The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985–1992): Season 5, Episode 4 - Colonel Stonesteel and the Desperate Empties - full transcript
Greentown, Illnois is in the midst of the "desperate empties," the doldrums that come at the tail-end of summer. To bring some excitement to the town, twelve-year-old Charlie helps the rascally Colonel Stonesteel bury a fake mummy to be uncovered at the Labor Day parade in an elaborate hoax.
[music playing]
[theme music]
RAY: People ask, where
do you get your ideas?
Right here.
All of this is my
magician's toy shop.
I'm Ray Bradbury, and this is--
OK, I'm waiting.
Come on.
[dog barking]
Colonel Stonesteel!
Charlie.
Now-- now Charlie, you're
old enough to knock.
Try it again.
I thought I told you to
yell around the house.
Heck.
Hey, look at that weather.
Ooh, hell's bell's, don't
you love the Autumn, boy?
It's a fine, fine day.
Hmm?
Son, you look as if your best
friend left and your dog died.
What's wrong?
Schools start next week, huh?
Yup.
Halloween not
coming fast enough?
And nothing ever
happens around here.
Charlie, it's
labor day tomorrow.
Big parade, full
of cars, a float,
fireworks, the Mayor,
belching sparks,
share of Belgian whiskey.
How old are you, Charlie?
I'm 13, almost.
13.
Well, things do tend
to run down come 13.
Come to a dead halt
when you're 14.
Might as well die
when you're 15.
Meanwhile, Charlie,
what do we do to survive
til noon this very day?
Only you know, Colonel.
No, sir.
You know, I can move
politicians big as prize hogs.
I can make locomotives
run backward uphill.
But small boys and long autumn
weekends with a bad case
of the desperate empties--
how's this.
I'll bet you six cans of pop
against you mowing my lawn.
At Green Town, upper Illinois,
population 5,062 people
and 1,000 dogs, Will
be changed forever.
For the best by heavens,
sometime in the next
miraculous 24 hours.
You got a bet?
Yeah, a bet.
I know you can do it.
Oh, well it ain't
done yet, son.
This town is the Red Sea.
I order it to part.
Gang way.
Here we are, Charlie.
Now.
The graveyard?
Or the junkyard?
Which?
Well--
You hear that, Charles?
What's it say?
Well--
Time, mostly, it says.
Oldness, memory, dust, listen!
If you let the Autumn wind shake
the skeleton of this house,
you'll get true time talk.
Bombay snuffs, two yard
flowers gone to ghost.
Boy, Colonel,
know ought to write
for top notch story magazine.
I did once, got rejected.
Oh, lookie.
Boy.
Are you ready for me to
birth you a real sockdolager
on the spot mystery?
Yeah.
You know, the great thing
about midwifing a mystery,
you don't have to
boil water or wash up.
Hand me those papyrus scrolls
over there, would you?
Then that diploma on
the shelf, over there.
And that wad of cannon
ball cotton on the floor.
Here we are.
Now.
What is it?
What?
Oh, thanks for asking.
He is, well, he was, a stand of
papyrus left in an Autumn field
long before Moses.
A papier mache tumbleweed
blown out of time and long
gone twilight dusks and dawns.
It's a chart map of the
blue river Nile source.
It is a hot desert dust devil.
Bundle of old Sunday comic
papers, stashed in the attic
to spontaneously combust
as I rub the shreds.
And, circus posters,
shows long since petered
out and dead by the road.
There, shaping up.
Peel an eye, boy.
What does this commence
to start to resemble?
Why--
Yeah.
It looks old.
Yes.
Dead?
Bullseye, boy.
Oh, well-- well now
you may well ask,
why does anyone want to build
something that's old and dead?
You, Charlie.
You put me up to it.
Yeah, go look out that
attic window, boy.
Just you tell me, do you see
anything happening out there?
Any murders being transacted?
Heck.
Face it, Charlie.
Green Town, upper Illinois is
a most common, mean, plain old
ordinary bore in history.
