The thanks I get

[Larry Fisher]

Hi all,

Another doggie story to follow .......

It was doing it's usual around here .......  rain.  Lots of it.  I had
fairly wimpy directions down a really curvy and remote road in the forest.
I had to squeeze this call in because I was going to be only a few miles
from this call today so I though I nail this one first and then spend the
rest of the day at my previously arrainged call.  I left the wimpy
directions at home .... dumb idea.  OH WELL ..... I'll wing it.  There ain't
that many places out here.  Now was it two miles, 10 miles from ......  well
at the end of the road I was up to my axles in slush and I hadn't seen a
house for miles so I went back down from this summit checking out every turn
off.  They were all logging roads with gates across them.  A sign indicated
the snow plows wouldn't go beyond this point, another sign indicated a
school bus turn around.  This must be the highest point that people own
private land  .....  houses .......  with pianos.  I pulled into one house,
found someone home, and he gave me directions to these people's place.  "Go
slow around the corner and the driveway will surprise you." he said.  I
found a drive .......  narrow, steep, muddy, full of houses.  I got out of
my car to knock on another door.  No one home.  I knocked on another, ....
he said, "oh yah, dey live up da road, ...... around da corner, past da ..."
ok so I went there.  Splashed the daylights out of an old dog (he was
already wet to the gills) and was told by that lady that they used to live
there and now they live through the woods, but I have to drive around this
way and that ......  I finally found the place.  Yes the driveway was
secluded and a total surprise ...... didn't even remember seeing it on the
way up (the first pass, when I was on time, I don't think my speed had
anything to do with it though ......).  I was greeted by a young man
wondering if I had a hard time finding it .......  duh!!  I'm 45 minutes
late.  A young dog is jumping up and down, yipping excitedly running all
around me while I approach the garage.  I'm a bit wet from all the visiting
I've done recently with all the neighbors, and then there's this huge old
German Sheppard that just had to exert his authority on me.  He did so by
trying to take a rather large chunk out of my thigh, as if to say, "Now look
buster, I'm the boss around here, and what I bite, hurts!!".  I got a
feeling his jaws muscles were so weak he didn't have it in him to break the
skin, but I responded with, "You bite me again and you won't live to see the
light of day" with a rather loud and stinging timbre in my voice.  The young
man appologized and ordered the dog to lay down near the piano.  I started
to dismantle the piano to inspect it for the estimate that I was expected to
do and the KrautMeister started toward me again from his cushy little
furball pillow.  "GET AWAY FROM ME" I ordered to the dog.  The young man
proceeded to grab the dog and put it on a chain in the back yard.  The mood
in the air was tense.  I wrote my invoice, submitted my estimate, was paid
and proceeded on to my next call.  

I thought, "Geez, that's what I get after all the trouble I went through to
get to this lousy call, is a bite in the leg from a big hairy old senile
stinkin' wet canine"  Sometimes I could just scream!!

Lar

                                    Larry Fisher RPT
   specialist in players, retrofits, and other complicated stuff
      phone 360-256-2999 or email larryf@pacifier.com
         http://www.pacifier.com/~larryf/ (revised 10/96)
           Beau Dahnker pianos work best under water