Show me the way to go home

‘Your home must be so far, comrade,” his Russian friends answered him. “It isn’t easy to get back. First you have to cross vast distances and brave enchanted waters as well as through hot deserts. “Why don’t you just stay here with us instead?”

“You are very kind,” Ole Johnny Mudd replied. “But I want to get back to my little ranch. I need to go feed my animals and feel my own earth under my feet.”

“Then you need to return, comrade,” the Russian replied. “One cannot be outside of his home for too long a time.”

He called out “See you later,” and he started walking toward Leningrad. There, he saw the statue of Peter the Great on horseback on top of a huge boulder called ‘The Thunder Stone’ because it

Ole Johnny Mudd had never seen such big fruit and he had never eaten such juicy apples. He decided to save a few of the seeds in his pocket. He thought when he returned to his little ranch, he would be able to sow some Russian apples in New Mexico. was split off a greater stone by a thunderbolt. He got very nostalgic. “He must have been a great cowboy,” he said as he walked away from the city.

“Perhaps I should walk more toward the south,” Ole Johnny Mudd was thinking. Finally he arrived at the village of Novgorod. “In Russian, ‘Novgorod’ means ‘new city,’ but it seems to me it is an ancient village,” he said to himself. “It looks very much like the village of Taos, in New Mexico. Its bells no longer rang to warn the people their enemies were coming. In this country their enemies had been the Mongols who would come to attack them.

Ole Johnny Mudd was looking at the monument to Russian history. Among the famous men on the monument, there was one named “Rurik the Great.” Ole Johnny Mudd thought Rurik must have been Russia’s first cowboy. He got very homesick for his own world. He left Novgorod and started walking toward the west.

Always thinking of his home in far off New Mexico, Ole Johnny Mudd started to cross the great Russian desert. “I am so thirsty in this desert!” he thought as he was walking. “I would really like to eat some fresh fruit,” he said in a loud voice.

“Well then, you have come to the right place,” a girl named Gulya said to him. “This is the land of the Cossacks. It’s capital is called ‘Alma Ata.’ In our language it means ‘father of apples.’ Ole Johnny Mudd had never seen such big fruit and he had never eaten such juicy apples. He decided to save a few of the seeds in his pocket. He thought when he returned to his little ranch, he would be able to sow some Russian apples in New Mexico. His horses would really like to eat some of them. He sighed, turned toward the other direction and he started walking eastward to where the Muslims lived.

Slowly but surely, Ole Johnny Mudd continued walking in Russia, looking for a way to return homeward. Now he arrived at a very curious place. It was the fabulous village of Ashkhabad that was founded by Alexander the Great in the olden days. He stopped to visit with inhabitants there. They were all at an Oriental bazaar, selling watermelons of all colors. The watermelons looked just like huge Easter eggs, shining in the sun. A big statue of Vladimir Illich Lenin was raised high over the town square. This Soviet leader looked very much like the rootin’ tootin’ men in the wild west in New Mexico.

“Sir,” a mystic man named Guilde said to him, “we have noticed that you look at everything, but that you see nothing. What’s on your mind?”

“Can you help me get to my land in New Mexico?” Ole Johnny Mudd asked.

“It’s very possible I can,” Guilde said to him, pointing more toward the Orient and saying “tuda,” which is the word that means “that way” in Russian.