If Napoleon had been born
here, he will have committed
Hara Kiri at the age of nine.
If Julius Caesar
was raised here,
he would have run
into the Roman forum
aged 10 and stabbed himself.
Boredom.
And, what do you
do when you're bored?
Break a window
in a haunted house.
Oh, good grief, child.
But what else?
Hold a massacre.
Massacre?
No massacres here in dogs years.
Charlie, there's a
whole town out there,
faced with stark,
staring ennuis and lulls.
It's our last chance, Charlie.
What's it going to be?
A mummy!
Colonel.
What are we going to do with
the mummy now that we got him?
It ain't as if he
could walk or talk.
No need, son.
Let folks talk.
It ain't enough, is it boy?
That you recovered
from your seizure
of the desperate empties.
There's a whole town out there
afraid to rise every morn
and find it's forever Sunday.
Now, who will offer
them salvation?
Rameses Tut the third?
Lord love you son, yes.
What we got here
is a giant seed.
Now a seed's no good unless--
We plant it?
And watch it grow.
Then what?
Harvest time.
Harvest time.
Well, if old Tom Tuppin
isn't the laziest farmer
west of the Ohio.
He hasn't finished
his plowing, son.
[music - john philip sousa]
[horn honking]
Well, Charlie, I
wonder what's going on.
I wonder.
I was plowing the
field this morning,
and bang, plow turned this up.
I feel like I've had a stroke.
Think, the Egyptians must have
marched through Illinois 3,000
years ago, and no one knew.
Revelations.
Flood the Nile,
and plant the delta.
Is or is not that a
genuine Egyptian mummy?
W-- in its original papyrus
and coal tar wrappings.
It is.
[cheering]
Just look at him, Sheriff.
Just a minute.
Charlie, hot dog, we did it.
All that babble talk and
uproar, hysterical gossip
will last a thousand days.
Ten thousand.
Michelangelo couldn't
have done better.
His boy David is a
cast-away lost and forgotten
wonder compared to
our Egyptian surprise.
Colonel Tally Hardy.
Listen, everybody.
Just phoned Chicago.
News folk here tomorrow
breakfast, museum folk
for lunch.
Glory Hallelujah for the Green
Town chamber of commerce.
[cheering]
[music - john philip sousa]
Well, end of act one.
Think fast, now, Charlie.
We do want this commotion
to last, don't we?
Sure.
Well then crack your brain.
- What does Simon say?
Simon says go back two hops?
Give that boy an A plus
and a gold star brownie.
The Lord giveth and
the Lord taketh away.
But where to?
Where that Autumn
wind takes us.
[music playing]
Where are we going, Colonel?
Well, now everyone,
including your folks,
is back at the park, right?
Yeah.
Final labor day speeches.
Someone'll light
the gas bag mayor
and he'll sail up about 40 feet.
Firemen will set off the big
rockets, which means the town
hall plus the mummy plus the
sheriff sitting there with him
will be empty and vulnerable.
And then-- then the second
miracle will happen.
Ask me why, boy?
Why?
Well, I'm glad you asked.
Well, boy, the
folks from Chicago
will be jumping off that
train tomorrow hot and fresh
as pancakes with
their pointy noses
and glassy eyes,
20/20 microscopes.
Those museum snoopers
plus the Associated Press
will rummage our Egyptian
pharaoh seven ways of Christmas
and blow their fuse box.
That being so, boy--
We're on our way
to mess around.
You put it rather
indelicately, boy,
but truth lies at the core.
Oh, child, life is a magic show.
Or at least it could
be if people didn't
go to sleep on each other.
Always gotta leave a bit of
mystery for the folks, huh?
We have our place in history.
Green Town is at one with the
pharaohs and the pyramids.
We unite the new
world with the old.
And the eyes of all
the world are on us.
So enjoy yourselves, folks,
and prepare for fame.
Tomorrow, Green
Town is big news.
[cheering and music]
Oh, no, no, Sheriff, you
just-- just finish it off.
