With respect to Mr. Milligan’s word of the day posts, I bring you Kelln’s word of this day–REPO. As in repossession.

I had traded for and subsequently sold a pair of swathers. I sold these swathers via the internet in mid April. The customer came to Woodward and hauled them back to northern Kansas. He wrote checks for both units. The problem was that the checks were like a hard hit grounder that caught a small rock in the infield and they BOUNCED. Bounced real high. These checks would have been nice to have on a cold winter day. Why? Because they would have kept you warm, as they were HOT. Since these units weren’t financed, we didn’t have a lien on them. Now, we had $40K worth of swathers six hours away.

Contact was made and they sent some money. Then a little more. Then a little bit more. Then nothing. No phone answers, no replies to e-mails. Nothing. Obviously, this made some of our administration people a little uneasy. I was hoping some money would show up, but nothing did. I didn’t have time for this kind of crap.

Fortunately for me, I grew up with a dad that was in the finance business. I have seen some repos. I even drove a couple of them in high school. One of them was a corvette. Then there was this 1982 short wide bed, 2wd, solid black chevy pickup with an AM radio, 3 on the tree tranny, inline 6 cylinder engine with glass packs. It sounded like a pissed off weed-eater. It didn’t have fuzzy dice on the mirror, but it should have.

Well, it was now time to either hire a lawyer or take care of it, myself. Any of you that know me understand that I am not afraid of a little confrontation. I can also be a devious SOB. I made a phone call or two and I not only had directions to his home, but his kids and his parents. Had a former student that was going to be in the area do a drive by and locate one of the machines this past weekend. Then I called the sheriff, just in case I got shot. I left the house early Tuesday morning and drove within a few miles of Nebraska. I quickly found the one machine. But not the other. I only needed to find one as he had sent enough money to cover one of them.

At this point, I could call my truck driver to come get it 6 hours away, which would cost some jack. Or I could get in the machine and drive it 20 miles to the nearest Deere dealer and park it. Which meant my pickup would be left behind. Or go find the guy and have a discussion about hot checks. Since I was a little pissed about driving 350 miles, I found the guy. I mean, I missed Law & Order, Sportscenter and Jed Castle’s channel 9 weather report in order to do this. I talked to him, then made him take me to the other machine. If I’m going to have to repo a machine, I want pick. Then we had another discussion about finances and not meeting financial obligations. He readily agreed that maybe he should sell something quick in order to come up with the money.

I am happy to report that this 700 mile round trip was not a wasted effort as he came up with the money. Too bad he didn’t raise good goats or I might have worked a trade.

No, I didn’t have a gun with me as I was in a company pickup. And in another state. But, as Thompson and Fred have said, they would rather go to prison and deal with all that goes on there then have to listen to me when I’m pissed. In other words, you probably wouldn’t want to be trapped in an elevator with me. Anyways, the money is collected, the customer has his swathers, maybe he lost a little dignity, but I lost a day of my life dealing with this crap. Oh well.

Don’t write bad checks. It is the same as lying.

This story reminds me of the one time that I had a bounced check for a goat. That wether became known as Repo Joe. We’ll save that story for another day.