Opinion: Danny Dimwit strikes again
Originally ran Sept. 14, 2013.
In today’s Madera Tribune you may have noticed a story about a row of raisins having been stolen. When I saw the story, I thought, “Ah, the work of Dandy Dimwit.”
Sheriff John Anderson, when giving speeches around the county, often says that the one thing most criminals have in common is that they are dumb. A sheriff I knew in another county called common criminals “Dandy Dimwits. They think they are smart, but that is their first mistake. Most of them have sand for brains. Their second mistake is planning and committing a crime, and their third mistake is getting caught.”
It seems to me that anyone who would steal a row of raisins would qualify as a Dandy Dimwit. Picking up all those raisins at night would be hard work. A row of raisins would weigh about a ton. They would have to be carried by hand in their folded-up papers to the truck or trailer Dandy Dimwit had brought along to haul them. Then they would have to be driven away and concealed somewhere and kept from spoiling. Would they be kept in the truck or trailer, or would they be unloaded into a garage or other storage space where they could be hidden?
Meanwhile, the farmer, once he or she had discovered the raisins to be missing, would have called the sheriff. Then, if the farmer had any sense, he or she would then call as many raisin processors as he or she knew, telling them to be on the lookout for the load of rogue raisins. If Dandy Dimwit took the raisins to any of those processors, he probably would wind up spending that night at the Graybar Inn.
Maybe Dandy Dimwit would try to sell the raisins privately to consumers, but doing that would present a new set of problems. First, he would have to figure out how to make them sellable. That means each raisin would have to be removed from its stem and carefully washed to get rid of dust and bugs, dried quickly and thoroughly, and packaged for sale.
At some point, Dandy will realize he’s made a lot of trouble for himself and will get as far away from that load of raisins as he can. Either that or he’ll have to develop a taste for raisins and eat them all.
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Periodically, The Madera Tribune will publish Chuck Doud’s “famous” columns as a tribute to the former owner who passed away January 6.
