I am sure that most everyone has noticed that when a pretty good story comes along, a lot of people can tell you just when the event took place and to whom it occurred. They either know the party or they know the party’s brother in law, and they can tell you just where and when the whole thing took place.
One such story that comes to mind, when I think about the way the farmers used to do their trading, is about the farm wife who brought in a crock of fresh lard that was intended for her own use. She told the store operator how, when her husband was transferring the lard from the rendering kettle to the crock, his pipe had dropped out of his shirt pocket and fell right into the hot lard. She said that they had retrieved the pipe almost immediately and she felt sure that a person who did not know what had happened, would never suspect that the pipe had dropped into the crock. Therefore, did he think that it would be possible for him to melt her lard and replace it from some other person’s crock.
The store owner assured her that it would be no problem, but he would not be able to take care of it that day, so if she would come back any time after noon, the next day, the lard would be ready for her. He accepted the crock of lard, placed it in his back room and did nothing more about it. The next afternoon, when the lady came in, he brought out her crock and told her that he was confident that, if nothing more was said about it, no one would ever suspect that anything had happened to the lard.
Another story that was real popular, a few years back, was the one about how the fellow that drove the Redi-Mix concrete truck handled the problem with his unfaithful wife’s boy friend. This one got a lot of exposure during those few years, because both pre-mixed concrete and unfaithful wives were quite popular during the period that I refer to. I guess that Redi-Mix concrete and unfaithful wives are still very much in existence, even now, however, that is not a factor, in this account.
The thing that I am attempting to explain, involves this truck driver who must have been related to or a friend of, God only knows how many people, found out from, what he considered to be a reliable source, that this bird who had just recently purchased a new Buick Station Wagon, was sneaking in and seeing his wife while he was out delivering concrete.
This particular day, when he had a three yard load to deliver to a customer that lived in his general neighborhood. He decided that he would go around by his house to check things out. Sure enough, there in his driveway was the brand new Buick Station Wagon, with the rear window rolled down. The mixer that he was driving was the type that discharges from the front, with all of the controls inside the cab. He just pulled in his drive, ran the spout in the back window and dumped about half of his load into the back of that brand new Buick Station Wagon.
The facts regarding the time, the place, the people and the amount of concrete can be adjusted to satisfy the whims and the imagination of the person who is presently, telling the story.