.
I was happily at home tinkering in my garage. I had just finished
nailing a couple of boards together when my pal Red-State Louie arrived with a
six-pack of Red Dog.
“Hey, ‘Hawk, whatcha
making?” Louie wanted to know, handing me a beer.
“Working on a prototype for
a new green car,” says I.
“Prototype, huh? I see
you’re making it out of wood. That’s pretty green. What’s it gonna run on, wood
chips? That would be really green, eh, eh.”
“B.S. I figure to set up
shop within an easy drive of the Crapitol. Fuel would be in endless supply. The
only catch would be that the Socialists would soon find a way to tax it.”
“Yeah, it’s the only
commodity they ever produced down there. You’d think they’d pay you to haul it
out of there. Better watch it, they’ll be charging you to haul it away, then
taxing you for using it. Whadya gonna call your green car?”
“The Fart. It’ll be
manufactured with green materials, it might as well have a green name. Farts
are a natural phenomenon. They’re part and parcel to b.s. Help me lift the hood
into place, would ya?”
We put the hood on and, of
course, it fit perfectly. Louie asked, “Where’s the fenders, I don’t see any?”
“Ah, it won’t need fenders.
They’ll just get all dinged up when you’re in the Walmart parking lot. The
insurance companies will love the Fart.”
“This thing have a roof?”
Louie asked.
“Yeah, over there, that
piece of blue tarp I got down at the hardware store. Help me stretch it across
these upright pieces. There we go, now it looks like a real green prototype.”
“Looks like a piece of
crap, to me, somethin’ right out of the Beverly Hillbillies.” opined Louie,
taking a big slug of Red Dog.
“I could put a coat of
paint on it, I s’pose.” I went into the garage and gathered several partial
cans of paint. After prying the lids off, I poured them all together and mixed
the colors. I came out with a lovely chartreuse and, grinning from ear to ear,
began slapping the paint on with a stiff, old brush. “There,” I said at the
end, “is a thing of beauty.”
“Yeah, right. Hey, who’s
going to pay for the production of this, er, work of art.?”
“The Energy Department.
Bureaucrats are always looking for green projects to throw money at. They’ve
already blown about six and a half billion of our dollars on green projects
that don’t work. The Fart is just the type of thing they’re looking for. You’re
not only looking at a prototype, you’re looking at a proto-millionaire.”
“Is there an alternate fuel
source? I mean, what if, heaven forbid, and I know it’s unlikely, you run out
of b.s?”
I unlocked the trunk and
threw up the lid to show him the solar panels. “The Energy Department will get
all giddy and start writing a check as soon as they see these. Solar panels are
hugely green. I thought about installing a mast and a big sail to use wind,
which is another big green thing. But the Fart would really be ugly with a sail
sticking up through the roof.”
“Yeah, well it’s obvious
you have good taste, eh, eh.. You’re a real Michelangelo.”
“True. True. Maybe I’ll
rename the Fart. Call it the Mikey!”
“Why not just call it the
Fred. Hell, you invented this thing and built it from scratch. There were lots
of early pioneers in the auto industry that named their first cars after
themselves – Oldsmobile, Ford, Packard. Ford named one after his son Edsel.
Naming your car the Fred would put you in some pretty tall company.”
“Ah, I don’t know. Maybe
I’ll just call it the BS Bus. Or maybe the Green Wienie. Ha, the Energy
Department getting diddled by the Green Wienie! Ah, hell, there’s no use diddling
somebody that don’t know they’re being diddled.”
“By the way, does this contraption
really work?” he asked just as a tow truck backed into the driveway. The driver
came back and began hooking up the Fart so as to pull it onto the bed of the
truck.
“What? Surely you jest, my
friend! If it actually worked, I’d never get any money from the government.”
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