Sometimes I have to chuckle out loud at the gullibility of some consumers. My latest chuckle happened yesterday with the arrival in the mail of an advertising flyer from a prominent local lumberyard and general supply store.
In the first place, I’m surprised that lumberyards and general supply stores in recent years have expanded their wares into furniture, some clothing, groceries and pet food. Guess it proves that those selling those kinds of “stuff” on the side is profitable. Must be or stores wouldn’t do it.
Well, I saw my “consumer gullibility chuckle” when I browsed through the store’s offerings for bird seed, suets, and bird feeders. But the item that really caught my eye was the “sale” on whole ears of corn for squirrel food. The “sale” was for “7 lbs of corn on the cob for $9.99.”
That piqued my curiosity. So, according to what I found on the internet, in general 70 pounds of dry ear corn equals 56 pounds of shelled corn. Seventy pounds of ear corn is ten times the seven pounds advertised for $9.99 for squirrel food. That, folks, comes out to an astounding price of $99.99 for a for a bushel of ear corn.
Not five blocks away from the lumberyard is a general farm supply store. There I can buy a 50# bag of shelled corn for $14.49 — and that’s quite a mark-up to the cash price for shelled corn of around $7.25/bu. And, just think, squirrels eat only the corn kernels, not the cob.
At $99.99/bushel, I think I might come out of retirement and start raising ear corn for gullible urbanites to buy for squirrel feed.
***
I mentioned last week that I might go back in time and re-publish parts of some columns from long ago. Here’s a tidbit from March 11, 1981, and it’s about the drought that wuz happening at that time. Here goes:
“Last week I attended my ol’ pappy, Czar E. Yield’s, farm dispersal sale. While I wuz standing around, I struck up a conversation with a Bart McRae, a farmer from Mound City, Kan. As aggies always do, the conversation turned to the on-going drought — and our mutual worries about it.
That’s when he said, “I once heard a story with a moral to it that might ease your mind about the drought.
“It wuz in the midst of a severe drought and a big, bad bull wuz hungry, but all the grass wuz burnt up. Then he spied a few mouthfuls of green clover growing in a damp spot in a dried-up creek and he hurried over and ate the whole clump of clover in one mouthful. However, in his haste, the bull also swallowed a bumble bee that wuz on a clover blossom.
“Well, the bumblebee got to buzzing in the bull’s rumen and gave the bull a stomach ache. So, he laid down to take a nap. The bee also got tired of trying to escape the bull’s stomach, so it took a nap, too.
“After a few hours, when the bumblebee woke-up, the bull wuz gone and the bee wuz released.”
“McRae said the moral of the story is that it never pays to worry. Everything will work out at the end.”
I guess that’s good advice for all of us who worry about weather we can’t change one whit by worrying.
***
Overheard at the local grain elevator coffee stop: “I attended a conservation district annual meeting recently and the speaker told the audience that he would give a speech like a cross-eyed javelin thrower — he wouldn’t set any records, but he sure would keep the crowd awake.”
Another “keeper” from the grain elevator kibitzers: “Nothing separates the men from the boys these days like the cost of vehicle insurance.”
***
It ain’t only men who gossip. Women can keep up when they want to. Recently I wuz standing in the cashier line at the local supermarket and I couldn’t help but hear the conversation going on between two ladies. They were conversing about a newly-wed bride in their rural community.
I heard one of the ladies lean over to her friends and confide, “Sally is so inexperienced about life. Did you hear about the problem she got into because she didn’t know the difference between Vaseline and window putty and caused their marriage to go cold?”
Naturally, my ears perked up at that statement. So I eavesdropped even more intently and heard the woman answer her own question:
“Sally’s windows fell out the first time the wind blew hard last winter,” she laughed.
***
Seems to me from observation and experience that many farm women get the urge to spring clean, and re-arrange the furniture in their homes, about this time of year. I think it a modern expression of the primordial maternal nesting instinct.
Regardless of the reason, just the topic of spring cleaning brought to my mind my words of wisdom for the week: “The happiest women are those who have furniture and a man around to move it as they direct.”
Have a good ‘um.
