There is probably an universe out of here where the person in bed with Nixon was Oswald.

If i am forced to endure this mental image so are you and the other readers of this TL
 
After beating him severely, they used a rope to lynch and hang Suffolk from a nearby streetlight. The crowd continued to beat the twitching body like a Metropolis Birthday Basher even as RUMP patrol cars pulled up, sirens blaring. Several officers opened fire with revolvers on the small crowd, injuring five and killing one. The young man was discovered to have been the former boyfriend of the local girl, Petra Parke, who had singled him out. King gladly and personally made the arrest himself, picking her up for inciting a riot, false witness, and second degree murder. Parke would spend the next few years in
Well, at the very least NUSA doesn't tolerate lynch mobs (in some cases at least).
 
The date was July 3, 1942, a day before America was to test and announce the creation of its first atomic bomb
Now that the Union has the bomb, where will they use it? Brazil seems like a good target, since it would be easier than attacking its major cities conventionally. I'm not sure if Lima would get a bomb as well, or if the Yanks can take it by conventional means. Maybe Sao Paulo gets the first nuke, then Rio?
 
Now that the Union has the bomb, where will they use it? Brazil seems like a good target, since it would be easier than attacking its major cities conventionally. I'm not sure if Lima would get a bomb as well, or if the Yanks can take it by conventional means. Maybe Sao Paulo gets the first nuke, then Rio?
Both those cities are fairly far south, meaning any bomber would have a very hard time not getting shot down. I suspect they’ll use the bomb much closer to the frontlines to crack a battle they’ve become bogged down in and any Americans killed by it will be declared Holy Martyrs
 
Both those cities are fairly far south, meaning any bomber would have a very hard time not getting shot down. I suspect they’ll use the bomb much closer to the frontlines to crack a battle they’ve become bogged down in and any Americans killed by it will be declared Holy Martyrs
That makes more sense. Peru will probably get the first nuke.
 
HELL GATE'S FAMOUS FLAVOR KING: THE THOMAS FOODS STORY
One of the longest chapters I've ever written in the TL, and it was nonstop fun the entire way. One of my favorite chapters to write of all time. It also has an absurd number of original images and I think it's a worthy introduction for the lore of the S.P.U.D. company we have all grown to love since 1.0, despite barely any actual concrete lore or info until this glorious loredump. Also, you'll read, by far, the greatest last words I have ever given a character. I busted a gut.


HELL GATE'S FAMOUS FLAVOR KING:
THE THOMAS FOODS STORY
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The saga of Thomas Foods is an American success story, a saga of small beginnings exploding seemingly overnight into a massive economic empire. From its beginnings in the late 19th century as a small-town cannery to the height of success, Thomas Foods helped shape the Republican Union and New United States and left an indelible mark on American culture. While it would be warfare and military sales that carried its products to soldiers' mouths everywhere, these fighters would take their culinary tastes home with them and demand--at grocers across the country--the unique taste of Hell Gate's Famous Flavor King.

- THE SAGA BEGINS -

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Morton's Brand Cigarette collectible card of Slog in his safari outfit, 1930

Slogwell "Slog" Victor Thomas was born on October 1, 1870, to Barton "Bart" Emmanuel Thomas and Annie Thomas (nee Slogwell) of Petersburg, Dakota. Annie's father Plato Slogwell (Slog Thomas' namesake) was the celebrated Major General of Legion II, Army Group I, and was a descendant of original Plymouth settlers that arrived with the Arkhams and Brewsters. With such greatness in the family, it is easy to see why Slog's father Bart was seen as such a disappointment. He was a serial philanderer and drunk who was absent much of the time, dealing with old wounds and internal demons from the Great American War, in which he served under his future father-in-law. Shortly after Slog's third birthday, Bart killed himself with his old war-issue service revolver, leaving the family with $50 and rent they couldn't afford. With a sickly and single mother growing up, Slog learned to take care of most tasks around the homestead they were gifted in Petersburg by her father.

