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Slim Randles'
Home Country
Steering the accident-prone
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[OCT. 21, 2006]
Leave it to Dewey to come up
with a new idea. In some ways, it was inevitable, of course, because
Dewey was so accident-prone it got to the point where no one would
hire him anymore. |
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When you turn over a friend's grease truck on the interstate, and
when you manage to get your dad's truck stuck in a mudhole… during a
drought… you just plain have to be Dewey. He's a good guy, and he
works hard. It's just that… well, things happen to Dewey. So here
was a single guy in his early 30s who hadn't yet managed to whack
off any arms or legs, and he was stuck for something to do. He was
finally able to do some yardwork trade-out at the gas station to get
his dad's old pickup running again, and Dewey was in business. But
what business?
He'd talked with most of us about what kind of a job he might do
that wouldn't end in disaster. No one would put him on the payroll
or the company insurance plan by this time, so it would have to be
something he could do on his own.
He thought at first of doing yardwork, but Doc talked him out of
that.
"Dewey," he told him, "before you do yardwork, I want you to
consider several things. Lawn mowers, trimmers, hedge clippers and
saws all have sharp edges."
[to top of second
column]
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"What you need," said cowboy Steve, seriously, "is a job where
you just can't hurt anything. Especially yourself. If you have a
product to sell, for example, make sure it's worth exactly nothing.
That way, if you ruin it, you won't be out anything."
So Dewey gave that some thought and came up with his new idea.
His pickup now says "Dewey, the Fertilizer King" on the door, along
with his phone number. Each day he goes out to the dairy and to the
feedlot and shovels manure into the truck, then goes to town and
spreads it -- for a price -- in people's yards. It seems to be
working so far, too.
"Only Dewey," said Doc the other day, "could become an entre-manure."
[Slim Randles]
Brought to you by "Sun Dog Days," a novel of
real cowboys. Check it out at
www.slimrandles.com.
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