Ferengi Plumber

All types of customers have crossed the threshold of the old barn. There's Eeyore, who was always gloomy. Cash Adams, to quote me Grandpa Joe, lived by the axiom of Get Cash, Pay Cash. Joe actually nicknamed Adams that because he didn't trust him; by labelling him 'Cash' Adams he shamed the man into paying up front for everything. California was a plumber who sounded exactly like, and I mean exactly like, Huckleberry Hound. And then there was the Ferengi Drain Cleaner.

For those of you not familiar with the Ferengi, they were meant to be the villains in Star Trek: The Next Generation. They were a race of the future, and supremely, bizarrely capitalist, childishly obsessed with money making. They were the epitome of buy low, sell high. They were short, with oversized heads, ears, and bad teeth. They quickly proved too comic to be formidable adversaries for the Starship Enterprise and crew. 

One of them was somehow transported through a time warp to the late Twentieth Century, to become a plumber in Detroit and environs. He had an oversized head, massive ears, and was rather short. He was not bald, however, as our Star Trek, um, enemies were. Ferengi Drain Cleaner had quite a head of hair. So all you Trekkies out there, imagine Quark with an Elvis wig.

He also was manically concerned with getting things on the cheap. Ferengi guy constantly hassled me Pops and me for better prices. We learned through the grapevine though that his own prices were significantly above the curve. All, of course, for his own profit, as any caricature of capitalism would have it.

Ferengi Plumber. He was out of this world. He was out of his mind, too, if you ask me.

Characters at the Old Barn

We've had our share of characters come through the Old Barn. I've described some in detail and a few in passing but I haven't really mentioned the bulk of them. Here are a few glimpses of other notables who have stepped through the door. They'll be more later I promise.

There was California. I never did learn his actual name nor why he was nicknamed for the state. What I do remember is that he sounded exactly like Huckleberry Hound. You could hear him singing My Darling Clementine like he owned it. If you heard his voice from behind a screen you'd swear it was the guy who voiced that bluish Hanna-Barbera hound dog.

Speaking of voices, there was a guy who sounded exactly like Eeyore, the woeful donkey from Winnie the Pooh. Eeyore's main complaint was that he could never get a girlfriend. "Who'd want to date a guy who does what I do (clean sewers) for a living?" he often lamented in that dullish monotone. Then he found a girlfriend. He told us about it one day, in exactly the manner Eeyore would have. "I got me a girlfriend. Now I have to paint her kitchen."

Grandpa Joe christened one guy 'Cash' Adams. Mr. Adams would walk into the door and Joe would say, "There's Cash Adams. He gets cash and pays cash." Grandpa explained to me that he wasn't sure he could trust the guy so he came up with the moniker to embarrass him from asking for credit. Apparently it worked.

I'll end today with Mr. Clean. I don't know that anyone called him that to his face as he was a muscular, mountain of a man. But he always wore a white t-shirt and had a big gold earring in his ear. Yes, he looked just like the guy on the bottle of cleaning fluid.

There's many more believe me. This is simply to peak your interest.