Manure If It Pleases You
The drama regarding Slim's Internet connection rises to new heights after a technician spends 4 hours at the house, tries three different modems, confers by phone with a half dozen different fellow technicians, and leaves in defeat. I've been working with DSL for three years and I've never seen anything like this, the technician tells Slim. Slim takes a measure of satisfaction in the fact that his DSL problem is one for the ages. He imagines technicians a hundred years from now talking about this one during their coffee breaks. My great-great grandfather tole me about this one in Fence Post, there was this old scraggly lookin smelly hermit he live in a run down shack trying to get what they called high speed back in those days, they tore apart a whole relay substation trying to get to the bottom of it, but never did. The hermit I hear he died in his sleep, apparently with a phone pressed to his ear while on hold to one of our technicians.
Meanwhile, in that world not ruled by fancy gadgets, Slim finds himself knee deep in dried chicken shit, with a crowbar and a sledge hammer, a pair of wire snips and a vocabulary to make a sailor blush. He was feeling pretty full of himself and unreasonably manly after he collapsed the first coop with three or four blows from the 8 lb. sledge, but the second coop was a test to his patience and the efficacy of his last tetanus shot. After a long day that had begun with him up on the roof removing a small limb blown there from the previous night's storm, the two coops were piled in two separate loadings onto his 8X12 flatbed trailer. The first pile he off loaded onto the burn pile and after the wind died down he struck a match to some paper below cardboard below twigs which he had gathered up from his lawn that morning and as the technician explained to Slim why he still did not have Internet access, the fire blazed in the background.
Earlier worrying that he had somehow distanced himself from potential ally, Johnny Woodman, the earnest, hardworking, neighbor across the street, Slim had walked over and confronted Johnny with a proposition. Did Johnny want this pile of cut lumber stacked in his backyard? Johnny was working on his log-splitter at the time but said he would take a break and come see. When they got to talking about, among other things, that bastard Danny Claypool, Johnny said he had watched Danny plant the corn and just assumed Slim had given him permission. Johnny also said he thought Slim was mad at him because Slim didn't wave back a couple of times and that maybe he heard that he, Johnny, didn't take no shit from Claypool and seeing as how we appeared to be buddies... but Slim assured Johnny that if he didn't wave back it was because he didn't see Johnny waving and that he held no particular affection for Danny Claypool. Slim told him about Claypool using his water and Johnny said the thing about Claypool was that if you gave him an inch he would take a mile. Slim said he had not intended to give Claypool an inch, just his 302 V-8.
Slim got to thinking and said, hey, Johnny, what would you think about you planting this garden in the future? Johnny said, well I already have a garden, but Slim said, well you could have another one, nice brown dirt over here, and Johnny agreed that it was a nice garden spot and that if Slim wanted him to, he would plant and maintain it in the future. They got to talking some more and about an hour later Johnny was backing his truck up to one of the metal piles. He took the aluminum pile first and then later in the day came back and got most of the heavy metals. Slim did not ask or care what amount of profit Johnny took from it.
There was still, after this removal, an unacceptable amount of junk on the property but Johnny's wife tried to encourage Slim by saying when their friends visit they are much impressed by the progress. Johnny kept telling Slim to cheer up. Apparently when Slim had his game face on it was a countenance dour to behold. Slim tried smiling but found it to feel counter to his motive, which at the time was was working, grunting, sweating, and cussing, in piles of dried chicken shit.
(As I was leaving for the 10 mile drive to post this a technician called and said give it a try and I did and it worked, something about a loop where there shouldn't have been one)
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