Flip told stories. Sometimes long stories, and he did it cleanly, and on national television. I went looking for something about his 'Ice Wagon' routine, but only found someone else's recollection of his classic routine.
The newly elected mayor of New York City, William de Blasio, is making an issue of doing away with the horse drawn carriages that take people for a ride into Central Park. They are as New York as a parking ticket, but the mayor wants to replace them with an electric car that looks like the one in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He feels it is inhumane to have the horses doing what they do. There is staunch opposition. Nothing is yet resolved
Over the years, there have been one or two horses that have died in severe heat, but new rules were adopted that governed at what temperature they have to stay in the stable.
Never mind that homeless people have frozen to death on the sidewalk because it was against the law to move them, but that's another story and another administration. So far.
When I was working, I sometimes used Flip's 'Ice Wagon' routine as an explanation to my co-workers why I didn't want it to be known that I could do something that was needed. I always felt I was doing enough. To volunteer was to ask for work, and I already had enough to do. My goal at any meeting was to emerge without a fresh assignment. I gave myself enough to do.
Having left that job in 2004, my attitude surely explained why my last promotion was in 1992, but I didn't care. I was content doing what I was doing. And not doing.
Taken from the Web, this is someone else's narrative recollection of Flip's routine. It is quite accurate, although I'm sure Flip didn't always tell parts in the middle the same way twice. No matter. You get the idea.
The comedian Flip Wilson (and I date myself here) used to tell a story that has stayed with me for many years. If memory serves, it goes something like this:
In the days before electric refrigerators, the ice man drove his horse-drawn wagon down the street, yelling, "Ice! Ice!" A woman opened a window above and called down to the ice man to bring her up a block for her icebox. While he hauled the ice upstairs, a passerby noticed the idle horse was muttering, "What a life!"
"Did you say something?" the startled passerby asked.
"Yeah," said the horse. "What a stinking life I have. The ice man makes me pull this heavy wagon five days a week, fourteen hours a day. Then on Saturday I have to pull a carriage through the park for the tourists. And on Sunday he makes me give pony rides to the kids."
"Holy mackerel," said the passerby, "does he know you can talk?"
"No," said the horse, "and don't you tell him either or he'll make me yell, 'Ice!'"
I have a feeling the Central Park carriage horses could tell Mayor de Blasio what they really want. But that would mean talking, and then he'd want the horses to tell people to vote for him in the next election, when they'd rather stay away from politics and just do their thing, even if that means someone else has to pick up after them.
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