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Ahh!, The smells of the country, and I'm not just talking about PROPANE! What's the purpose of this page you might ask?, maybe to vent a little of my frustration at having been uprooted from my contented city life to become known as just another "City Slicker" in these here parts, this utopia of aromatic delights. This page is sort of a "How To Or Not To Manual" for living among "Agricultural Engineers" and the other "Non-Urbanly Challenged" residents of Mother Nature's quiet places in the shade. This page will be updated every Tuesday so be sure to come back often to smell what there is to be smelt!!! The material is not meant to be offensive to anyone, it merely advances a perspective, sometimes to the extreme. All characters, situations and locations are the products of my imagination and are not meant to make reference to literal reality.

The following story is Part 1 of a series titled: TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY YOU GOTTA HAVE GAS! Subsequent installments will be identified in numerical sequence - Scroll down for others in this series.

Click here for the latest "Gas Leak".

Part 1: The Business Venture


After moving to the country, I started to do a little research as to starting a small business, since there wasn't much in the way of work around here with the exception of farming. From what I could see, they didn't have much in the way of small electronics such as Walk-Mans for the kids, battery operated screw drivers for men, etc... and quickly started up a small electronics store offering cheap but useful gadgets. The first week my business was booming, seemed everyone in town wanted what I sold and I couldn't keep up with the demand. The second week the bottom dropped out, no one was coming in to my store anymore. The third week came and went, still no new customers so I decided to do some marketing research to shed some light on why I wasn't getting any more business. I traveled around town and asked every past customer I recognized if they were happy with their purchase and was met by short, cold answers that were precluded with nearly incoherent mumbling except for the words, "God-Dam__d City Slicker". After hearing the same mumbling and still not knowing the problem, I decided to have a talk with the local minister, figuring that at least he'd give me a straight answer regarding his purchase of a hand held, electronic database of bible quotations. Even he was cold towards me but did inform me that the whole community was mad as hell at me for selling them items that no longer worked. As he was going off on me about the evils of greed and cheating my brother, I told him I had no idea that the items were defective and asked him to spread the word that I would make full refunds on all items that were defective. The next day the whole community arrived on my store's doorstep, purchase in hand, expecting a refund. The first unhappy customer pushed a hand held calculator at me and simply said, "Piece of sh_t". I tried to turn the calculator on but nothing happened so I replaced the batteries and it now worked. The customer scooped up the now working calculator and left the store without paying for the batteries but he was happy so I thought,"What the hell, I'll let it go, Consider it a goodwill gesture to make the customer happy", and for the rest of the day I passed out free replacement batteries to a now happy again community and re-established myself as an honest citizen. For the rest of the day my new sales again boomed and I thought the matter resolved and my business again a success. The bottom dropped out yet again and this time I headed straight to the minister who repeated our first conversation almost word for word with the bottom line being that my gadgets stopped working again. A light bulb went off in my head as it occurred to me that I'd most likely find that the batteries were dead and that maybe the residents weren't too familiar with the modern miracle of "The Portable Power Cell". This story does have a happy ending in that I exercised a little ingenuity to familiarize the locals on the need to re-fuel from their perspective. In my store's battery section, I wrapped every battery with a silver colored piece of paper containing the words, "PROPANE", and haven't had a complaint since. I'm still selling my gadgets and am also doing a booming "Battery Replacement" business which goes to show -

To Live In The Country, You Gotta Have Gas.