Among those tasks was cooking and stocking up on food, which was often in short supply after Major General Slogwell's death. Slog would tell biographer Hershel P. Baxter in 1950:

"I really appreciated the value of a penny my whole life. There was no such thing to me as 'pocket bacon,' as the kids say nowadays. If I wanted to eat, it had to be cheap and it had to fill me up. I got my first job at ten, working on a neighbor's cattle farm. I took to eating the castaway cuts, I call 'em. Offal, guts, livers, pancreas, gizzards, testicles, uterus, hell, even the penises and bungholes and really anything that was going to be tossed in the trash by the butcher. My mother, bless her soul, taught me the power of seasonings, brine, and sauces that could mask that slightly 'off' or gamey flavor of those cuts, and we ate real good. We grew our own vegetables, too, mostly potatoes, peppers, corn, and onions. They were simple days, but they taught me that meat is what you make it.

Let me tell you, to this day, I still prefer the taste of a good, properly seasoned ox cock over a cheap steak from Wendell's or some other dive. And if you've never tasted battered beef bung deep fried in bone broth, you haven't lived. I consider it sacrilege to let any part of Jev's critters go to waste. This applies to all the animal kingdom. I haven't encountered a furry friend that you can't take to the supper table in a palatable form in all my years. I've eaten poisonous puffer fish in Holy Nippon, formless blobfish in the South Seas, Cackalacky mouse wine, pickled scorpions in Arabia, deep-sea anglers in Cuba, tiger in India, and more. I'm grateful for every day the good Lord grants me, and I'm just as grateful for every mouthful of succulent flesh I get to enjoy."

Slog was not joking around. The man was a voracious carnivore from the beginning of his life, and his obsession with meat would lead to him becoming the so-called "King of the Carnivores," frequently journeying to Carolinian Afrika and the Mittelafrikan Reich to hunt and consume everything in sight in epic safaris. He was also known for having purchased several pairs of luxury designer wingtip shoes only to try to break them down into beef cracklins. But that's getting ahead of our story, the story not only of Slogwell Thomas, but of Thomas Foods itself.

Like most empires, it started small. In 1895, shortly after his mother's death from stomach cancer, Slog left Dakota on a mission to go all the way to the West Coast to seek his fame and fortune. After a short stint as a longshoreman in Marxburg, Oregon, Slog saved up enough money to rent a small warehouse to go all-in on his favorite pastime, canning and preserving food. Via a secret blend of herbs and spices, he managed to grow quite the client base among the poor of Marxburg, as well as the sailors in port needing to restock on preserves. Within a year, he had saved up enough money to buy the cannery. 1897 saw the official creation of Thomas Foods Company. A legacy was born.

But 'wait,' you might say. If it was founded in Marxburg, how did it become 'Hell Gate's' Famous Flavor King? Well, upon the death of his long lost uncle Nicodemus Thomas in 1900, Slog was awarded a modest ranch as Nick's only remaining living relative. The location of the ranch? Hell Gate, Oregon. Packing up everything he had and very much desiring to escape the increasingly urbanized West Coast, he moved to the ranch to start anew, not unlike a classic fairy tale or adventure pulp. The Thomas Ranch was located in the canyons and foothills, allowing plenty of room to buy and herd cattle. Starting with 200 heads in 1900, by 1905 there were over 2,000, and Slog had brought in pigs, buffalo, and rabbits en masse. One industry fed the other, with profits from selling leather going to fund the purchase of more cattle, who would then in turn be butchered and sold for parts. It was an infinite loop of capital flow, and Slog Thomas was eventually one of the richest men in Oregon. Even with his newfound wealth, however, he still continued his philosophy of "waste not, want not" by consuming animals almost down to the smallest dollop of bone marrow.

After a failed attempt at marketing potted pig penis to the public in 1908, the young rancher realized he didn't a different approach. Instead of slapping a wholly honest label on his canned goods, he would attempt to create his own vernacular to describe and name his products. "This wasn't dishonesty for dishonesty's sake," he would say in later years, "But just a way for me to convince America to try certain bits and bobs that would normally go to the wayside in the culinary world. Affordable bits and bobs, at that!" In 1910, potted pig penis reappeared as "Hell Gate Sausages." Pickled pig nuts also appeared as "Hell Gate Oysters," a term that would eventually become the standard generic one to describe one of the Northwest's favorite lunchtime or afternoon snack standbys. 1910 saw the adoption of a new motto for Thomas Foods: "Waste Not. Want Not."

