, the act provides an amusing game. Or at least a funny photo.
I learned a lot about bonsai trees when I finally met Thunder Kim the bonsai tree man, but not how to take care of one. Thunder gave me multiple sets of instructions and sold three small vials of “green green liquid plant food,” but the more helpful Thunder Kim tried to be, the less I knew what to do with my new four-year-old Japanese Juniper. Even the cheat sheet that he insisted I take a photo of left me puzzled:
1.) It is good to fully soak the tree in water for the first time. 2 times in the first week only.
2.) Plant food- Mix the plant food with one gallon of water and water 2 times a week.
3.) Rain water- When it’s raining outside. Rainwater is ok to let the tree absorb the rainwater. No more than 2 times a week.
4.) Sun- No sun or very little sun is ok. Is it is ok with a 24 hour light. Normal conditions are ok as well, such as air condition, heater, and animals.
I tried following Thunder’s instructions as best I could. But I couldn’t really understand how to rectify all of those things I wasn’t supposed to do more than two times a week. It kind of seemed like everything was “ok.” This ought to be easy.
I took the tree out to our patio a few times each week. I let it out when it was raining. I took pictures and showed it off to my friends. Things were looking great for my little tree, until I started comparing the current color of the tree to the color from my first photos. The second my four-year-old Japanese Juniper came into my house, it started its gradual death.
It turns out those things are pretty damn hard to take care of. I must not have read the instructions carefully enough.
•••
Frankly, I thought the bonsai tree would last a lot longer and provide a lot more material for Haywood Fudd letters than it did. I imagined it as some ongoing saga, some new hobby I could periodically update Fudd on with all my new bonsai tree knowledge and experiences. But I never really cared about bonsai trees in the first place, and the death of my own tree certainly indicated that. I was always more interested in Thunder Kim, the bonsai tree stand man. It turns out I wasn’t the only one.
Shortly after purchasing and murdering my Japanese Juniper, the Omaha World Herald newspaper ran a story about “the Omaha bonsai guy.” Apparently he had quite the social media following. People seemed more intrigued in him than the art of bonsai trees. Well, most people. Everyone but Noah Lenser, who responded to a Facebook post asking, “where is the bonsai tree guy parked today?” with the specific location of “up your ass.”
Not helpful Noah.
But other than Noah, people loved this “bonsai guy” and his mysterious full-size van filled to the brim with potted plants. Full-sized vans tend to get a bad reputation given the improper conduct people seem to do in full-sized vans, but now we all had a usage of the vehicle we could get behind. Thunder Kim’s small business was so popular that the Omaha World Herald re-ran the story in its Best of 2025 year-end recap.
But like the dead stump I now use for decor in my basement, my interest in bonsai trees atrophied. It was just as well. Fudd had also seemed to move on to new topics. His next letter to me was his own recap of the year in the form of a Christmas card.
The message, albeit odd, made complete sense to me.
•••
Dear Yuletide You,
If there are burn marks on this jolly dispatch, consider the scribbling source. Consider this too: mailing Christmas cards is teetering on the cheerless precipice of extinction. Some velvety synonyms for extinction include kaput, pfft, defunct, belly up, and doomed.
Everyone is jim-dandy. Sing it: Jim Dandy to the rescue... Jim Dandy to the rescue.
Our granddaughter made her majestic appearance on November 7. She’s also beautiful and breathtakingly perfect. Watching her sleep and listening to her make muffled cooing noises while she’s nuzzled in our arms is pure bliss.
In April, a sinful tornado with oodles of scabby intentions and credentials mauled our town. While others judiciously sheltered in basements, I fortified myself with a beaker of general anesthesia and charged outside to do battle with this swirling tempest. With the wind and rain horse-whipping me, I shook my fist at the man-eating cyclone while baptizing it with a bona fide and virtuous cussing.
Our travels caused us to mosey like insubordinate tumbleweeds and to sideswipe into some of you in 2024. Boosting to get back on the road, we are reposing in Palm Springs during Christmas week with cousin Hunky Gordy where we’ll zigzag through the hidey-holes and haunts of old blue eyes. We return from Palm Springs for four days before bulging to San Antonio where Mrs. Fudd will conduct high-stakes business and I’ll serve as an impromptu tour guide at the Shrine of Texas while stashing myself inside my deteriorating gorilla suit.
We visited a couple of potential sanctuaries in 2024 where we were considering relocating. City ambassadors of two of these cozy communities extended invitations to Mrs. Fudd but not to me. During meetings with these emissaries I couldn’t resist the immaculate temptation to puff on an ill-bred cigar, wear knockoff Elvis sunglasses, sport a sleeveless threadbare T-shirt with a fading picture of Farrah Fawcett emblazoned on it, while randomly issuing strangled grunts of muddling questions and blurry testimonials.
In the ladylike town of Bliss, Idaho (population 300), a disheveled cluster of glassy-eyed, hidebound literary adrenaline junkies anointed me to once again chaperone them to literary Shangri-La. What this de-facto hooey means: I remain The King of the Literary Daredevils. Mrs. Fudd isn’t ohh so amused.
Merry Christmas and Much Obliged,
Haywood Fudd
