


     The Best Investment

                                             By Gary Bryant
  
          The  man on the phone said his house was located 
     at the end  of a long dirt road.   He was right.  I 
     had driven about three miles on what one could call a 
     dirt road.  One  wouldn't however, it had been raining 
     for three days  steady, and that 'dirt road' had become 
     a series of  small lakes, preventing the undergrowth and 
     forest from  squeezing it out of existence.

          The house itself  was nothing special.  This was  
     standard middle-of-the-road white  shingle house with 
     hardly a porch.  A short series of  boulders made a 
     roundabout walkway to the front door.

          I  got out of the car.  My foot sank in six inches 
     of mud.  I was doing all of this because of a FREE ad in 
     the paper.
          
          Three German shepherds and a small black  goat stood 
     between me and the front door.  It began to rain again.
     The garage door was open and I heard someone  operating 
     a tablesaw.  I walked over and peered in.  An  old man, 
     smoking a pipe and wearing a wool turtleneck  sweater 
     peered over what was to be a bookshelf. 
      
          Spying  my stare from across the garage, he spoke.  
     "You here  about the ad?" He asked.

          "Yep," I said.
     
          "I'll show ya," he said, I followed him out into the rain.
     
          We walked behind the house, past the chicken coop
     where several hens clucked in quiet contentment.  We walked 
     passed the abandoned dog house, apparently it had not been 
     used in years.

          "There it is."

          The old man said  without emotion pointing in the 
     direction of a large  fir tree.  
      
          My seven-year-old son, who had  accompanied me on this 
     excursion, spoke for the first time.  
     
          "That's the one," he said.       
          
          And so it was.  After we washed off the four days of 
     mud, filth and who  knows what, a beautiful young collie dog 
     appeared.  Although we found him in a free ad of a local 
     paper, that rainy afternoon was one of the best investments 
     we  ever made.  It's been almost five years since then, 
     and we haven't regretted a single day. Ask my son. 
      