- S.P.U.D. CHANGES AMERICA FOREVER-

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Slog photographed in his "ranchin' duds" sometime after the Great World War

"I wanted to bring protein and meatstuffs to the masses that maybe couldn't afford much animal flesh otherwise. Especially as the Gee-Double-Ya-Double-Ya broke out, I feared rationing, as patriotic and necessary as it was, would severely impact the available flavor profiles and dinner habits of Americans. I knew that if I could keep the bulk of my slaughtered critters going to military usage, they wouldn't expect the organs, offal, or genitals to be sent to the front, too, so I was able to keep those leftover cuts of meat on the table for millions of Americans. Out New England a-way, them tea-sippin' Yankee Doodles wanted no part of our flesh noodles and didn't understand what kind of exquisite flavors were out there waitin' for 'em. So the Northwest, as I like to say, was an 'offal' place to live during the war, and we just never looked back. It'd still be years before we could get those East Coasters to try out our main products, but we were about to send their boys home from the war a-cryin' out for the taste of Hell Gate's Famous Flavor King."

- Slog Thomas in an interview with a young journalist named Barb Weir during his 100th Birthday Celebration (10/01/1970)

S.P.U.D. was at first an accident, like most of Slog's recipes. One night in 1909, while out on safari in New Cackalack, trying to bag and consume his first gorilla, Slog cooked up some grub for himself and his three hillbilly guides. He had fried up and seasoned some not particularly offensive pig brain and potatoes in a cast iron skillet over a fire. A gorilla was spotted right as they were about to partake in the meal and the four men rushed off, guns in hand, on a wild goose chase that lasted clear through till morning. When they arrived back at camp, empty-handed and exhausted, five hours later, their fire had died and the cow brain and potatoes had cooled. Now, a pig brain is about 60% fat, so most of what was left was a bunch of potato chunks stuck in a congealed, greasy mess, and much of the actual brain matter had been picked by scavenger animals. Rather than waste the food, as would be heretical to Slog's lifelong creed, he stoked the campfire again and brought it to a high temperature. What resulted were greasy, fatty pucks of potato, of an almost hashbrown-like texture, with tiny bits of brain matter and sweetbread. It was delicious. Slog knew he would take this idea all the way to market.

When he returned to Hell Gate, stuffed and mounted Gorilla in tow, he immediately set to work figuring out the perfect recipe for this new dish. Before long, he was pitching the idea to the War Council as "S.P.U.D.," sometimes inconsistently omitting the dots, short for "Succulent Potato Utility Dinner." The mixture of secret spices and herbs, pork (mostly brain) fat and hashbrown potatoes that went into every can of S.P.U.D. was almost liquid in nature to start, being and gushed and flushed from giant state-of-the-art "slop hoses" in the Hell Gate Packing Plant into oblong tall metal tins. As the temperature cooled, the mixture would set, leaving a loaf of sorts that could be easily dumped out of the can and held its shape. Famously, "S.P.U.D." was indented onto every tin, under the label, also giving the loaf inside a bass relief of the logo. It could then be cooked whole, eaten cold or room temperature, or cut into slices for sandwich purposes. When the first loads of the product hit the Grand Army of the Republic during the GWW, they were unsure about it. But after a few months of huddling in foxholes and getting shot at, beggars could not be choosers. Demand for S.P.U.D. on every front skyrocketed. Now it was not only the GAR, but the Navy and the Aeroforce, as well. Sales were through the roof. What followed was a generation of men becoming hooked on "America's Comfort Food."

