Hung Far Lao

Written By Joe Smolen

You wouldn’t think so, but Hung Far Lao is a Chinese kid. All day, he carries heavy baskets of black cobbles - from a rat-infested dockside heap of ship ballast about a quarter mile away. Hung Far Lao has this idea he can be what no one else sees the possibilities of - a paving contractor. At first, he is his only employee. He lives on rice and rats. A lot of crime is happening around him. The daughter of the local Dragon Lady falls in love with him. She wants to know why he isn't afraid of the gangs. He smiles and says, "Who would steal a box of rocks?"

Joe Smolen

Joe C. Smolen, AKA L.W. Smolen is an Oregon Coast writer of insufficiently exaggerated notoriety. Never having been arrested, he lives with his wife Sherrie and the ghost of their black, Standard Poodle Rico Suave in a really pretty good, Prairie Style house they built themselves. Since the Literary Magazine Fleas on the Dog of Kitchener, Ontario has permanently stopped accepting submissions, in order to read L.W. Smolen’s 2021 short fiction, A Real Guy, you are referred to joecsmolen.com. Some of L.W’s other, subsequent short fictions are archived at Olive Tree Review, Ginosko, Cardinal Sins Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, Wilderness House and etc. Kirkus reviews once interpreted his work favorably.

https://joecsmolen.com
Previous

Books
Next

“BIO 2025”