I tell you truly, Gentle Reader, there are times when you really can
get something for nothing. With Your Humble Obdn’t &tc,
this is generally something like a cold, or a flat tire.
But
just once, it seemed, innocence on my part was to pay off with something
really nice.
Horse manure.
No, that is not a scatological
comment; that is what my payoff was. The neighbor in the rear
of my property was having truckloads and truckloads of manure delivered. Since the soil around our houses closely resembles the beach at Deerfield,
fertilizer is a must if you want to grow anything other than palmetto
scrub and fire ants.
I was intrigued. As the tenth
huge truck rumbled in, I ever so casually wandered back to the back
fence, to snoop. Oscar, my neighbor, was surveying his new domain
from atop a huge redolent pile. I looked up to him, squinting
in the sun.
“Wow, Oscar, that sure is an impressive pile of…”
I began cleverly.
Oscar smiled benignly. Right off, that
should have warned me. Oscar is generous to a fault, but he
believes that morals are something you paint on walls, and scruples
are Russian currency. His smile parted to utter The Dangerous
Words:
“Sure is! And it is all free!”
I admit to being
stunned by this information. Here were tons and tons of prime
fertilizer being delivered, and it was all free. Not even a
delivery charge. Oscar has a LOT of connections. I have
observed time and again that they don’t connect for me, somehow. A coconut tree that cost Oscar ten dollars winds up costing me fifty
– even though I am using Oscar’s connection, and the tree would have
cost a hundred and fifty dollars at the Enormous Hardware Emporium’s
Plant Department. Oscar just gets a much bigger break than us
lesser mortals.
An aside, here, Gentle Reader: There has
to be a baseline in the retail industry. I am it. They
print manuals in the jungles of Madison Avenue. There is a mug-shot
photo of Himself in all of them, labeled: “Sucker”. Also
there is an asterisk, with a reference to “see: ‘Stooge’ for
further details.“ So whenever you see a sign saying, “List Price”,
know that the number posted there is the price that Your Humble Obdn’t
&tc paid for that particular item. For It Is Written: “Somebody has to pay full retail.”
Now, my yard encompasses a
tad over an acre. (*gasp*). That might possibly be borderline
impressive to folks that live in civilized residential neighborhoods,
but there is a downside corollary: said acre looks a lot like
Iraq.
Without the oil wells.
Where you, Gentle Reader, may
look out the dining room window in the morning and espy a neighbor’s
cat daintily trespassing, I keep expecting to see camels. At
best, one might say that my acre is infertile. That would be
understating the situation. There is a distinct resemblance
to White Sands Proving Ground.
So I was naturally interested
in all that free manure.
Then it happened. From atop his
new domain, Oscar dropped the… well, to keep this family-oriented,
I’ll call it a bomb:
“Would you like me to have some delivered
to you?”
“Free?” I asked warily.
There was a hurried
consultation with the truck driver. In Spanish. Now, the
only Spanish I know is “si”. That either means a large body
of water, or is backwards for “is”. I heard things like, “gringo
muy stupido” and other phrases no doubt relating to delivery schedules,
but I knew that Oscar would handle it for me.
“For you, ten dollars,”
says Oscar, smiling broadly. “I couldn’t get the deal for free,
but there you are.”
“But… I have a problem, Oscar. There
is no way to get those humongous trucks onto my property.”
“No
problem, I will have it delivered here on my property, and you can
build a nice, new gate in the fence to move it through”
Take
note: “Free” wasn’t free to me, and now I was honor-bound to
spend a coupla hunnert bucks building a gate. (*sigh*) Nothing new. But I would get all the fertilizer I needed for
my wasteland, and overall it would still be a bargain. The Fabled
PC laid a cold, hard eye on me (which feels disgusting) and asked
if I was sure I was up to this. I indulgently smirked, “No problem,
my dearest – a mere day or two’s work.”
O, foolish me.
Here
came the truck. It was one of those loooong ones with the big
piston. It dumped the output of five hundred horses right up
near the fence. It looked like considerably more than I would
need, but I was honor bound to spread it all. I went to the
Enormous Hardware Emporium to get the fence material.
When
I came back, another fifteen hundred horses had been heard from, and
there were TWO trucks adding still more to the unbelievable mountain. In a panic, I ran over to the fence, shouting.
Unfortunately,
the driver did not speak English. I tried Spanglish: “Muy
too mucho horsie pooness! El grande esta pile-a!” Believe
it or not, this worked. The driver (after dumping the load)
went over to Oscar. A quick conference. Oscar came climbing
across the mountain of horse apples to tell me that the deal was for
all I wanted, and that I had been supposed to tell them when to stop
delivering. I pointed out to Oscar that I had gone to the Enormous
Hardware Emporium to get stuff for the gate, and how was I ‘posed
to know they would keep on delivering?
I felt sorta like Mickey
Mouse in the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” section of Fantasia. Only
Mickey just had water to contend with.
So I built the gate. And buried my acre in six inches of horse apples.
However, there
remains a thirty-five foot long by twenty foot wide by ten foot high
pile remaining, and I am exhausted. Oscar is giving me Significant
Looks about the pile on his property.
Anybody want some free
fertilizer?
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