"There's just something about this S.P.U.D. stuff. It tastes like... I don't know rightly. I reckon it tastes like... America."
- Unknown GAR trooper in an interview with a war correspondent during the Kawartha Lakes Campaign, 1911


- BIRTH OF A CULINARY EMPIRE -

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Manifest Climax-era advertisement for the rollout and launch of Potted Pancreas, a flagship product

Another thing which would contribute to the domination of S.P.U.D. was the fact that soldiers were pairing it up with Horton's Brand Pounded Tomato Paste Product Mushed Red Sauce Slurry, usually just known as "Horton's," or "Horton Sauce." Founded in Oshkosh, Michigania, in 1886 by Alfred Watson Horton, a chef and licensed pharmacist, folks quickly found out that Horton's "gave S.P.U.D. a dash of zip" that it was "frankly lacking." Many found S.P.U.D. too salty, and thus the tangy, spicy high strangeness of Horton's Sauce gave it a mouthwatering aroma and flavor. Many Americans were slathering the entire S.P.U.D. loaf in Horton's and baking it in the oven as a budget meatloaf. While Slog was fine with this in public, he would continually resent the fact that people found his recipe "lacking" in any way, shape, or form. Never one to let grudges go, when Alfred Horton died of pneumonia in 1925, Slog simply bought the entire company. This also included their immensely successful lines of Horton's Soups, such as Minty Tomato, Royal Jelly Broth, and Savory Sup. This purchase of Horton's also saw the Oshkosh Horton's plant become the second-ever Thomas Foods plant (although it kept the Horton's trappings to preserve the customer base), regularly inspected by Slog himself to assure his standards and recipes were being respected. Horton's became just another tagline for Hell Gate's Famouse Flavor King to slap onto products for nostalgia.

In 1934, Slog opened up the Horton's Brand Tomato Lager facility in Metropolis, New Canaan. While he tried to open up a full-on Thomas Foods factory, the Agricultural Clan couldn't agree on a middle-ground between Thomas and the Metropolis-based Vita-Vittles corporation that controlled most canned food production in Old Mexico. So he opted instead for the brewery. The strange, slightly bitter, rancid taste of the Horton's Tomato Lager, often nicknamed T-Lag by aficionados of the beverage, became a staple of Old Mexico culture, especially in New Canaan. One long-haul truck driver was interviewed by WUSN 1050 as he sat in a Gilwood, Arnold, tavern in 1950. He phrased it quite well by stating:

"Stuff tastes like skunk piss and donkey spunk, but it'll put hair on your chest, by Jev. You can order a Republica around here at any bar, but it won't earn you any respect. My baby boy drank Republica before he drank cow's milk. If you're going out with the boys and you want to get shitfaced like a real man, everyone around these parts knows you ask for a T-Lag."

The driver couldn't have been more accurate. "T-Lag" had a 15% alcohol content, compared to Republica at just 5%. T-Lag became an icon of the many cultural differences separating Old Mexico from the rest of the Union. By 1960, 75% of all beer sales in the greater Old Mexico area were dominated by T-Lag. Chuck Oswald was known to occasionally be seen sipping from a can during visits in the region, and he was famously drinking a can during the opening ceremony of Krummhornland Southwest with a less-enthused, puckering Morty Krummhorn. Even Kissimmee movies were known to reference the drink, often to depict a Northerner learning the ways of Old Mexico. One such example could be found in a 1943 episode of the adventure serial Pennsylvania Jack. In Search for the Savage Tomb, Max Cross's titular character is seen conversing with love-interest and rival Ambrosia Thompson, played by starlet Praisegood Lewis.

Cross: *looks at can pushed in front of him* "What is this? Up north we have what we call 'Bloody Marys.' This anything like that?"

Lewis: "No, you silly man. It's a T-Lag. Tomato beer. Just try it."

Cross: *splutters* "Augh, fluidation of the nation! That's bitter!"

Lewis: "Awe, you want me to put some sugar in it for you, Philadelphia?"

Cross: "It's Pennsylvania. And while we're on the topic, would you like me to put some sugar in you?"

Lewis: "I thought you'd never ask, stud."


