The Tale of Yoplat Von Hauffer - by Jared Hardy

For my little sister, Allison. A story to keep you company.

Story 1 of 2

The Von Hauffer family was not as wealthy as most people assumed. They indeed lived in a big house. They indeed drove a big, fancy car (with 7 wheels and a mechanical hat that you could tip at passersby with the pull of a lever inside the car). They indeed wore fancy-schmancy clothes. So it was simply logical for the town; indeed the entire city; perhaps even the entire world, to assume that the Von Hauffer family was wealthy beyond compare. But there-in lies the secret of the Von Hauffer family. And there-in lies the tale of Yoplat Von Hauffer.

It′s not simply a lie to say that the Von Hauffers are rich. At one time they had amassed a rather large fortune. Yoplat′s great great great grandfather had been the first person to think of putting horns on the inside of automobiles, and for that he had been grossly rewarded for selling off his patents of the invention. The money was invested and a small fortune quickly grew into an enormous fortune. The money passed from generation to generation dwindling only slightly before it reached the hands of Vladamire Von Hauffer: Yoplat′s father.

Vladamire wasn′t a bad man, he wasn′t even a man of many vices. He was in the front pew of the biggest church for miles not just every Sunday, but every single solitary day. No, it wasn′t that Vladamire had trouble managing money. He, like many people, had but one vice. Vladamire held a certain liking to a certain type of licorice from a certain licorice producer that was not, by any stretch of the imagination, easy to get his hands on. He first came in contact with it was he was a young boy, no more than 10, during a family trip to a remote island, far off from the Von Hauffer estate. Vladamire brought back as much of it as his tiny arms could carry, but after he ran out the licorice haunted his dreams. For years he yearned to have it again, and on the day of his 18th birthday he took off for the island; again, he bought as much of it back as he could manage. He took several trips there over the span of his lifetime, and it simply never seemed to be enough. These rather costly expenditures were only made more costly when the licorice provider realized his customer was addicted and raised the price. Needless to say, the vast fortune of the Von Hauffer family was nowhere near vast and hardly a stones throw from a fortune by the time Vladamire passed and Yoplat became owner.

Yoplat was not, however, up the hypothetical creek without the hypothetical paddle. He had but one real card up his sleeve, and that was the Von Hauffer family name. He used his name to get all sorts of connections; connections that were not always the sorts of collections that an upstanding person would want, and all sorts of the bad sorts of those connections at that. Yoplat was a wise man, wise enough to know that he had little more than his name to offer, but he was also a stupid man. Stupid enough to exhaust his efforts in fooling the world rather than in retrieving a new fortune. And, as they say, was his fatal flaw.

Yoplat bought a pig. Or, rather, a piglet. It was the first step in ′looking rich′ for Yoplat, because it′s something a rich person would do. Rich people use the outstanding noses of pigs to track down some of the most peculiar and expensive truffles in the world. These truffles are nearly impossible to find without the extraordinary nose of Yoplat′s little pig, Ferdinand Gustiov, or any pig for that matter. Yoplat nursed, nourished, raised, and trained Ferdinand Gustiov to be one of the finest truffle scouting pigs in the world. And he found truffle after truffle, worth fortune after fortune. But Yoplat the wise, as I′ve said, was not Yoplat the smart. He had an opportunity to sell these truffles and make his families's fortune back, but that would mean admitting they weren′t already rich and word would surely spread. So, instead Yoplat ate the truffle. Truffle after truffle he ate and devoured. He even fed a few of them to Ferdinand Gustiov. All of this done in the public eye, all of this a gross wasting of money that Yoplat did not posses.

Venture after venture Yoplat continually made a fortune, and used it to look rich rather than be rich. As wise as Yoplat was, his stupidity eventually caught up to him. He was offered money for the world-famous pig, Ferdinand ′The Truffle-de-duffler′ Gustiov. Ferdinand had no money to feed his family (and was deathly sick of truffles) and could either take the money to eat, or eat The Truffle-de-duffler himself. Either way, Ferdinand would be no more. He sold the pig and word soon spread of the loss of Ferdinand Gustiov. The council came before Yoplat and his financial miseries were soon deduced. There was a little known law in this particular town that made it illegal to lie about financial gains and/or losses. Yoplat was sentenced to a lifetime in a factory far far away. A particularly nice smelling factory, that produced some of the greatest licorice in the world.

And thus ends the Tale of Yoplat Von Hauffer. I hope you enjoyed it.

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