Down at
the sale barn Saturday, the think tank had coagulated
there with coffees to go
to celebrate life. Doc and Dud had their dogs with them,
while Bert and Dewey
and Steve wentstag.
Dud tried to
start a conversation, but the
loudspeaker soon drove them outside, where they arrayed
themselves on dropped
tailgates and waited to hear what Dud had in mind.
“I thought about
it a lot,” Dud said, “and I
wondered what the favorite part of my job was, and
wondered if you fellas ever
gave that any thought, too.”
They nodded.
Yes, by mutual consent a worthy
subject.
“With me,” Dud
continued, “it wasn’t so much
my job as it was my hobby. You know, writing that book.
I’m claiming it as the
best part of my job, anyway.”
The assembled
were still waiting to read
“Murder in the Soggy Bottoms,” as it had yet to see print,
and was really a
work in progress.
Then Bert picked
up the conversation thread.
“Of course I’m retired now,” he said, “but when I was
running the pawn shop, my
favorite part of the job happened when a customer found
something in there he
really needed and ended up paying much less for it than he
thought he’d have
to.”
Doc laughed “And
you made more on it than you
thought you would, too,”
Bert
grinned and nodded.
“Yep. That was
good too. And you, Dewey?”
Our
accident-prone pharaoh of fertilizer got
a serious look on his face. He finally said, “The best
part of the fertilizer
business is seeing the difference it makes in the flower
gardens around town.
Now maybe it’s just my imagination, but I kinda like to
take a little credit
for a prettier town.”
“You deserve it,
Dewey,” Doc said kindly.
“Well now … with me it’s a little different. I have
doctoring skills, of
course, and it’s good when I can help someone, but these
days the most
satisfying part of my job is to check someone out
thoroughly and find there’s
absolutely nothing wrong with them. Now that’s special.”
They all looked
over at the tall cowboy,
Steve.
“Digging
postholes,” he said.
“What?” they
said.
“You know,” he
said, “the favorite part of my
job.”
“Digging
postholes?”
“Sure,”
he said, grinning.
“It’s
the only part of my
job where I start at the top end work down.”
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