A Geographic Perspective - LAWN ORNAMENTS



Part 2: If The Shoe Fits Call It A Shoe


John, a friend of mine from the city, is a horse racing track farrier by profession who visits us most weekends in the country and was considering buying a weekend/holiday getaway home here and setting up a part-time business shoeing horses. He asked that I do some local inquiries as to whether his services would be welcomed and if it would be profitable for him to set up shop. Through my research I discovered that my town and surrounding communities could indeed use his services as they only had Ralph the blacksmith, who also shoes horses, and he being well into his seventies, was beginning to screw up on a regular basis and was considering putting himself out to pasture. I went to Ralph in hopes of obtaining his blessing for my friend John and to ask him if he could perhaps show John the local ropes when he came up this weekend. I approached the subject in a slow, cautious manner by asking Ralph what he thought of the idea of having another person around who does what he did. Ralph said that not only would he welcome with open arms another "shoer" but would be more than happy to show him the ropes, introduce him to the locals, etc... He said this would give him the perfect opportunity to bow out from his 55 year old business and allow him the time to enjoy other things till his maker called him home. With this type of response I saw my opening and took it. I said, "Ralph, my friend John is a farrier and is coming to pay me a visit this weekend, and I was wondering if you...", at this point Ralph abruptly cut me off and asked me to leave as he didn't care to have none of that around here. Needless to say, I was taken quite off guard and didn't know what to make of his sudden change in mood and temperament and thought it best that I do what he ask and simply leave, which I did. On my drive home I couldn't help thinking of my talk with Ralph but decided not do any more research until I was able to sort it all out. The next morning I routinely opened the doors to my store and was expecting to see Tim, my sales clerk, out front waiting to come in to work as he always did, but he wasn't there. He didn't show up that day and neither did even a single customer - The bottom had fallen out of my business yet again. In the evening I called Tim from home to see what was what, he answered and upon recognizing my voice, hung up. From past experience I knew that the best person to talk to in this town to get the straight scoop was Bob the minister, and made him my next call. Bob seemed uneasy and suggested that we continue our conversation in person as he didn't want the local operator listening in so I suggested that I come right over to his house, an idea that he nervously and quickly dismissed as being not a good one and instead suggested that I meet him over at the church in about half an hour, which I did. Minister Bob started our little meeting by saying that in the eyes of God, we are all his children and yet sinners. He said that he personally tries to live by the quote, "Judge not, that ye be not judged", but admitted that he felt very uncomfortable in discussing such a personal and questionably moral issue as he felt was his duty to discuss with me - My sexual mis-directions! I was shocked, didn't have a clue what he was talking about and attempted a quick memory search in vain, to come up with anything that might even vaguely be related to this accusation. Getting angry I said, "Now hold on there, just what the hell are you talking about" and he also getting angry shot back, "You know damned well, you even told Ralph the blacksmith!". I asked, "What did I tell Ralph" to which he replied, "That you preferred men as partners". Something clicked inside my head and replaced my anger with a sense of the ridiculous that elicited my laughter. Not knowing what I was laughing about, the still angry Minister Bob reacted with, "And you even have the nerve to laugh about your sins of the flesh, you heathen!". After a few minutes, when I was able to regain my composure and stop chuckling, I explained to him that I had told Ralph that my friend John was a "Farrier who was coming to visit me" and that either out of ignorance to the word's meaning or a decline in hearing brought on by aging, old Ralph heard or understood something entirely different. Maybe he thought I said "Fairy" or thought that "Farrier" means to be gay! Minister Bob being an educated person, was able to now experience the same chick inside his head that I had experienced earlier and reacted with, "I'm so sorry, I'll try to explain to the community, but you have to stop using words they might not understand". I vowed to try and stick to local terms from now on and admitted that I had inadvertently created my own pile of manure.

A Geographic Perspective - From the WEBSTERS


Daniel Webster - Dictionary Founder
taint: to corrupt or contaminate
tis: a contraction of it is
yern: to long or wish for

Dick Webster - Dairy Farmer and Local "Know It All"
taint: I aint gunna
tis: Not mine - it's his
yern: same as tis, not mine but belongs to you

Country Web Browsers



A Geographic Perspective - More From the WEBSTERS


Daniel Webster - Dictionary Founder
hair: a threadlike growth
lint: fuzzy bits of thread
gun: a portable firearm

Dick Webster - Dairy Farmer and Local "Know It All"
hair: where I'm at
lint: borrowed to someone
gun: where what I borrowed to someone is at

A Geographic Perspective - BUCKET SEATS



A Geographic Perspective - More From the WEBSTERS


Daniel Webster - Dictionary Founder
stars: celestial bodies
sty: a pen for swine or sore on the eyelid
get: to obtain

Dick Webster - Dairy Farmer and Local "Know It All"
stars: people's gauks
sty: don't go
get: don't sty

A Geographic Perspective - LEADING ECONOMIC INDICATORS



A Geographic Perspective - More From the WEBSTERS


Daniel Webster - Dictionary Founder
halved: to divide into two equal parts
trucked: to send or receive by truck
acre: a measurement of area
acres: plural of acre

Dick Webster - Dairy Farmer and Local "Know It All"
halved: something I gotta do
trucked: to walk on over
acre: something that pains
acres: unbearable pain

