The Real History of the Louisiana Purchase

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The Real History of the Louisiana Purchase As almost any shopkeeper, store owner, or business person might tell you, one of the keys to prosperity is "turnover." Most would describe turnover as being the stocking of merchandise, the selling of the stocked merchandise, and then its re-stocking. Sort of a churning of the goods of their commerce. you might say. Well, during the bad, low sales times of the publishing business where I once worked there was not a whole lot of turnover going on -- until one day when a big-money customer from nearby Louisiana came over to pick up a load of printed and bound cookbooks. As usual, the boss publisher guy did not want to be in the building when that customer showed up to get her books. He assigned his second-in-command, Jack, to be there for the delivery of the books and for the expected yelling and complaining about the lateness of fulfilling of the book delivery. Jack was used to this, so he did not fuss about the deal, for it was not a new thing for him. Anyway, the lady arrived at the company and, because of the long journey from Louisiana, her bladder was yelling at her by the time she got to the old building to pick up her order of books. In other words, she had a strong, very strong need to pee. There was only one potty room in the building, and an old, old building it was, too. The building was beset with termites and with disrepair on a magnificent scale. Those two problems were certainly exhibited in that lone potty room. The toilet fixture was no longer bolted to the floor. That made using it for all of the normal purposes always risky. In addition, the termites rather liked the old potty room, maybe because of the dampness in there, but maybe just because it was semi-dark in the little cubicle-like potty room. To further complicate the situation, it was termite breeding time, and the bugs were all into the business of breeding. That is, they were swarming here and there in the building, but really carrying on in the potty room. So, on her arrival, the Louisiana purchase lady headed for the can. Her privacy was provided only by a curtain hung at what should have been the potty room door. Jack related to me the next day that he was in the storage room outside of the potty room when, all of a sudden, here came the Louisiana purchase lady sliding out across the storage room floor, followed by a big swarm of amorous termites, a gush of potty water and a bouncing ceramic potty bowl. As much as I liked my friend and co-worker, Jack, I no longer envied his role as Number Two in the management of the publishing company. * * * * * * * * * * Image source: Pixabay dot com, edited by Gus Kilthau * * * * * * * * * *