Two! Two! Two Days For The Price Of One!

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 23434 – 1200

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If you want more about our friend, Art Vegan, click here.
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Dear Readers,
One of my favorite cartoon characters was Inspector Gadget. He was voiced by Don Adams who also starred as Maxwell Smart on the show, Get Smart. He was also the voice of Tennessee Tuxedo. If you don’t know who or what I’m talking about it’s possible you are not of a certain age. I didn’t have a lot of time to look up a bunch of references and links, but I hope that won’t distract from your pleasure in reading this, one of Art Vegan’s less illustrious adventures.

Here’s the haps:

Art Vegan is a man of many varied tastes, of course, and hobbies. Besides drawing and painting the little birds that occupied his feeder he had other things that occupied his time. One of his simpler pleasures was watching the original Inspector Gadget cartoons which ran from 1983 to 1986. That and his collection of Get Smart episodes. He always loved Don Adams and was frustrated with later versions of the cartoon that didn’t include Adams’ distinctive voice and humor and refused to see the live-action film that came out. This was why the headline, “Go Go Gadget Arms – Gone” barely fazed him. Apparently, someone had stolen some props from the film. He might normally look to make a buck on such a recovery but he wasn’t really interested. Besides, he had bigger problems in the offing.

The weather eased up and Art Vegan surveyed the damage to his roof. He loved his place in Colorado but these hailstorms…Of course, he had insurance but the outrageous deductibles they charged for roof repairs due to hail damage were pretty high and even though he was independently wealthy he still liked to be as frugal as he could about some things. He would let the insurance take care of the main part of the roof and have the fascias fixed by the local handyman, Vince.

Vincenzo Schmidtke, handyman extraordinaire, was a character whose scruples barely scruped by on some days. Some of the local folks swore by him and the rest of them swore at him. Art’s few experiences with him were okay but there was something about the guy that didn’t seem to set just right. Still, the guy was available and the price was okay. Art called.

“Hey, Vince. Art Vegan here. I’ve got some fascias that need to be fixed. How soon can you do ’em?”
“I’ll be over first thing in the morning.”
Art was a bit surprised. Mr. Schmidtke had never before evinced such ambition. Maybe there was hope for him yet.

Next morning a large white work van pulled up outside but to Art’s chagrin, there were no ladders visible. Oh well, at least he was likely to get an estimate. But the handyman reassured him he could have it all fixed quickly. “You just go in the house, Mr. V., and leave it all to me.” Art watched from the security cameras as Vince stood there, lifted up his arms and they suddenly elongated on heavy-duty steel springs. The man had reached the fascia board, removed it, and fixed it back up. It could only mean one thing. He had stumbled across the thief who took the movie props.

“Okay, Mr. Schmidtke, drop the stolen gadgets. It’s too bad you had to do this. You were a pretty good handyman but now you’ll just be a con, Vince.”

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