A Geographic Perspective - THE "BOARD ROOM"



A Geographic Perspective - More From the WEBSTERS


Daniel Webster - Dictionary Founder
drawers: sliding receptacles as in bureaus
dresser drawers: sliding receptacles in a dresser
spenders: those who pay out money

Dick Webster - Dairy Farmer and Local "Know It All"
drawers: britches
dresser drawers: reel gud britches
spenders: what holds up my britches

A Geographic Perspective - THE BUSINESS DEAL



Part 3: Gooseberry Car Wash


I've now added a couple of new routines to my busy country calendar - Picking berries from a neighbors property in the morning and evening to protect the finish of my car. My neighbors have a rather large section of area surrounding a pond on their property, literally crawling with beautiful dark bluish berry bushes which in and of itself wouldn't be such a bad thing except that their pond also serves as home to a migrant flock of Canadian Geese. The geese love to load up on the tasty gela tinous sacks of soon to be recycled color, before hitting the road to their seeming 9 to 5 jobs sitting in a hay field on the other side of town, with my house being, to my mis-fortune, roughly mid-way between the pon d and the field. As luck would have it, it seems that the extremely efficient digestive systems of these geese reach their final stage in mid-flight while directly over my house and colorfully finishes with a splattering pattern to my car's finish. Since the berries have been in season, I've been spending a good deal of time and money on various cleaning and waxin g products and have decided it might be easier to make changes to the birds' d i e ts rather than to continue in the car wash business. So every morning and evening, with my neighbors permission, I arrive at the berry bushes buckets in hand, to weed out the ripest of the ripe in hopes of discouraging the birds' love of this fruit by leaving them only the bitter and not yet ri pened. Thank God next year will be a cleaner one for both me and my car, as construction is to soon start on a new two car garage, but unfortunately won't be completed until after this year's berry season is over. With the building of the garage also comes a rather ironic twist being that the carpenter who is to build the garage is also the neighbor who owns the berry bushes that feed the geese and in an indirect way has created the need for his services. But for the rest of this berry season, I'll continue to bring home quarts and gallons of the "could have been" high impact, time released, color bombs to my "berry" tired and complaining wife who has had a good deal of her time occupied finding things to do with the result of my berry hoarding. She's made: pies, jellies, jams, pancake syrup, tarts, cakes, etc, etc, etc... and has just about run out of ideas. She's even set up a road side stand to sell the result of her efforts and I'm happy to say, we're making a tidy little profit which we put aside for our Garage Building Fund which will pay the carpenter who has created his own need, with the profits from his own berries. A final word about the geese - Now I know why they're referred to as "Flying Foul", "Bluebirds Of Happiness" They're Not!

A Geographic Perspective - METAL DETECTORS



A Geographic Perspective - More From the WEBSTERS


Daniel Webster - Dictionary Founder
afford: to have the means to procure
agenda: a listing
afterburner: jet device that re-burns exhaust

Dick Webster - Dairy Farmer and Local "Know It All"
afford: what a truck might be
agenda: either boy or girl
afterburner: when to put on the ointment

A Geographic Perspective - TIME CLOCKS



A Geographic Perspective - More From the WEBSTERS


Daniel Webster - Dictionary Founder
automate: to run automatically
back seat: rear seat in a vehicle
back-seat driver: a vehicle passenger who offers driving advice

Dick Webster - Dairy Farmer and Local "Know It All"
automate: rides with me in the truck
back seat: whatever's to set on in the back of the truck
back-seat driver: usually bouncin and a hollerin from the back of the truck

A Geographic Perspective - CORPORATE RESTRUCTURING



A Geographic Perspective - More From the WEBSTERS


Daniel Webster - Dictionary Founder
barium: a metallic element
bayou: a marshy inlet of a lake, bay, river
beekeeper: one who tends to bees
behoove: to be fit, needful or right for

Dick Webster - Dairy Farmer and Local "Know It All"
barium: what to do when something dies
bayou: next to you
beekeeper: what I intends to keep
behoove: what's at the ground end of a cow

A Geographic Perspective - INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING



A Geographic Perspective - More From the WEBSTERS


Daniel Webster - Dictionary Founder
breakdown: to mechanically fail, no longer work
breakup: a rift, an end to a relationship
breakneck: headlong and recklessly dangerous

Dick Webster - Dairy Farmer and Local "Know It All"
breakdown: where the weather vane usually goes in a wind storm
breakup: the direction a broke well pump spring flies
breakneck: what might happen if I'm under the vane or atop the well pump

A Geographic Perspective - VACATION SPOTS



A Geographic Perspective - HOME SECURITY SYSTEM



A Geographic Perspective - COUNTRY HUMOR OVERHEERED AT THE BARBER SHOP


Did ya heer the one bout the city sliker who wanted to plant corn in his back yard gardin but couldna get the can open. Sos he took ta rasin a bull insted cuz thats somtin he aready knows bout.

