Garrison Keillor, Salon, December 12, 2007
And so Mr. Scrooge kept Christmas in his heart and became a friend and benefactor to all and also got his hair and eyebrows trimmed. He made Bob Cratchit a partner, and an orthopedic surgeon fixed Tiny Tim’s gimpy leg so he could jump and run, and Scrooge & Marley became ScratchitInc and got out of the countinghouse business and into venture capital.
It financed the conversion of old factories and mills into luxury apartments and reaped fabulous profits, which Mr. Scrooge wanted to give away. “Mankind is our business!” he cried. Mr. Cratchit felt that charity tended to weaken the moral values of the poor. Look at Tiny Tim. He was no longer good as gold. He shaved his head and got a spiderweb tattoo around his neck and spiked his hair and replaced his little crutch with a Fender Stratocaster and started a band, the Humbugs. He was a handful.
“I didn’t ask for charity,” Bob told Mrs. Cratchit. “I worked hard for everything I got.”
When Scrooge died, he was mourned by the entire city but not so much by Mr. Cratchit. He was relieved not to have the old coot wheezing about the prison population, the homeless, uninsured children or some other needy bunch. And when the solicitors came around before Christmas to make their pitch, Bob told them to stuff it. “I have a business to run,” said Bob. “I can’t be buying Christmas goose for everybody who doesn’t have the gumption to earn his own.”
He and Mrs. Cratchit lived in an eight-room loft in an old blacking factory, now called Dickens Village, and one day she threw a hob at him and burst into tears.