Ol’ Kleenan Baggitt, a farmer local seed corn dealer fell behind in his inventory payments to company headquarters. To make matters worse, Kleenan furthermore completely ignored three increasingly sharp and threatening letters from company headquarters demanding payment.
Finally, the company’s regional manager, B. A. Hardcase, appeared in person, waving the sheaf of unpaid seed bills in Kleenan’s face.
Much to the manager’s surprise, ol’ Kleenan sat down at his desk and astounded him by writing a check for every cent owed without a moment’s hesitation.
“Why didn’t you send me a check and save both of us all this unpleasantness?” demanded Hardcase.
“Well, I didn’t have the cash to begin with,” admitted Kleenan. “So, I copied your demand letters word for word, and threat for threat, and mailed them out to the corn growers who were behind in the payments for the seed they’d bought from me. The results were so good I held up my payment to you till I could get your complete set.’’
***
Overheard around the co-op coffee pot: “Old Doc Crawford is the roughest doctor in town. Yesterday, he beat around on my back and sides and chest until I had to cough. Then he’d growled: ‘How long you had that nasty cough?’ Then he wrote out an expensive antibiotic prescription!”
* * *
A farm mother took her small daughter to the family dentist, Dr. Picken Floss. She assured her nervous daughter that the procedure would be painless.
When the daughter emerged from the procedure room, she yelled, “He’s not a painless dentist like you said he’d be.’’
“I’m sorry,” her mother answered, “Did he hurt you much?”
“Naw ,” the daughter shrugged, “but he sure yelled when I bit his thumb.”
* * *
Two days ago the temperature got up into the 70s and my thoughts turned to fishing. And just thinking about fishing, got me to thinking about fishing liars.
Here’s my favorite fish liar story from Farmer Brown:
First fisherman: “And what about your catches, Brown? Have you caught any worth mentioning?”
Farmer Brown: “No, last one I caught was too small to take home. So two men helped me throw it back in the lake.”
I’m eager for the weather to wake the fish up from their winter slumber.
***
I spent a good bit of time within the last week continuing to sift and sort my “stuff,” getting ready for serious downsizing.
Nevah and I have been a serious readers all our lives and have accumulated a couple hundred books of all sizes, purposes, and genres — every kind imaginable, ranging from coffee table books, to history, biographies, romance, humor, hunting, fishing, travel, cookbooks, politics, and reference.
We’ll never have room for them all at our new home, if we ever get it built, so the books need to go.
So, we loaded three boxes — the limit — and dropped them off at The Dusty Bookshelf in Manhattan, Kan. An employee said the store owner would go through the books and decide which ones to pay me for. I’d have two weeks to take all the rejects home or the store would put the books up for give-away.
Well, in a couple of days I got an email that said I could come pick up the rejects — and I could bring three more boxes if I wanted so.
So, last Sunday, Nevah and I made another trip to Manhattan and our first stop wuz at The Dusty Bookshelf. Out of the three boxes, it bought 18 books. The amount wuz $40 for in-store credit or $20 for cash.
I wuz a bit disappointed at the paltry amount, but thanked the store, pocketed the cash, and left the other three boxes. At least, 18 books will go to appreciative readers and we’ll see if we can sell any of the rejects at another used book store or at the garage/yard sale we plan sometime in April.
***
Amongst our belongings are many thick albums of generations of family pictures. Most the pictures are Kodak or Polaroid and we’ll likely keep them all.
But what are we going to do with the gazillions of pixels and pictures that reside inside our computers and smart phones? Our grandkids and great-grandkids have thousands of pictures on our computers — with more being added weekly.
That’s a pleasant problem that I’ve not seen addressed by anyone. Shall we download the pictures to compact disks, auxiliary hard drives, thumb drives, or just leave them on our computers and smart phones?
And, how should our heirs inherit all my columns, other writings, and other “computerized” family stuff?
***
Words of wisdom for the week: “Too often in life, the success of a man’s career is directly related to the disappearance to his hair.” Have a good ‘un.