SHERIFF: Finished.
COLONEL: Sheriff do you
believe in them old sayings?
What old sayings?
Well, if you read them
hieroglyphics out loud,
the mummy comes alive and walks.
Horseradish.
Stratas
Oh, oh, here, let me give
you a reinforcement here.
Oh, Oh, yes, thanks.
Now come here, Sheriff,
just-- just take a look here.
Fancy old Egyptian symbols.
Um-- uh-- uh--
Well, somebody stole my glasses.
You read it.
Make the fool money walk.
Well, let me see.
Oh, I see a jackal.
And number two is a
hawk, number three is
an owl, and the yellow fox eye.
A fox eye?
Go on.
River horse, Egyptian
cat, and a jungle ape.
Good grief, Sheriff, look!
It's a mummy, Sheriff.
It's going for a walk.
It can't-- uh-- it
can't-- well it can't be.
It can't-- it can't be.
Is-- is--
Oh good grief,
it's-- it's leaving.
Sheriff, I'll catch it,
and I'll bring it back.
Good idea.
I-- I-- no, no, no, no don't.
REPORTERS: Tell us where
the mummy is now, Mr. Mayor.
Who was the last person
to see the mummy?
Any ideas, any ideas at all?
Please, can you--
The mummy Rameses Tut
may have been kidnapped,
but the Chamber of
Commerce will offer
a reward for any information.
Any theories Sheriff?
I'm sorry, so who?
I must admit, now look you
guys, and girls, there's
a lot of this iceberg
still under water, okay?
So we need a bit of cooperation,
you know what I mean?
We are pursuing a line of
inquiry, and we'll keep you,
believe me, fully briefed.
REPORTERS: I'm sure he's
not telling the truth.
I think we should follow--
I'm sure the Sheriff
knows something--
Get some answers--
COLONEL: Boredom,
where are you now?
Boy, I can just see
tomorrow's clarion headlines.
Traceless mummy
kidnapped, reward
offered, blackmail expected.
Boy, you do have
a way with words.
I learned from you, Colonel.
Colonel, what's
he truly made of?
What's he mean?
Well boy, you were there.
You helped, you saw.
No, tell me, Colonel.
You want to know
who he truly was, hmm?
Once upon a time?
He was everyone.
He was no one.
He was someone.
He was you.
He was me.
Well, his body-- body's
made of crushed flowers,
new weddings and old funerals.
Ticker tapes unravelled
from gone off forever
Egyptian pharaoh
midnight trains.
The circus posters, torn off
seed barns in North Storm,
Ohio, and shuttled south
toward Fulfillment, Texas.
All the things that
were once need, hope,
fresh nickel in the pocket.
Framed dollar on the cafe wall.
Printed there by odd old
men and time-orphaned women
saying, "It'll happen tomorrow,
tomorrow it'll happen."
You believe, Charlie.
You made life start over.
Yeah, the minute you
hollered outside my door.
Yes, you said, it'll happen.
See, you-- you
went for the dream.
Well, that's the meaning,
old Rameses here.
And right now, he's
all yours, son.
Next week when
this noise is over,
we'll hide them in your attic.
And then, about 30 or
40 years from now--
What?
You know, in a bad year that's
so brimming over with boredom
it just drips out of your
ears, you'll climb up
to your rummage sale
attic, and you'll
shake this mummy out
of bed and you'll
toss him into a corn field.
And you'll watch new
hell-fire mobs great loose.
Colonel, what if,
even when I get old,
I don't need my own mummy
to stir mobs up with?
Hmm?
What if I have a life
where I'm never bored?
I find out what I
want to do and do it.
Make every day and
every night count,
wake up laughing and grow
old still running fast?
Then what?
Well, then, son.
You'll be one of
God's luckiest people.
Because Colonel, I've decided.
I'm going to be the
world's greatest writer.
Lord, you will.
Yeah, I see it.
Charlie, let him
tell you your future.
Let him start you
on the stories.
Come on.
Ready?
What's he saying, Charlie?
