Lanterns
Won a door prize at the club meeting a couple days ago, and I have to say that it is one of the best little gadgets that anyone has ever given me. It is a small Coleman lantern, called the “micropacker.” It’s so small it fits in your hand and it runs on LED, so it is very bright in spite of its size. The lantern runs on three “AA” batteries and with new batteries should last about 125 hours. I keep it in the truck’s glove box so it is always at hand.
The very best gadget I ever got was when a salesman talked to me for a while in a diner about a year ago. He was pretty down and discouraged and I struck up a conversation with him. I didn’t have anywhere I had to be, so I hung around and talked with this guy over coffee, about all kinds of things: school, farmers, politics, my girlfriend, my truck, fishing. The only reason we broke it up was that I had to get home for supper and he had to head out the highway for Dallas. As we shook hands to leave the diner and go our own ways, he dug down in his pocket and asked me to take this little Swiss Army knife. I tried to turn it down, but he insisted. He said he had others back in his desk and he really wanted me to have it. Let me tell you, that knife has come in handy hundreds of times and every time I use it I think of that guy and wonder if he got his head together and turned things around OK. I sure hope so and hope our paths cross again sometime so i can thank him again for this great knife and his kindness to a stranger.