- MEAT MOUNTAIN RANCH AND THE MEATGOBLIN CONSPIRACY -

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1940 would see the renaming of Thomas Ranch as part of an overall upgrade to the entire Thomas Foods brand and facilities. To put it simply, Slog viewed the place as far too big to refer to as just 'Thomas Ranch.' "This isn't about my name. It's about the meat," the entrepreneur told local papers. In July of that year, he renamed Thomas Ranch to Meat Mountain Ranch. While old wooden buildings were replaced by sleek brick-and-mortar and steel-based construction, the main improvement made was the Central Warehouse. The C.W., as it was known by employees, was the biggest refrigerated structure in human history. Over 500,000 square feet of cold storage was possible thanks to the gargantuan building, capable of storing over 300 million pounds of meat. The structure was so large that it was difficult to say where the C.W. ended and the Main Packing Plant (M.P.P.) began, as they were connected by an umbilical corridor of conveyor belts and temperature regulation and quality assurance terminals.

By 1960, thanks in part to a partnership with fellow Oregonian company Wende Tabulatics, the C.W. became the first cold storage building in history to be regulated by a tabulatic mainframe, which could read, monitor, and automatically adjust AC units all around the building to maintain the most hyper-accurate and economical temperature then-possible. The Central Warehouse was such an incredible piece of the American food chain that President Oswald declared it a national security interest to maintain its safety in 1950, as a wartime attack by an enemy saboteur could cripple a huge part of the American food chain seemingly overnight.

"The Cee-Double-Ya never stops, never ceases. Like a colony of human bees farming meat-honey, it works around the clock, 24/7, 365 a year, to feed this country. Over 500 employees on both shifts, and that's 1000 in all, move and monitor approximately 90 million pounds of beef, 100 million pounds of chicken, 50,000 pounds of rabbit, and over 100 million pounds of pork. It's a war we're fighting here, no different than in the Quarantine Zone. Only we're not fighting Infees, we're fighting America's hunger for delicious and affordable meatstuffs."

- Slog Thomas in an educational documentary on Meat Mountain shot for public school classes, 1958

The C.W. was almost rivaled in size by the Potato Warehouse (P.W.) Often nicknamed "The Pow" by its employees, it was capable of of holding an estimated 200 million pounds of the dusty, delicious tubers. Despite its insistence on deriding Irish Inferiors as "potato grubbers" since the days of Charles Goodyear, America was--by far and wide with no contest--the biggest consumer of potatoes, thanks in part to its addiction to S.P.U.D.. The Pow was right next to where the magic really happened, in what was known as the S.P.U.D. Hut. The gargantuan building consisted of several pipelines of already-cooked "pork brain slurry with juices," and later other meats as the number of S.P.U.D. flavors expanded, and giant machines known as "Potato Sloggers," which sliced and diced the potatoes into hash. After spending some time soaking in brine and seasoning in huge coppers tubs, the temperature would increase to a boil, softening the tubers.

Workers in head-to-toe protective suits and hard hats would maneuver the giant slop hoses to spray the pork brain slurry into the violently loud, ground-shaking, rotating mixing vats, where other workers used "culinary shovels" to scoop boiled hash out of "culinary wheelbarrows" and into the slurry. At the base of the mixing vat, precisely every thirty minutes, valves would be turned, releasing the mixture to the Lower Level. There, enormous conveyor belts of S.P.U.D. tins would move into position and nozzles would spew the taste of Hell Gate's Famous Flavor King into them. The next step would be enormous crimpers, which would fasten a seal, and finally the labeling machine, attaching that familiar blue-and-yellow paper on with a dab of glue. At long last, the tins would be packed into wooden (and in later years plastic) crates, loaded into trailers, and shipped out onto the Destiny Road to deliver to supermarkets, general stores, and restaurants all across the nation. By the 1970s, over 10,000 pallets of S.P.U.D. and its varieties would be sent a week to Better-Mart stores alone.

But all was not as open and shut as it seemed. In fact, many conspiracy theories were bandied about by locals and even nationwide. One couldn't build such an industrial, enormous landmark without generating a fair share of detractors and gossip. As early as 1941, rumors spread of what would become known as the "Potbellied Meatgoblins." Supposedly, in the darkest bowels of the C.W., there was a special level of holding pens for hairless, immobile, silent creatures of enormous size, covered in what was described as "meat sacs." Most of these stories were just based on rumors, but many insisted that a special group of employees known as the "Caretakers" were in charge of this secret basement. Some described the animals, if that's what they were, as pigs, or pig-like, while others described them as more bovine. Many a young schoolchild would tell other kids, in an attempt to scare or disgust them at lunchtime, that these Potbellied Meatgoblins were abominations, hybrids of pigs and cows, that were blind, lived in darkness, and were kept refrigerated lest they go insane and begin attacking the Caretakers. The meat sacs were supposedly trimmed off and shipped upstairs on dumbwaiters to then be ground into an infinite supply of the "pork brains with juices" needed for the S.P.U.D. recipe.

