“Durn goat, durned old goat, you think you own this place, you think you are the boss around her, huh, you mangy old goat, you think this is your place and I am just a visitor, me the guy who feeds you and takes care of you, me the guy who dragged you out of that durned swamp? You mangy old goat.” Frank Foistdig had hit it good this morning, as he walked into town to work. Frank was a real eccentric, but he was a hard worker and never gave anyone any static nor did he cause any trouble at work.
But Frank lived by himself out in the old Jelly’s house, that big old stone house there on the east end of town, just before you hit the gravel road. The Foistdigs were the elite of town, back a few years, well, not a few years but about a century and a half ago. His Grandfather Archieibebald Frostdung, had settled here and started raising this special breed of goat which supposedly had the best wool there was for making sweaters. Grandfather Archieibebald's family had gone west to raise cattle out in wyomin country and all had gone busted and then migrated to California where they became known as the Naveloranges. There they got rich and then went back to the old country, got a baronet and still live in style.
Anyhow the family had raised these durn goats and that was when sheep were great and cotton was king; but the Foistdigs were never a family to follow, they marched to their own drummer. And so for over a hundred and fifty years, they had raised these goats and had eked out a living. But things had slowed down and now there was only one Foistdig left and one of those goats, Angus.
Frank was a machinist by trade but he had worked at the furniture factory for years, and was the chief pattern maker for new developments. The factory hired young designers and engineers to design and plan a new line of chairs, but they had learned to just do it the easy way. On the first Monday of a month, the foreman would at nine o’clock walk into the shop and say, “Frank, we need a new chair, need it fir the new season, seems Bassett or Chairmasters has a new one out, and it is kicking our behind in sales.
Frank would look at the foreman and reply, “O let them educated idiots do it, you know I am just a pattern maker and a machinist.”
The foreman would shake his head, “Yeah Frank, but you know those college idiots, and if they had an idea it would take three years.” He would pause and then before Frank could reply, he would add, “I would appreciate it if you would Frank, it would help me and the company out quite a bit.” Then without another word the foreman would leave and leave Frank alone.
About noon, Frank would get sort of sick and go home to recuperate, and then on Wednesday morning or Thursday morning at the latest, Frank would work all day and night and by noon on Friday he would have a new chair, or couch or foot stool, or something like that. It would be argued about, but Frank’s design would be take as proposed and it would go into production. Then Frank would just make what the designers or Engineers required.
This had gone on for twelve years now and top management had at first questioned it but had adopted it as the normal mode of operation, and their design and Engineering department had come up with six things which had been manufactured in the last twelve years. Enter Able Dickit, an efficiency man hired from a big mill upion Maple Grows, somewhere in New England. Able had decided the plant operated all wrong and when he was told how things worked, he shook his head. “I will straighten all of this out,” he had said, and his first course of action was to find out how Frank came up with his designs.
Able had gone into the shop and asked Frank, Frank just shrugged his shoulders, “Just do, just do.”
Well Able had decided to bring in a Private Detective to learn the secrets of Frank’s designs, and Snoopy Smeller had been retained. Now I could go through all of the technical stuff about how Snoopy Smeller had used all of this new microelectronics and detection stuff, but that is just some hooey, so we will just skip to the chase and I will tell you how it worked. As seen by the silent prying eye.
Frank walks into the house, “Angus, you old goat, you silly old goat, how about a beer? Need a beer, for we need a design?” Frank would take off his shoes and socks and put on his nice comfy fleece lined slippers and take two beers from the fridge. Then he would make four baloney sandwiches, open two beers, and then put one beer in a saucer on the floor, and three of the baloney sandwiches on the floor and after he had eaten one and Angus three and drunk their beers, Frank would pick up the paper plates, then open two more beers. Frank would sit and Angus would stand and they would drink beer until Angus burped.
As soon as Angus burped, Frank would drag the black board over and get out the colored chalk. Angus would climb up into a large lazy boy chair, sit down and say, “Frank shall it be modern or shall we take them back a few decades? Yes Angus talked. And with Frank sketching and Angus designing, before one or the other of them passed out, from beer, they had a design, a design and a color sketch.
When Angus woke up he would go out into the pasture field and look for some friendly Nannies and Frank would clean up, and go to work. Go to work with a sketch of the new product. Frank would start building and would work around the clock until it was done, then he would walk outside and pick up a rock, and then chunk it at the second floor window, which of course the rock broke. With that Frank would go home, take a shower and go to bed.
The Plant manager would go down to the shop and get Frank’s design and then the Plant Manager, the Designer, and the Engineer would look over the design and go over it, always tearing up the design as bad and yak, yak, yak. Two days later Frank would come back to work, and he would go over the design, the manufacturing process, and the requirements for materials and after each person had made comments. Frank’s design was adopted and then it went into production.
When Frank got home after this session, he would stop by Pizza Hut and buy four Hawaiian pizzas, and a case of beer. Then Frank and Angus would sit and Frank would tell Angus everything said in the meeting as they ate pizza and drank beer.
And this is how it was and how it would continue until Angus or Frank could find a way to reverse the Sgnylittaion process and get Frank’s brother Baaa back into his real human form, for just before he died Baaa had made their uncle Cross mad and he had done a little genetic manipulation, and well actually Angus and Frank were brothers.