Fatale Abstraction

I was telling my dad the heart-warming tale of a ridiculously mis-begot gun buy-back program in Chicago that Xavier recounted here in this superb July 30 post called Robin Hood of the Gun Buyback. Go there and read it when you get a chance - I promise you'll be giggling like a maniac. I did. Incidentally, it was this post that compelled me to add Xavier Thoughts to my blog roll. Anyway, in that post, Xavier tells the story of a gun buyback in which a noble group of gun entoosiasts gather a bunch of gun-shaped glorified pot-metal for which they receive many hundreds of dollars, the proceeds of which went to buy ammo for an NRA Youth shooting camp. Rock on! Anyway, great, fun reading.

When I told me Da about that story, he said it reminded him of one his dad told him. This was in the 1940s in the area of Kokomo Indiana, where my dad's family lived at the time. Apparently, all the farms in the area were so plagued by crows that the local officials offered $1 per pair of crows feet turned in at a central location.

Well, these old boys who lived out in the country had a giant roost on their property where thousands of crows came home every night. These guys knew a money-making venture when they saw it. During the next day, they booby-trapped the entire roost area with big bags of pea-gravel with a stick of dynamite in the middle and a blasting cap as the cherry on the cake. When all the birds got good and settled that night, they set off the dyn-o-mite, and the next day they picked through nature's bounty.

They walked into the place the next day with two enormous bulging bags. The officials told them "now, you know you weren't supposed to bring the whole birds in--just the feet." One of the fellows said "Yeah, we know. That's all we brung ya - just the feet."

Anyway, these guys cleaned out the entire funds allotted for the crow feet reward.

Good times, eh?