Everything, just everything.
Everything I always
wanted to hear.
BOY: Mr. Flagstaff!
Johnny, you're old
enough to knock, try again.
Rameses Tut,
another lost friend.
[music playing]
[theme music]
RAY: People ask, where
do you get your ideas?
Right here.
All of this is my
magician's toy shop.
I'm Ray Bradbury, and this is--
OK, I'm waiting.
Come on.
[dog barking]
Colonel Stonesteel!
Charlie.
Now-- now Charlie, you're
old enough to knock.
Try it again.
I thought I told you to
yell around the house.
Heck.
Hey, look at that weather.
Ooh, hell's bell's, don't
you love the Autumn, boy?
It's a fine, fine day.
Hmm?
Son, you look as if your best
friend left and your dog died.
What's wrong?
Schools start next week, huh?
Yup.
Halloween not
coming fast enough?
And nothing ever
happens around here.
Charlie, it's
labor day tomorrow.
Big parade, full
of cars, a float,
fireworks, the Mayor,
belching sparks,
share of Belgian whiskey.
How old are you, Charlie?
I'm 13, almost.
13.
Well, things do tend
to run down come 13.
Come to a dead halt
when you're 14.
Might as well die
when you're 15.
Meanwhile, Charlie,
what do we do to survive
til noon this very day?
Only you know, Colonel.
No, sir.
You know, I can move
politicians big as prize hogs.
I can make locomotives
run backward uphill.
But small boys and long autumn
weekends with a bad case
of the desperate empties--
how's this.
I'll bet you six cans of pop
against you mowing my lawn.
At Green Town, upper Illinois,
population 5,062 people
and 1,000 dogs, Will
be changed forever.
For the best by heavens,
sometime in the next
miraculous 24 hours.
You got a bet?
Yeah, a bet.
I know you can do it.
Oh, well it ain't
done yet, son.
This town is the Red Sea.
I order it to part.
Gang way.
Here we are, Charlie.
Now.
The graveyard?
Or the junkyard?
Which?
Well--
You hear that, Charles?
What's it say?
Well--
Time, mostly, it says.
Oldness, memory, dust, listen!
If you let the Autumn wind shake
the skeleton of this house,
you'll get true time talk.
Bombay snuffs, two yard
flowers gone to ghost.
Boy, Colonel,
know ought to write
for top notch story magazine.
I did once, got rejected.
Oh, lookie.
Boy.
Are you ready for me to
birth you a real sockdolager
on the spot mystery?
Yeah.
You know, the great thing
about midwifing a mystery,
you don't have to
boil water or wash up.
Hand me those papyrus scrolls
over there, would you?
Then that diploma on
the shelf, over there.
And that wad of cannon
ball cotton on the floor.
Here we are.
Now.
What is it?
What?
Oh, thanks for asking.
He is, well, he was, a stand of
papyrus left in an Autumn field
long before Moses.
A papier mache tumbleweed
blown out of time and long
gone twilight dusks and dawns.
It's a chart map of the
blue river Nile source.
It is a hot desert dust devil.
Bundle of old Sunday comic
papers, stashed in the attic
to spontaneously combust
as I rub the shreds.
And, circus posters,
shows long since petered
out and dead by the road.
There, shaping up.
Peel an eye, boy.
What does this commence
to start to resemble?
Why--
Yeah.
It looks old.
Yes.
Dead?
Bullseye, boy.
Oh, well-- well now
you may well ask,
why does anyone want to build
something that's old and dead?
You, Charlie.
You put me up to it.
Yeah, go look out that
attic window, boy.
Just you tell me, do you see
anything happening out there?
Any murders being transacted?
Heck.
Face it, Charlie.
Green Town, upper Illinois is
a most common, mean, plain old
ordinary bore in history.
If Napoleon had been born
here, he will have committed
Hara Kiri at the age of nine.
If Julius Caesar
was raised here,
he would have run
into the Roman forum
aged 10 and stabbed himself.
Boredom.
