We have a hardware store in our little town. It closes at 5 on weekdays, 3 on Saturdays, and isn’t open at all on Sundays. So I have to make a list and get everything I might need on Saturday mornings. Plus extras. If I come up short on just one screw, it’s a 30 minute drive each way to get one from the next big town.
Anyway, I’ve been going there for 20 years, know many of the people who work there, and many who once did. I’m in there picking up some molding for a project, and they’ve now got bear traps for sale next to the bird seed. We’ve had bears in our yard, and friends have, too, Some even have photos to prove it.
Checking out at the register, six people are standing around trying to figure out what you’d do if you caught one. Brings out the best of Southern humor.
“I don’t know, and I sure don’t want to tell a man how to run his own business, but seems to me this here product hasn’t been thoroughly thought through. Seems to me you’d do a whole lot better selling a “Bear Accelerator.” Bear shows up in my backyard, last thing I want to do is slow him down. And I sure as shit don’t want to stop him AND piss him off.”
“Well, you got a point. We got a rack of brooms in back. We had a bear once, was in my wife’s kitchen garden. She spied him out the back door and she let after him whooping and waving her broom. He look off running like Satan on Sunday. I could see the whites of his eyes from the upstairs window.”
“If I buy a broom will you lend me your wife?”