#61 COMMENTS* (revised 6/4) "my friend Al and his hog farm"

“My friend, Al, moved to a town in Utah to start a small tree growing business. He bought a house with some property behind for the young trees. While he was busy planting the saplings, two neighbors stopped by and angrily told him that it was against the city ordinances to have a commercial business in their housing development. Al was worried and upset. He had put all of his money in the house, the land and the trees. A few weeks later, he appeared before the town zoning board and pleaded his case. They turned him down flat and ordered him to stop planting trees.

“What can I do on the property?” he asked. They read from the ordinance. “You can do this, you can do that, and you can have a hog farm”. Al’s ears perked up, “A hog farm?” The astonished board member could not believe that was still in the zoning regulations, a use allowed years ago when the area was still a farming community.

Al quietly folded up his papers, thanked the board members and left the meeting room. The next day he placed an ad in the local paper seeking hogs for his hog farm. He put the word out in the neighborhood that he had ordered the hog pens and huge open hog manure holding containers.

One evening there was a knock on Al’s door. It was the same two neighbors. They spoke quietly this time, lowering their heads, as they sheepishly handed him a contract offering to give Al cash for all of his land and house right then and there. Al looked straight at them, scribbled down a number on the TV Guide and pushed it to them. He watched the anger boil up on their faces.

“This is my price, said Al. It is rock solid and if you guys open your mouths about it, each word that comes out will cost you an extra thousand dollars.”

Al deposited the money, moved out of his house, and is happily growing trees on some beautiful land and house he bought with cash from the hog farm caper.

Oh yeah, Al canceled the order for the hog pens!"

garden store owner

Utah