And, what do you
do when you're bored?
Break a window
in a haunted house.
Oh, good grief, child.
But what else?
Hold a massacre.
Massacre?
No massacres here in dogs years.
Charlie, there's a
whole town out there,
faced with stark,
staring ennuis and lulls.
It's our last chance, Charlie.
What's it going to be?
A mummy!
Colonel.
What are we going to do with
the mummy now that we got him?
It ain't as if he
could walk or talk.
No need, son.
Let folks talk.
It ain't enough, is it boy?
That you recovered
from your seizure
of the desperate empties.
There's a whole town out there
afraid to rise every morn
and find it's forever Sunday.
Now, who will offer
them salvation?
Rameses Tut the third?
Lord love you son, yes.
What we got here
is a giant seed.
Now a seed's no good unless--
We plant it?
And watch it grow.
Then what?
Harvest time.
Harvest time.
Well, if old Tom Tuppin
isn't the laziest farmer
west of the Ohio.
He hasn't finished
his plowing, son.
[music - john philip sousa]
[horn honking]
Well, Charlie, I
wonder what's going on.
I wonder.
I was plowing the
field this morning,
and bang, plow turned this up.
I feel like I've had a stroke.
Think, the Egyptians must have
marched through Illinois 3,000
years ago, and no one knew.
Revelations.
Flood the Nile,
and plant the delta.
Is or is not that a
genuine Egyptian mummy?
W-- in its original papyrus
and coal tar wrappings.
It is.
[cheering]
Just look at him, Sheriff.
Just a minute.
Charlie, hot dog, we did it.
All that babble talk and
uproar, hysterical gossip
will last a thousand days.
Ten thousand.
Michelangelo couldn't
have done better.
His boy David is a
cast-away lost and forgotten
wonder compared to
our Egyptian surprise.
Colonel Tally Hardy.
Listen, everybody.
Just phoned Chicago.
News folk here tomorrow
breakfast, museum folk
for lunch.
Glory Hallelujah for the Green
Town chamber of commerce.
[cheering]
[music - john philip sousa]
Well, end of act one.
Think fast, now, Charlie.
We do want this commotion
to last, don't we?
Sure.
Well then crack your brain.
- What does Simon say?
Simon says go back two hops?
Give that boy an A plus
and a gold star brownie.
The Lord giveth and
the Lord taketh away.
But where to?
Where that Autumn
wind takes us.
[music playing]
Where are we going, Colonel?
Well, now everyone,
including your folks,
is back at the park, right?
Yeah.
Final labor day speeches.
Someone'll light
the gas bag mayor
and he'll sail up about 40 feet.
Firemen will set off the big
rockets, which means the town
hall plus the mummy plus the
sheriff sitting there with him
will be empty and vulnerable.
And then-- then the second
miracle will happen.
Ask me why, boy?
Why?
Well, I'm glad you asked.
Well, boy, the
folks from Chicago
will be jumping off that
train tomorrow hot and fresh
as pancakes with
their pointy noses
and glassy eyes,
20/20 microscopes.
Those museum snoopers
plus the Associated Press
will rummage our Egyptian
pharaoh seven ways of Christmas
and blow their fuse box.
That being so, boy--
We're on our way
to mess around.
You put it rather
indelicately, boy,
but truth lies at the core.
Oh, child, life is a magic show.
Or at least it could
be if people didn't
go to sleep on each other.
Always gotta leave a bit of
mystery for the folks, huh?
We have our place in history.
Green Town is at one with the
pharaohs and the pyramids.
We unite the new
world with the old.
And the eyes of all
the world are on us.
So enjoy yourselves, folks,
and prepare for fame.
Tomorrow, Green
Town is big news.
[cheering and music]
Oh, no, no, Sheriff, you
just-- just finish it off.
SHERIFF: Finished.
COLONEL: Sheriff do you
believe in them old sayings?
What old sayings?
Well, if you read them
hieroglyphics out loud,
the mummy comes alive and walks.
Horseradish.