Even more legends grew around the disappearance of Office of Health and Wellness inspector Aaron Carpenter in the area in 1944. A former ORRA veteran of the Masonic Purge and the Starry Wisdom Revolt, Carpenter had been exchanged to the OHW while he combated the side-effects of Black Bliss poisoning. He had received reports that enormous diseased creatures were being imported from former Colombia, possibly mutated tapirs, and were being used for meat. His last known location was the town of Hell Gate proper, at a local hotel called the Gates of Paradise. He supposedly came back enraged from his first visit to the C.W., and later decided to break in after hours. Despite much investigation by amateur sleuths, Carpenter would go missing from the history books at this point and, as Hell Gate City Police were prone to saying reflexively, nothing could ever be proven in a court of law. Thomas Foods, and time itself, marched on. As late as the 1970s, people who remembered the disappearance would joke about finding "bits of Carpenter" in their S.P.U.D..

Down in the pastures, where the manly men of MEAT MOUNTAIN RANCH herd the well-fed, plump beefcows and baconpigs of Thomas Foods, the sun is settin' low.
Back at the Ranch, the hands get ready for America's Favorite Flavor Combo. S.P.U.D. 'n' HORTON'S Pounded Tomato Paste Product. It's what's for dinner!

THOMAS FOODS would also like to let you know the rumors of a so-called "Potbellied Meatgoblin" bein' held underneath our state-of-the-art Central Warehouse in refrigerated cubicles are completely fabricated. The only goblins 'round these here parts are the boys a-goblin' up their S.P.U.D. at dinnertime. There are no blind, five-ton, room-sized hybrid abominations in our possession--incapable of movement or sound-- that we shave slabs of delicious, perfectly-edible driblets off of--only to find it regrown in hours, thereby producing an infinite supply of self-replicatin', mouth-waterin', cost-effective m e a t. That would be "udderly" ridiculous. And we're lookin' forward to provin' it in a court o' law.

S.P.U.D.: AVAILABLE IN BEEF AND/OR PORK
THOMAS FOODS. THE TASTE OF HELL GATE.

- 1948 talkiebox ad ran by Thomas Foods




- BUILDING A LEGACY -

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1950 photograph of Slog


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S.P.U.D. and Horton's advertisement (circa 1970)

Unlike many of his rivals, Slog Thomas never depended on impressed Inferior labor to run his facilities, because he kept operations small, organized, and tidy as demand for product would deem possible. Indeed, Slog mad a point out of trying to give jobs to the destitute and downtrodden, and he donated considerable sums to the American Fundamentalist Christian Church. In fact, he gave so much so that the Slogwell Thomas Fund was created by the church in 1955 in his name to assist jobless or wayward youth in a search for gainful employment and career training. This resulted in his anointing by Reverend-Colonel Graham as a Servant of Christ, awarding him the moniker of Ser.. He would donate tens of millions of "Truth Dollars" to Rev-Col. Graham's Truth Crusades, promising to reach Better-blooded Protestants trapped behind the Papal-Illuminist Curtain with AFC Bibles and contraband talkiebox broadcasts. Much like Wendi Wende's Female Academy in Barnumsburg, Slog opened the Thomas Foods Culinary School in Oakland, Pacifica, in 1939 as part of the ongoing settlement of the purged former Kingdom of California.

