Bulldozer

Ol' Abner shares an occasional (well actually most days) late afternoon visit with other old codgers in the area. They mosey in one by one to the back porch of Ol' Excavator to discuss the highlights of the day. Most days it's just a notch below the gossip session attributed to the female counterpart. Lately though, the discussion, as relayed to me, has taken a rather gloomy turn. Government corruption, crime and inability to hire adequate personnel dominate concerns previously allocated to which widow woman was after Ol' Taxidermist or which point to fish for walleye. Ol' Pharmacist suffered a break-in during the power outage of the recent ice storm, the city can't seem to get it's share of the $$ needed for storm clean up in place, but Ol' Excavator is truly the most underwater in this downturn. He sent his truck wrecker, tractor breaker employee down around the bend and behind the mountain with his bulldozer on a trailer. Now if you haven't ever had occasion to purchase a bulldozer...just take my word for it...it is a valuable piece of equipment. A new home being built near the river required some serious lot leveling before construction could begin. Equipment wrangler was instructed to take it to the backside of the lot and off load it so the work could begin the following day. Now mind you this guy is not a newcomer to the area. Signs are posted all along the river cautioning that water can rise rapidly. Said lot was many feet above the river even when the water released rose to it's maximum level...or so Ol' Excavator thought. The next morning he arrived at the construction site to begin his work. Not seeing his dozer, he feared the worst (that someone had stolen this tool for his livelyhood). As he walked the property looking for tracks, he looked over the cliff at the back of the property, there sat his bulldozer on a rock ledge now underwater. Now mind you, this was not the "top this" tale any of the ol' boys really wanted to win. In the spirit of dogpatch though, they sipped their beer, wine, diet coke, scotch and branch water. Not one of them could really remember any employee quite that dumb in recent history. It was worth a pretty good laugh. Ol' Realtor says the builder will wait for the dozer to be repaired, cause Ol' Excavator is the best at what HE does, just not too good at picking employees.