Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/365558
70 • SEPTEMBER 2014 • WORLD FENCE NEWS Days and days of rain put fencer in a soggy mood BY JIM HART, WFN CONTRIBUTING EDITOR EMERITUS In remembrance of longtime World Fence News contributing editor Jim Hart, we will occasionaly reprint some of his articles from past issues. Here is one of his classics from No- vember 1991. Sadly, Jim passed away a number of years ago, but his unique fence humor lives on. • • • Recently, due to foul weather, I've had a lot of time to just sit around and think. Our yard took 10 inches of rain in one day, and our trucks have sunk up to their axles in the driveway. The two wreckers we hired to get 'em out are also sunk, along with the 20/40 John Deere tractor we borrowed to pull them out! I won't mention the supply truck that is up to its hood in mud way out back. We don't even want to think of that one. It may go away by itself, since it's sinking about an inch a day. The zoning board's roving "en- forcer" car, which came out to red tag us for running an unlicensed used car lot, went under yesterday. I told 'em, "All the vehicles were on a rescue op- eration." The zoning board believed me, and decided to drop the charges! We also got a medium size drag- line about to tumble into the pond it dug. It's under a double threat – the banks of the pond are slowly seeping away, while at the same time the ma- chine is slowly sinking into the muddy ground it sits on. It don't look like we are going to be able to move it, either, since the walking gear is broke down. And you guys thought you all had troubles! I'll trade ya! My insurance company may have to pick up a big tab on this one. Good! They were about to cancel me anyway. Their computer said I was due for an accident, since I hadn't had a claim for 12 years. That made me a bad risk. In light of what's going in now, come to think of it, the computer was right! from Social Security. I'd put a .44 magnum slug through both knees and one elbow, which would be doing you a favor since it would leave you one good arm to eat with!" He stares at me and his mouth dropped open, so I think he believed me. He is also shocked when I tell him I have two sons and 15 ex-daughters- in-law on the county police force. I told him that with my police connections, I'd have a cop on every corner if any more of those posts were messed with. The local drug dealers might not take too kindly to this, and they had an enforcer called "Big Ed- die" whose specialty was punk kids calling unwanted police attention to a neighborhood! I guess my story musta got around, cause a carload of punks who were driving by every few minutes making threats to pull the fence down didn't have anything to say, and wouldn't even look in our direction when they passed. Well, we get the job finished, and some guy comes up and says, "Don't know what you did, but last night was the first quiet night we've had around here in months. Thanks!" The little P.I.A. comes around lat- er on, and says he opened the gate last night and was on the parking lot. Well, I can see he is lying because the gate is still wired shut just like I left it. I tell him, "Hell boy, you ain't got much of a future as a criminal, you can't even tell a good lie!" I tell him he ought to investigate becoming a police officer instead. It pays about $28,000 to start, which is chicken feed compared to peddling dope, but you get to go home every day. The peddlers have a bad habit of winding up in the "House of Many Doors" for 15 or 20 years. Oh, by the way, Big Eddie was just a figment of my imagination. I know it, and you know it, but P.I.A. don't know it! Heh! Heh! Heh! How about that? Strange to say, we who are suppos- edly not on the flood plain are drown- ing, while people two miles down the road in bay heads and swamplands are dry. How do you figure that one? If we get a few more sinking vehi- cles stuck in here, we may become the Florida version of the La Brea Tarpits in California. Can you see the headlines in the year 3001: "1990 tow truck found by scavengers hunting for ancient chain link artifacts." The story will say the scavengers were poking around on the site of a suspected "prehistoric" chain link fence yard in Florida. The scientists could come up with no explanation for the phenomenon. But they plan fur- ther excavation of the site. They will probably conclude that it was some sort of religious site like Stonehenge. They will make careful notes of everything. The logo on the zoning board car will probably be at- tributed to the "high priest," and the dragline will be mistaken for some kind of phallic symbol. The John Deere tractor will go unexplained. Should a copy of World Fence News survive to the year 3001, someone will explain everything as it really was! But anyway, after four months of living on "stone soup," we finally got real busy a while back. We got a job at a day care center in the mean part of town. They wanted a parking lot en- closed, including a 16 ft. roll gate and repairs on 200 feet of existing 48". Thank the Lord for small favors! I got so excited I quoted the price out of a two-year-old catalog, then gave 'em a 5% discount for cash to boot! I caught the error in time, but they gave the job to the next lowest bidder. We install for this guy, so it wasn't a com- plete loss. We had to wade through 9 mm pistol shells the day we went to lay it out. They musta had a small war the night before. We no sooner get the string up when the inevitable "wise guys" show up. They threaten to tear the fence down that night. I tell 'em to have at it, that's how I make my living. The customer is insured, and I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life putting it back up, as long as the insurance money kept coming in. I was paid in advance for this job, so it's no skin off my nose! They left one kid about 13 to be our official P.I.A. (pain in ankle). He tripped over the string, picked things up, and generally tried to be a nuisance. He failed. I put him to work marking poles and toting ma- terials for free! Well, we finally got 'em all up. The asphalt was only an inch thick over six inches of hard clay. And to think I'd lost three nights sleep won- dering how thick the asphalt was! Sheesh! The next morning, sure enough, the wise guys had struck. Two poles were pulled out and missing, and most of the others were shook loose. The resident P.I.A. shows up, and asks if we are upset. We ain't. Besides, I tell him I have a good idea who did it. He ask how, and I say. "Put your right foot over here." His sneaker exactly match- es a perfect set of prints in the sand around the pulled out post. I said, "If you was 18 instead of 13, I'd treat you to an early retirement