Duke Fabulous Reporting

Now this sho 'nuff takes the cake and eats it too. I ain't, I say, I ain't even a kiddin' this time. Just the other afternoon there I was shinin' my boots over by the radio, seein' as there was this ball game playin', and wouldn't you know there was a knock at the door. So I opened up and said howdy-do to some feller I ain't never seen before. With his hat in his hands and polite as could be he asks Mister Duke can I speak a question and I says all right. Turns out he's preparin' to claim paternity and wanted to get a few details straight. So I lean on the door post and raise one eyebrow as this dude 'splains this and that and th'other and how his momma said I's his daddy from a way ways back. Now, I knew that I knew that I never knew his mother, even from Eve, as they say, but what's the point in lettin' 'im off that easy? So I asks I say now do you have any documentation to substantiate said claim to my posterity? He proceeds to hand me his certificate of live birth and I reach for my speck-tackles. He keeps a spinnin' his yarn as I peruse the details, county seal and all that. In a couple more minutes he seems to run plum outta words and so I point out one detail in particular. I say, well, I say as much as I'd like to have you call me pappy I don't see how it could be. And why not, he wonders, lookin' just a tad let down. Well, it says right here, on this legal tender, you were born about five years be-fore my very own date of birth. Oh, he mutters and snatches the paper without even wishin' a good-day. So hear what the Duke sayeth. No matter how off a wall the assignment may seem at first, always, always do your homework. Duke out.