Yellow Fever
You're living in New Orleans and it's 1869. There's been a water shortage for about two weeks, so everybody's drinkin' the water out of the cisterns that are attached to the side of their homes. You take a big ol' pail and you grab yourself a whole bunch of water out of the cistern. You take it down to Ma and Pa down there . . . down in [laughter] -- down in the kitchen down by Dogpatch! You take it to your brothers and your sisters and you take it to your little baby sister who was born about two weeks ago, because she's cryin', she wants water, and you know -- [laughter] -- you can live without food for about three weeks, but without water, the little baby sister won't live much longer than a couple o' days! [laughter] You know, she's little! [laughing] But little does she know that as she guzzles that water -- because her mom's mammary glands are ran dry from milk, because there's nothin' in town, there's only evaporated milk that hasn't even been invented yet [much laughter] -- that all around New Orleans, that in the cisterns in which the rainwater [bad word] down for weeks on end, slowly, twelve inches of rain a day, that the stagnant water has been breeding mosquitos, and especially the female encephalis mosquito, and that you're all about to get one of the worst diseases that ever hit Louisiana, and probably -- hopefully -- ever will. All the way from Dogtown, Lousiana through the Hajafalias swamp, down through Baton Rouge, all the way to end of the Mississippi River, where it merges with the Gulf of Mexico, one of the worst things that'll ever terrorize that town is the dreaded yellow fever. That yellow fever starts coursin' through your veins, you get the worst fever you ever had! It's like the flu, but multiplied a hundred times. You go to sleep at night in that deranged fit that has you in convulsions, and your last dream before parting the face of this great glorious earth is being one of the caskets that follows the two-mile long train of caskets to that Catholic Church down in the center of New Orleans. Because you're dead! Gettin' that final send-off by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who's been especially appointed by the Pope! There's one sure cure for yellow fever -- it's DEATH!!! [Laughter]