COMMUNITY HOME REPAIR PROJECTS OF ARIZONA, INC (CHRPA)
PO Box 26215 Tucson, AZ 85726-6215 Phone (520) 745-2055 chrpa@chrpaz.org
¤Stories by Scott Coverdale¤
Back O' The Page Stories
Back O' The Page Stories 4/05 By Scott Coverdale
Matt was on the roof working on the cooler. He has repaired and replaced and serviced a lot of coolers in his time, and up to now it has never resulted in death. Old cooler pads, when endowed with a year or two worth of mineral deposits, can be pretty weighty items. When somebody stacks four of them up and then heaves them off the roof, a lot of kinetic energy is set into motion, and the results can be lethal.
There was, without explanation, a donkey in the yard of the client's home. Matt, feeling the weight of the jobs stacked up in the office and the number of files on the dashboard of his truck, was working hard and fast, not cutting corners, but not contemplating the implications of each action separately. He hoisted the heap of salt-encrusted pads and let fly.
The donkey never had a chance. Never even looked up. The blow from the projectile broke the donkey's neck with a horrible cracking sound, and it fell to the ground without a twitch. Matt came down the ladder, aghast. The client came out of the house and stood over the still form of the hapless creature, gently brushing crusted aspen shavings from the blank, staring eyes.
"I...I'm really sorry," Matt stammered, seeing the emotional pain in the deeply lined face of the elderly woman.
"No, its all right," replied the woman, choking back her emotion. Then tears welled up in her dark eyes. "It's just that the donkey was a gift from my son, and he recently passed away."
Matt put his hand on her shoulder. "I'll see what I can do," he said. "I'll try to get you another donkey."
Matt quietly finished the cooler repair, put his tools back in the truck, and left for his next job-another cooler start up. He is now in the market for a ceramic donkey....
