State Fair

Summer is the time for State Fairs when the campaigning politicians can mingle with the folks and brag about their proficiency in castrating hogs - see Iowa. Mentioning State Fairs recalls the following story. When I was working the booking desk at USLines in Philadelphia some years ago I received a phone call from a Ma & Pa carnival couple wanting to send a trailer-load of stuffed teddy bears to Honolulu for the Hawaii State Fair. We agreed on a price of $3000. cash only - prepaid and on the appointed day they arrived at our loading pier and the Ma partner entered the chief clerk's office with a carpet bag and proceeded to dump 3000 crumpled dollar bills on his desk. The longshoremen present were bugeyed - it was a Friday - the banks closed at 3PM and the petty cash drawer could not accommodate this windfall, so the cashier had to babysit this pile over the weekend. Talk about money laundering! But there's nothing like "cash on the barrel" or on the chief clerk's desk.
tjs
(Above excerpted from Eagle Blue No. 12 - March 2, 2006)