thebigspendur

July is winding down and it’s hot outside. I mean really hot. A couple of the guys are frying an egg on the pavement and the air is so thick with humidity it takes an effort to breathe. We hear in the big city they have this thing called refig…umm refrid…well some contraption that makes the air cold. I don’t know why you would need something like that we just pack things in salt around these parts and to cool off we just mosey out to the old quarry and jump in.

I stopped in to the General Store to get the mail and to get me some of that home-made lemonade Cecelia is well famous for in these parts. A couple of guys were sitting around the potbelly stove and old Charlie was talking to Billy about his Razor collection and Charlie was bragging how his DE’s are the best shave tools in the world and since he has 100 of them I guess he should know. The Postal Mistress just handed him a package and he couldn’t wait as he tore through the wrappings and all this funny white peanut shaped stuff was flying all over the place. Then this gleaming DE falls out. Charlie says that’s the new Splendoroso Razor made from solid Tungsten Carbide (whatever that is). All I know is the razor weighs 2 pounds and it has all these adjustments on it. Why you can adjust the head so it goes up and down and then another thing makes it go sideways and another things makes it tilt at all kinds of angles and then the handle gets longer and shorter. Then this thing slides out of the head so you can move the blade forward and backward.

Charlie says he’s been saving for this for months and knows everything there is to know about it. Billy wants to see how well he knows it so he takes the thing apart and I mean it’s like field stripping an M-1 with all kinds of springs and levers and gears and knobs and there’s 46 parts on the table. So Billy tells Charlie he would bet 5 whole dollars he couldn’t put the thing together within 30 seconds. Charlie says, “you know what, put your money where your mouth is and pony up 10 whole dollars and you can blindfold me and I’ll get it all together in 30 seconds.” Billy says why, that’s like taking candy from a baby no one can do that.

So everyone gathers around and they blindfold Charlie and Billy mixes up the parts and someone says go and well I never did see someone’s hands work so fast. There were parts flying all over the place but when the 30 seconds were up the thing was all in one piece with no parts left over.

Billy starts laughing and says well I ain’t got no 10 dollars on no account. So Charlie says well, you gonna have to work it off. One of the fellas tells Billy he was had because when he was a young man Old Charlie be in the Carny business and he be an expert with those slight of hand tricks and taking things apart and reassembling them was what he did. So Billy calls Charlie a cheat and a scoundrel and Charlie throws the razor at Billy and it bounces off his head and fell on the floor and broke in 100 pieces. Billy was in a motorcycle accident years ago and had a steel plate in his head and that’s where the razor hit but the razor was so heavy it dented the plate and must have mangled his brain or something. So Billy gets off the floor wiping the blood from his face laughing saying well Mr Slight of hand you be like Humpty Dumpty so let’s see you work that magic now.

Old Charlie was really mad and left the store in a huff but failed to see the egg they were frying on the sidewalk and slipped on it and broke his leg in 3 places. A couple fellas had to haul him off to old Doc Keene (I hope he ain’t drinking today) to be put right.

Yea it’s a hot day outside. The kind of day you just sit on the porch and put fly poison out and watch the critters land and eat the stuff and watch them die a terrible death as they struggle to fly off.