Hysteric Dates In The History Of The Country


On July 4, 1948, Tim Johnson, age 17, son of a local dairy farmer, was responsible for the re-verification of Newton's Law of Gravity, the creation of a famous American saying and lost the use of his pick-up truck for one month. At approximately 5PM on this date, as his whole family was working in the Milk Barn, Tim quietly opened the barn door and threw in a pack of lit firecrackers as a gag. The resulting and unexpected explosions caused Tim's sister Annie to throw the bucket of manure she was carrying up towards the rafters where the manure firmly took hold for the time being. Tim's family had a hell of a time quieting the cows and themselves but were able to calm things down in a few minutes only to encounter Mr. Newton's Law of Gravity. The glob of manure stuck to the rafters let loose, fell groundward and wound up covering a rather large fan that was used to cool the barn. At this point the fan saw fit to evenly distribute the contents of the manure throughout the barn, covering walls, cows and people in various designs of brown spots. When all was said and done, Tim's father Pete noticed that Tim seemed to be the only family member not spotted and asked the proverbial question, "Where were you when the s--t hit the fan." Tim fessed up to his gag, lost his driving privileges and learned a valuable lesson. Thanks Tim, this Spuds For You!

A Geographic Perspective - COUNTRY HUMOR OVERHEERED AT THE BARBER SHOP


Did ya heer the one bout the city slicker whos son wond up in the poky for steelin feed for his horse. His father shows up at the Sheriff's Office with the hay bail.

A Geographic Perspective - COUNTRY HUMOR OVERHEERED AT THE BARBER SHOP


Did ya heer the one bout the citi gal who got a sumer job on a catel ranch and was told to see to it that the stud's needs were met. The poor ole bull died that sumer from starvin and thirstin but the ranch hans was all happy. Nex sumer the gal shows up wit a litle fringe benefit frum las sumer - A baby boy!

A Geographic Perspective - COUNTRY HUMOR OVERHEERED AT THE BARBER SHOP


Did ya heer the one bout the preecher who waz apreechin bout the evils of corn whisky to a grup of tater growers. They wuz all eyes but had no ears to lend.

A Geographic Perspective - COUNTRY HUMOR OVERHEERED AT THE BARBER SHOP


Did ya heer bout the preecher that lost his sole in the pew. Yup, stepped in a big pile a cow leavins an trekked rite outa his dern shu.

A Geographic Perspective - COUNTRY HUMOR OVERHEERED AT THE BARBER SHOP


Did ya heer the one bout the city slicker that was alookin ta buy a halter for his horse cuz he couldna get the animal to stop.

A Geographic Perspective - COUNTRY HUMOR OVERHEERED AT THE BARBER SHOP


Did ya heer bout the citi sliker who showed up at the lumberyard lookin ta buy sum iron wud sos he kin mak a wud stove.

A Geographic Perspective - COUNTRY HUMOR OVERHEERED AT THE BARBER SHOP


Wat do ya cal a city sliker wat changes the oil in his car without a funel - A sliker citi slik.

A Geographic Perspective - COUNTRY HUMOR OVERHEERED AT THE BARBER SHOP


Did ya heer bout the citi sliker what came to the cuntry ta cut his own Christmas Tree? Yup!, he even brot alon a torch ta melt the plastik!

A Geographic Perspective - COUNTRY HUMOR OVERHEERED AT THE BARBER SHOP


Did ya heer the one bout the citi slik that tuk up growen crops what got fested wit bugs an wuz telled ta hav hiz crops dusted? - he hired a extry maid ta hep out!

A Geographic Perspective - COUNTRY HUMOR OVERHEERED AT THE BARBER SHOP


Did ya heer the one bout the citi slik what tuk ta growin winter corn? Yup, cum December 21st. he planted a whole snow covered field!




Communications

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