"Makin' a Million"

 

   Every once in a blue moon, I learn something from the computer. Not often, of course, because they change the rules on how to use it about three times a day, and I never was that fast.

   But I love that YouTube channel. Oh man. And I believe, after watching ‘way more episodes than my eyes and brain could handle, that I’ve stumbled on a hidden truth.

  How to mess around in dirt and rocks and get filthy, and create something that the headline assured me would be worth millions. And in my spare time!

  So I’m sharing this with all of you. First of all, you have to move to southeast Asia … somewhere. Shrieking monkey calls are optional, but still a good idea.

Then you look in the house or the trash bin or the county dump until you find a container of some sort. You know, an old flat tire or a Remington noiseless typewriter, or maybe a wastebasket that you want to change into a million bucks.

  Then you dig a hole near your jungle home and pour water in it. A lot of water and a lot of that gray stuff that comes in a paper bag with Cambodian writing on it so you can’t guess what it says. But boy, does it work!  You get some window screen that no one wants, line the wastebasket with it, and pour in the concrete.

  While it’s still setting up, you take a railroad spike and use it to carve million-dollar symbols on the wastebasket. When it dries, you flip it upside down and plant flowers in it.

   I can’t wait to start. All I really need is a southeast Asian kid about 12 years old who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. Why didn’t they tell us these things earlier, so it wouldn’t take so long to make that million bucks.

  Oh well …

 

Brought to you by “Whimsy Castle,” Slim’s most recent novel. Available online at Amazon.com.

 

Newspaper columnist Slim Randles, who writes the weekly Home Country column, took home two New Mexico Book Awards in 2011. His advice book for young people, “A Cowboy’s Guide to Growing Up Right,” took first place in the self-help category, and “Sweetgrass Mornings” won in the biography/memoirs category. Randles lives and works in Albuquerque. Home Country reaches 3 million hometown newspaper readers each week

Slim Randles learned mule packing from Gene Burkhart and Slim Nivens. He learned mustanging and wild burro catching from Hap Pierce. He learned horse shoeing from Rocky Earick. He learned horse training from Dick Johnson and Joe Cabral. He learned humility from the mules of the eastern High Sierra. Randles lives in Albuquerque.

Randles has written newspaper stories, magazine articles and book, both fiction and nonfiction. His column appeared in New Mexico Magazine for many years and was a popular columnist for the Anchorage Daily News and the Albuquerque Journal, and now writes a nationally syndicated column, “Home Country,” which appears in several hundred newspapers across the country.

 

  Huntington Beach News