Count Igo Schlappovski

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Bügoslavian royalty’s least memorable son, Count Igo Schlappovski gained notoriety when, in 1865, he became so enamored with the American Union’s struggle to combat slavery, he pledged an entire regiment of Bügoslavian soldiers to the cause. Unfortunately, the soldiers were not his to pledge—certainly not an entire regiment of two thousand men. Schlappovski had to settle for fifty, and this only because Bügoslavia’s king, Belgo Dedvi IX, recognized a potential source of future American revenue as gratitude for the gesture.

And so it was that Count Schlappovski, with a company of Bügoslavia’s finest under his command, arrived on the steps of the White House to lay his sword at the feet of President Abraham Lincoln. This was April 10, 1865, exactly one day after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House.

Following a certain embarrassed reception, where President Lincoln lauded Schlappovski’s belated support as “confirmation that the spirit of liberty lives in all good men’s hearts, regardless of race, nationality, or timing,” Schlappovski was promised “ten acres for every man” who had pledged to lay down his life in the service of freedom.

Castle Schlappovski

The six hundred and ten acres in question—Schlappovski, though a romantic idealist to the core, was nonetheless also a bit of an autocrat and negotiated a further one hundred acres for himself—were located smack dab in the middle of America’s heartland, one hundred miles from the nearest small town that no one had ever heard of, along the banks of the Big Sucker River. The Count and his fifty men sent home for their families, and the Europeans spent the next six months wagon-training cross-country to their new home.

It was there that the Count inaugurated the first real industry in Schlappovstown (as it came to be known): construction. He scraped together enough family money to begin building Castle Schlappovski on a nineteen-acre island a half mile from shore in the middle of the Big Sucker. Schlappovski himself designed the castle, which replicated the Schlappovski ancestral home along the Pustošenje River back in upper Bügoslavia.

Battle of Schlappovski Island

The first order of business, however, was to remove the tribe of Shottana Indians that occupied the island and the surrounding land. According to a series of purchases that had been ratified by Congress in 1848, all land within two hundred and fifty thousand square acres of the Big Sucker River belonged to the U.S. government. Available records, however, indicated that no one had ever bothered to inform the Shottana. This small fishing tribe of only about 250 were mostly peaceful, and had hunted and fished along the Big Sucker—the Shottana called it Riwitkiitsu (Skunk Water)—for thousands of years.

Schlappovski arrived at the lodge of the chief of the Shottana, Cusutareeus (Blue Nose), and presented him with the requisite documents proving that he and his followers were now the rightful owners. Chief Blue Nose closely studied the hen scratch on parchment with a pair of opera glasses he had traded in exchange for a buffalo hide, then sat back and held out his hand, palm-side down—the Shottana symbol for “go stuff yourself.” Schlappovski misinterpreted the gesture as one of acquiescence, and, ignorant of the further insult of touching a Shottana chieftan without his approval, grabbed the chief’s hand and shook it with ardent vigor.

The subsequent battle between the Bügoslavians and the Shottana lasted for two weeks, with both sides taking heavy losses. Even though the Shottana warriors outnumbered the Bügoslavians by more than two to one, the Indians finally surrendered due to the Europeans’ superior firepower.

Despite taking an arrow to the thigh (which he later kept mounted on an ornate plaque above his fireplace), Count Schlappovski, whose natural affection for “all creatures who, through no fault of their own, were consigned to an ingloriously inferior social station,” offered the defeated tribe twenty-two blankets, two pounds of bacon, a handful of Countess Schlappovski’s paste jewels, three cases of Bügoslavian wine and the Count’s own pocket watch as a parting gift.

Unfortunately, the Battle of Schlappovski Island left the Count without enough men to begin construction on his castle. As he stood on a bluff overlooking the Big Sucker, bemoaning his fortunes, he saw the Shottana, just beginning their ignominius retreat. According to eyewitnesses, the Count leaped onto his horse and galloped to the front of the Shottana line and offered Chief Blue Nose a job. He promised the Shottana part of the land, access to the river, and all the Bügoslavian wine they could drink, if they would stay and help him build his dream castle.

They agreed, and so it was that the first cornerstone of Castle Schlappovski was laid on August 30, 1866.

Schlappovski’s Folly

“I refuse to occupy the place,” Schlappovski proclaimed in a letter home to his parents after construction began, “until it is a castle worthy of the Schlappovski name!”

Only he never seemed satisfied. For the next forty years he drove his workers insane, obsessing over the tiniest details and sometimes tearing down an entire section of the castle that did not live up to his picayune standards (for two-and-a-half years he built and rebuilt the kitchen alone, claiming that “it just never gets enough light!”).

His obsessive tyranny began to drive away the local job force, including the Shottana, who had begun to feel the deal they struck had been a bad one. Racial discrimination and decidedly lower pay than their Bügoslavian co-workers created a toxic work atmosphere. Besides, those Shotanna that didn’t work at the castle had continued to fish the Big Sucker with great success, and the fish market they started grew into a thriving concern, which eventually became the Consolidated Fish Meal plant, and began to turn a tidy profit with their sales of the oily, but delicious fishes caught in the Big Sucker.

As the years wore on, the Count, ignoring the many local cynics who referred to the castle as “Schlappovski’s Folly,” continued his obsessive building and rebuilding.

Unfortunately, he never lived long enough to live there.

Death

On the Count’s 104th birthday, April 11, 1928, after putting the finishing touches on the basement rumpus room, the decrepit old man decided it was time to move in to Castle Schlappovski. He closed his rooms at the Schlappovski Arms (now the Slappytown Motor Lodge), and, along with his only son and heir, Schlomo Schlappovski, fourteen grandchildren and eighty-seven great-grandchildren, he boarded a ferry boat at Riverwalk Walk and set out for his new home.

Halfway across the Big Sucker, the ferry foundered under the familial weight and sank like a stone. Miraculously, all survived, except Count Schlappovski, whose body was never recovered.

“He’s down there with the Big Suckers now,” said Schlomo, who, once his boots had dried, decided to sell the unlived-in castle to the state government, which converted it into a penal institution, State Correctional Island.

“Somehow, I think it’s fitting,” said the new Count Schlappovski. “For sixty years Dad was its prisoner.”

Schlappovski, c. 1865