Thomas Foods Culinary School East would open in Athens, Georgia, in 1945, with the promise that African-Americans could attend free of charge as part of the ongoing efforts to combat the remnants of lingering racism in the area. When the Southron terrorist group Riders of the Storm threatened to kill black students during the opening day ceremony, Slog deployed a private mercenary army to patrol the grounds and make sure everyone present was safe. Three terrorists were later taken into custody. Thomas Foods Culinary School East would eventually expand into other areas of study to become Slogwell Thomas University, one of the largest mostly-black schools in the country.

in 1900, Slog had married Lucy Stanhope, of Hell Gate, a young widow who worked on the ranch. By 1908, they had five children, though not all would survive to adulthood. Jason Slogwell Thomas, the first son, died at the age of 2 of mumps. Sanctity Grace Thomas, their first daughter, would eventually marry Major General Henry Baxter, a commander who would find glory in the days of Manifest Climax. Gideon Armstrong Thomas, their second son, would serve in the 320th Cohort under Legate General Mike Fleetwood, and would be killed in his sleep by Peruvian guerrilla fighters during the infamous Massacre of the 320th in November of 1941. Purity Valiance Thomas, the next daughter, would go on to live a quiet life as the wife of Oregon Governor Sandy Smith, dying of old age in 1990. Finally, the youngest and only surviving son, the handsome Calvin Uxbridge Thomas, known by many as Cut Thomas, would be the heir of the family business and would share his father's obsession with spices, sauces, and bizarre cuts of meat. Cut Thomas would also later be a known hanger-on and member of Chuck Oswald's Rat Pack. He would become known as "one of the guys who gets stuff done and moves and shakes behind the scenes."

Slog never slowed down. Well into old age he remained active in the company, though Cut carried on with most of the day to day duties, and he took frequent safaris and expeditions to parts unknown to check more and more animals of his life's menu. He, of course, credited his long life and incomparable vigor to his obsessive devouring of peculiar bits and bobs of the animal world. In a 1969 televisor interview with the Oregon Today news program on Barnumsburg's Local 3 station, Slog said:

"I just eat, dammit. I eat, I eat, and I eat some more, and I don't ever plan on stopping. I've survived stomach cancer three times and two heart attacks. I'll grind up tiger teeth and down the dust with some platypus blood, I'll eat camel toes with a side of hashed chipmunk uterus. I'll eat it all, and I'll prove to everyone that the secret to vitality and purity of essence and bodily fluids is enjoying all the flavors Jev put out there for us to discover. He set us up as masters of the earth, and I'm living proof that following his commandments and exerting dominion over all living things is the path to a long healthy life. I only hope when I die they will let nature take its course. I don't wish to be embalmed. I want my corpse to be dumped way up in the mountains of Oregon, maybe up near Heartland State Park. I want the creatures to pick every ounce of usable flesh from my bones, so in some small way I can repay my animal friends for all the good times, good meals, and good memories I have had devouring them. My wife always jokes she'll slather my corpse in Horton's Sauce, but I always have said that if your meat needs a dressing, you cooked it wrong. That's why I'm gonna go all natural."

It would be the same Oregon Today on Local 3 that would report the death of the culinary titan in 1973:

"Dear viewers, we are very sorry to report that, at about 9:43 this morning, we lost the last cowboy, and one of the truest expressions of the American dream. President Oswald has ordered flags across this vast empire to lower to half-staff because Ser. Slogwell Victor Thomas, retired CEO and founder of Thomas Foods, its Horton's subdivision, Meat Mountain Ranch, and numerous celebrated educational and charitable institutions, passed away today at the age of 103. Known by all as 'Slog' and born on October 1, 1870, in Petersburg, Dakota, the so-called 'King of the Carnivores' moved to Oregon at a young age and quickly became one of its most celebrated figures, standing tall among the likes of Barnum and Wendi Wende. Ser. Slogwell Victor Thomas helped shape the dining habits of hundreds of millions of Americans for generations, and is perhaps, as President Oswald said in a press briefing released today, one of the true giants in the cultural history of the Republican Union and New United States. Slog passed away peacefully in his bed, surrounded by loved ones. His last words were reportedly, 'Flip me over, Lord. I'm done on this side.' Please join us here at Local 3 in a moment of silence for Hell Gate's Famous Flavor King."

 
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Dude didn't die of old age. He simply lost the will to live after realising he had eaten any kind of meat on Earth and there was nothing new to eat
 
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