What A Long Strange Trip It Has Been

“What a long strange trip it’s been,” proclaimed George Jones on his radio show as he drove to a charity garage sale in suburban Minneapolis. Wearing his usual Noose T-Shirt, Jones took the car down to the lot where the charity carwashes had been doing their weekly Saturday night auctions. It was just past ten o’clock and these people were really getting into the day’s action, having reached the end of their week. With the exception of a few elderly people, most of the people there were in good spirits, but there was one person who looked tired and confused and sitting under an old wooden bench. This was Jones’s neighbor, Bill Johnson, who’d driven all the way up from St. Paul for the auction.

As Jones got out of the car, Bill Johnson called out, “George, I’ve been waiting all night to see you. You’re not coming home until you pay off my car.” Looking puzzled, and wondering why this old man was so upset at an auctions, Jones said, “Oh, Bill, please don’t worry about it. We’re only going to the charity garage sale for two dollars apiece – you’ve got nothing to get angry about.”

Bill Johnson was so happy to have won the auction that he said he was going to buy everyone dinner at the restaurant. When the auction was over, he offered to pay for the whole lot of cars, but George and Bill were not so pleased with this idea. Instead, they decided to split the money. “We’ll split the money,” said George, “because in this economy nobody is willing to invest in something unless they can guarantee that they will make money off of it. It would be such a shame if we both ended up with nothing.” Sadly, two weeks later, Bill Johnson was found dead in his driveway.