Stratas
Oh, oh, here, let me give
you a reinforcement here.
Oh, Oh, yes, thanks.
Now come here, Sheriff,
just-- just take a look here.
Fancy old Egyptian symbols.
Um-- uh-- uh--
Well, somebody stole my glasses.
You read it.
Make the fool money walk.
Well, let me see.
Oh, I see a jackal.
And number two is a
hawk, number three is
an owl, and the yellow fox eye.
A fox eye?
Go on.
River horse, Egyptian
cat, and a jungle ape.
Good grief, Sheriff, look!
It's a mummy, Sheriff.
It's going for a walk.
It can't-- uh-- it
can't-- well it can't be.
It can't-- it can't be.
Is-- is--
Oh good grief,
it's-- it's leaving.
Sheriff, I'll catch it,
and I'll bring it back.
Good idea.
I-- I-- no, no, no, no don't.
REPORTERS: Tell us where
the mummy is now, Mr. Mayor.
Who was the last person
to see the mummy?
Any ideas, any ideas at all?
Please, can you--
The mummy Rameses Tut
may have been kidnapped,
but the Chamber of
Commerce will offer
a reward for any information.
Any theories Sheriff?
I'm sorry, so who?
I must admit, now look you
guys, and girls, there's
a lot of this iceberg
still under water, okay?
So we need a bit of cooperation,
you know what I mean?
We are pursuing a line of
inquiry, and we'll keep you,
believe me, fully briefed.
REPORTERS: I'm sure he's
not telling the truth.
I think we should follow--
I'm sure the Sheriff
knows something--
Get some answers--
COLONEL: Boredom,
where are you now?
Boy, I can just see
tomorrow's clarion headlines.
Traceless mummy
kidnapped, reward
offered, blackmail expected.
Boy, you do have
a way with words.
I learned from you, Colonel.
Colonel, what's
he truly made of?
What's he mean?
Well boy, you were there.
You helped, you saw.
No, tell me, Colonel.
You want to know
who he truly was, hmm?
Once upon a time?
He was everyone.
He was no one.
He was someone.
He was you.
He was me.
Well, his body-- body's
made of crushed flowers,
new weddings and old funerals.
Ticker tapes unravelled
from gone off forever
Egyptian pharaoh
midnight trains.
The circus posters, torn off
seed barns in North Storm,
Ohio, and shuttled south
toward Fulfillment, Texas.
All the things that
were once need, hope,
fresh nickel in the pocket.
Framed dollar on the cafe wall.
Printed there by odd old
men and time-orphaned women
saying, "It'll happen tomorrow,
tomorrow it'll happen."
You believe, Charlie.
You made life start over.
Yeah, the minute you
hollered outside my door.
Yes, you said, it'll happen.
See, you-- you
went for the dream.
Well, that's the meaning,
old Rameses here.
And right now, he's
all yours, son.
Next week when
this noise is over,
we'll hide them in your attic.
And then, about 30 or
40 years from now--
What?
You know, in a bad year that's
so brimming over with boredom
it just drips out of your
ears, you'll climb up
to your rummage sale
attic, and you'll
shake this mummy out
of bed and you'll
toss him into a corn field.
And you'll watch new
hell-fire mobs great loose.
Colonel, what if,
even when I get old,
I don't need my own mummy
to stir mobs up with?
Hmm?
What if I have a life
where I'm never bored?
I find out what I
want to do and do it.
Make every day and
every night count,
wake up laughing and grow
old still running fast?
Then what?
Well, then, son.
You'll be one of
God's luckiest people.
Because Colonel, I've decided.
I'm going to be the
world's greatest writer.
Lord, you will.
Yeah, I see it.
Charlie, let him
tell you your future.
Let him start you
on the stories.
Come on.
Ready?
What's he saying, Charlie?
Everything, just everything.
Everything I always
wanted to hear.
BOY: Mr. Flagstaff!
Johnny, you're old
enough to knock, try again.
Rameses Tut,
another lost friend.
[music playing]