Quickies
Here’s a few few short short stories that may be of interest.
Quickies
Boy Scout Jamboree
Our troop had a few boys go back east to the National Boy Scout Jamboree and we helped them load up on horned toads and cockleburs to sell. Those boys from the east were kind of naive and would pay big bucks for certain items. You could sell horned toads for $20 each as baby dinosaurs and you could sell cockleburs for a dollar a piece as porcupine eggs. The guys that went made a small fortune.
The Horned Toad would bring a cool $20 at the Jamboree as a baby dinosaur.
Each Cocklebur would bring a buck as a porcupine egg.
The Bum
When I was in London, I was walking through a shopping area one afternoon and there was a poor man begging for money. He said “sir can you spare a few shillings so I can feed my family tonight.” He was kind of skinny with a full gray beard and he was wearing funny little cap. I thought….”wow, if my family was hungry and I had to beg to feed them, I sure hope someone would help me!”, so I reached in my pocket and pulled out all the coins I had accumulated on the trip. I had five or six 5 pound coins and four or five 2 pound coins and a hand full of shillings. ( about 60 dollars US) I reached out and handed him the coins. He said “Bless you sir” and walked away. I was feeling pretty good about helping feed his family until I looked back and saw him ducking into the English Pub on the corner. I thought…” well I guess I made him happy for a few hours anyway.”
Here’s to you mate for helping feed my internal family a bit of the Scotch Whiskey.
The Interruption
When Pam and I got married in June 1972, we took our honeymoon to Southfork, Colorado. On the way up there we spent our wedding night in a motel at Trinidad, Colorado. Along about 5 AM in the morning, Pam was feeling a little frisky so we were making whoopee when the phone rang. I thought….”who in the world could that be, we don’t even know anyone here.” On the other end of the phone was Pam’s Dad, and he said we’re in the motel restaurant, come on down and have breakfast.” Feeling kind of interrupted, I said….”OK, we have to get dressed, we’ll be down in a few minutes.” So we got up got dressed and went down to the restaurant. When we got there, they were no where in sight. The guy at the register told us they left a message that they went ahead and ate then left. I thought….”What kind of a crazy family have I gotten myself into?” They were on their way to visit relatives in Grand Junction, Colorado, and had stopped by visit us. It took me a few years to train Pam’s Dad, but he finally came around.
Pam and I heading out for Trinidad on our wedding day.
Copper Hunting
When I was about 10 years old, scrap copper was selling for 36 cents a pound so my cousins Ricky and Scott and I started walking all over the Phillips, Texas, area hunting copper. On one trip I was with Scott and we saw this bottle of Coke sitting on the front porch of a house on our way. We were kind of thirsty, so we slipped around to the side of the porch and about the time Scott got his hand on it, the front door flew open and a lady asked us what we were doing. We said we were stealing the Coke until you caught us. She started laughing out loud and Scott and I took off running. We wondered the rest of the day whether the police were looking for us. But nothing ever happened. I think the lady put the Coke there to tempt kids and catch them in the act.
That coke sure would have tasted good to a couple of weary copper hunters.
On another trip Ricky, Scott, and I spotted a 1 inch diameter copper cable near the rip track where they worked on train cars. We talked it over and decided to go back after dark and pull it off and hide it. It weighed close to 300 pounds so all we could do was drag it. We dragged it off and hid it some deep weeds about 300 yards from the rip track. The Johnson grass was about 4 feet deep there so we could work on it there without being seen. We devised a plan to cut off about 4 feet a day and add it to our scrap copper pile. We had lopped of two sections and came back on the third day and it was gone. We guessed someone had seen us and investigated and took the rest for themselves. The best laid plans of culprits often go astray.
The copper cable would have brought us close to a $100 dollars if we had been able to salvage all of it.
Thanks for reading Quickies,
Bill