[UA] The Bolters

[John Tynes]

A friend of mine's brother is having a weird problem. He bought a house last
year to remodel and then sell, and has been living there during the project.

Three times now, someone has stolen bolts from items in his yard. That's
right, bolts. Once was a couple of bolts from his motorcycle, for example.

Recently he was working in the yard with some piece of gardening gear--maybe
a leaf blower, I forget. It had two tubes joined by bolts that formed the
main attachment. The phone rang and he put the thing down. Inside the house
he talking on the phone for a minute, drank a soda, and then went back
outside again. When he picked up the blower, the tube fell apart--the two
bolts that held it together were gone. In the ten minutes or so that he was
outside, someone stole the bolts off the thing.

He bought the house from a run-down little church next door. The church had
been using it as rough living quarters for about a dozen political/religious
refugees from Ethiopia, but they were ejected from the property by the
police for health reasons. The pastor of the church decided to sell the
house to raise money for some church improvement projects. After selling the
house, the pastor announced he was retiring to do missionary work in
Zimbabwe. A couple weeks after he left, the guy with the missing bolt
problem ran into the pastor's brother in the neighborhood and asked if the
missionary post had started yet. The pastor's brother looked baffled and
said, "No, we're buying a used-car dealership together."

<- John Tynes - john at tynes.com - http://www.JohnTynes.com/ ->
He was so tiresome that you could spend fifty-nine minutes
in his company, and yet not consider it the better part
of an hour.


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