Hick Gets a Charge Out of Mick, and Bizarro News Off "The Facebook"

For those of you losing sleep over Hick's stolen tractor battery...sweet slumber awaits. The sheep are already lining up at the fence to be counted. Hick got a battery Tuesday, and has already used John Deere to blade the road. Gravel, of course. The bad blacktop cannot be helped.

Tuesday, we had some financial business to attend (don't get me started!), and stopped by Mick the Mechanic's shop to pick up T-Hoe (don't, DON'T get me started!) on the way home. Hick had mentioned how he might go get a tractor battery after dropping me off. He'd measured the size of the battery compartment so he'd know what size battery to get. Then he said,

"I bet Mick has a battery that will fit my tractor."

"You mean he has some there in the shop? Or that he'll order it from his parts guy and have it tomorrow?"

"Both. He keeps some there. Mick has to make a living, too. I like to buy from the little guy when I can."

"It will save you a 20-mile drive [sweave], and be less hassle."

We pulled onto Mick's lot, and saw one of his minions prying the door panel off T-Hoe (DON'T GET ME STARTED!), a sight so disturbing to me that I had to avert my eyes. Hick went in the big garage door, and came out about 60 seconds later with a battery.

"Did you pay him for that?"

"No. He said to take it. I'll pay him when I settle up."

Hick apparently runs a tab with Mick. He will gladly pay him Wednesday for a battery today.
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Events took a strange turn about an hour later, when Hick returned to the house to tell me what he'd learned from the Facebook page of our informal homeowners' association.

"The guy up the road came home yesterday, and found THIS on his front porch!"

Hick showed me a picture of some Rubbermaid tubs and a pet carrier and some clothes and boxes. Piled in disarray on The Guy's porch.

"He wants to know if anybody saw any suspicious vehicles out here. He'd like footage from anybody who has a surveillance camera. I guess he thinks those dummies I put up are real."

"You can't tell him that! Then real thieves will know they're fake."

"I'm not going to say anything about the cameras. He said it was a gray van."

"Hey! I've seen a gray van out here. Last week! It was down by the mailboxes. I didn't recognize it, but I thought maybe it might be that guy who asked you to blade his driveway for free, with the kids that you fixed the bus-waiting shed for. Because that's a lot of kids, and they probably have a van."

"You know, they might have something to do with it. I don't know if they have a van. But the girl was up at my Storage Unit Store this weekend, with another family. I figured maybe they had her for the weekend. Maybe those people brought some stuff out for her, and thought that was her house."

"I don't know. But people who drive that van probably don't have a Garmin in it. And most addresses out here aren't marked."

"Yeah. It could have been them. I didn't see what they were driving, and I don't know of any van out here."
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Wednesday afternoon, Hick was lounging in the La-Z-Boy, due to rain and no tractor-fiddling, waiting for auction time. Then I heard him stumping down the basement steps.

"Hey, a gray van just went up the road!"

"I KNEW I'd seen one!"

"I don't know where it's going, but The Guy put more information on The Facebook. He said it was HIS stuff on his porch! That he broke up with his girlfriend, and has a restraining order against her, and that her and her new boyfriend came out and dumped his stuff on the porch."

"Well, at least he got his stuff."

"Yeah, but he wants footage of them because he has the restraining order."
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I don't know if one incident is related to the other. Nobody else has had anything STOLEN, but The Guy has had things GIVEN. These van people are the new variable in the equation. Nothing stolen in the past 20 years, until now...