Show me the way to go home

Ole Johnny Mudd was oh, so bored! Heaven was not what he had thought it was going to be. The angels were singing day and night, but they only sang hymns; they didn’t know any country songs. He just couldn’t stand them anymore.

He asked them, “Isn’t there anything else to do up here? I would really like to go fishing or hunting. I would like to run or go horseback riding. I would like to feel the wind on my face. In truth, I really don’t belong here!”

The angels agreed with what he told them. That New Mexico cowboy had no business there among them. Without further ado, the angels got together and seized Ole Johnny Mudd by his hands and feet. With cries of “One, two, three,” they hurled him out of Heaven so fast that during his fall, his wings came off.

“Finally!” Ole Johnny Mudd exclaimed as he was falling. “Finally now I’ll be able to feel the wind on my face! In a little while, I’ll be able to get home and then I’ll be able to do all the things that I’ve wanted to do!”

As he was getting closer to the earth, Ole Johnny Mudd saw that he wasn’t going to land where he had thought that he would. He couldn’t see New Mexico in any part of the world. He did, however, notice that the world was turning and that he was going to fall in Russia.

Old Johnny Mudd’s hat flew off and his blue, heavenly gown was slowing his down his fall just like a parachute. “How am I going to get along in this nation of unknown people?” he wondered. “If I have to walk from here all the way to New Mexico, it is going to be one long trek all the way to the desert.”

Just as Ole Johnny Mudd was about to land, he felt himself stop abruptly. He looked up and he saw that his gown had

gotten stuck and that he was hanging from the onion dome of a church. “I must be in Moscow!” he said to himself.

“Of course you are, comrade,” a voice from below answered him. “Who are you, Sir?”

“My name is Johnny Mudd,” he replied. “I am a cowboy from New Mexico. The angels from Heaven couldn’t stand me because I was making too much noise. I was trying to land in New Mexico, but suddenly, the world turned around and I fell in this strange country. My gown got caught on this onion dome and I don’t know how to get unstuck from it,” he finished up by saying.

“Wait for me here and I’ll help you get down from there,” the voice called up to him.

When Ole Johnny Mudd was able to get down from the onion dome, he found he was standing in Red Square, as the big plaza was known in Moscow. The Russians just looked at him with great curiosity, seeing him dressed in a torn, blue gown.

“You are going to need something warmer than a dress, comrade,” they said to him. “In this part of the world it gets really cold. Put on this fur coat so that you don’t catch a cold.” They themselves helped him get dressed a little warmer.

When he was wrapped a little better, Old Johnny Mudd started to look around him. He saw he was close to a high wall with palaces and cathedrals behind it. “What a fantastic place!” he said to them, “but can you show me the way to go home? I don’t belong here either. It is very different just as Heaven was to me also.”