MY FUNGI HUNTING BUSINESS HAS MUSHROOMED

By Tim Colin
When you live way up north you have to come up with creative ways of making a living. One business that I have done well at is giving city people backwoods tour guides. Last year I took people out to the swamp bogs so they could get a good look at quicksand. The funny thing is about half way through the tour everyone would disappear. I guess they thought my tour was boring and took off to the bar. I did learn to take cash up front before I gave a tour. Those people that lit out on me during my quicksand tours ended up not paying and they never answered their phones when I would call them.

This year I have a brand new tour. The annual Martin Mushroom Festival which I believe they have every year, seemed like a great backdrop for my new business, mushroom tours. All I would have to do is advertise in a big city that has a lot of rich people. Well, Detroit is broke but, Chicago has a lot of rich people so I decided to blanket that area with advertising. I did not have any money to spend but, my brother has a cell phone that has unlimited calling during the week provided you call after eleven o’clock at night.

I then offered a buddy of mine a free pitcher of OMB beer if could get me some people signed up for my mushroom hunting tour. He just had to make cold calls some night. It was only a couple of days later that my buddy got arrested for harassing people on the phone. But, before he went to jail he did hook me up with this couple from Chicago who were willing to pay me $500.00 to take them mushroom hunting for the Martin Mushroom festival. Now, not only was I about to make three months wages for just a couple of days work but, I got to drink the pitcher of OMB beer myself since my buddy was in jail and expected to stay there the rest of the spring and maybe part of the summer.

The Chicago couple had lots of bucks. He worked as a store manager and she worked as a nurse. They seemed nice. They were in their forties so they were too old for me to hang out with but, I took them to a nice sports bar where sometimes a former pro athlete drops by. I bought them each a shot of Absolute and then took them to their hotel and put them to bed. It was nine o’clock and I wanted these city slickers to get a good nights rest before I took them into the backwoods. They were both on the pudgy side so, I hoped neither of them would have a heart attack.

After I dropped the old folks off, I went to a topless bar. The next day when we got to the woods I regretted staying out until two. All the birds sounded like they were screaming in my ears and the swamp mold were doing a job to my sinuses. We walked through a swamp and then a black berry briar patch and then, we came across a whole slug of mushrooms. Since we were going to the morel mushroom festival, I figured these must be morel mushrooms. My brother once had his stomach pumped when he ate a mess of poison mushrooms. But, for $500.00 I was willing to take a chance that these were morels and anyway, these people should not be going mushroom hunting if they did not know what they were doing. Furthermore, the people at the mushroom festival would tell us if these were not morel mushrooms the geezers seemed real happy filling up their bag with the stringy pink capped beauties.

After we returned to the car we drove to Martin where the mushroom festival was held. Unfortunately, I was a bit off on my dates and the mushroom festival did not start until the following weekend. The couple was a little perturbed but, I suggested that they come back the next weekend and I would only charge them half price for my services. They agreed.

The couple returned to Chicago with their mushrooms. Three days went by and I had not heard from them in regards to their upcoming redeployment to the mushroom woods during the Martin Mushroom festival. Finally, on Thursday I gave them a call. Some strange lady answered the phone. When I asked to talk to my customers she said that she was their daughter and that her parents were both in the hospital. I immediately envisioned that my middle-aged meal tickets had been in some terrible accident. When I asked the daughter she said no, they had not been in a car accident. Instead, she said, her parents had gone up North to hunt mushrooms with some “creepy backwoods guy”. The daughter then told me that “the creep” had gotten her parents to pick some deadly poisonous mushrooms. She said her parents fried the mushrooms up like “the creep” told them to do and then, ate the mushrooms with steak and red wine. The daughter did say that her parents would be fine but, they would be turning “the creep” into the Better Business Bureau.

When the daughter asked who I was I decided I had better just hang up the phone. I decided that the next time I take people mushroom hunting I would first buy a bag of morel mushrooms and then just find a spot and stick them in the ground. (We do the same thing when we guide deer and moose hunters up here). The people would be happy to find the mushrooms and I would still get paid.

MY NEW BUSINESS: INCOME TAX PREPARATIONS

By Tim Colin
So many people are concerned about making out their income taxes that I decided this week to start a little income tax preparation business on the side. I have absolutely no training at tax preparation and have never filed an income tax form. I’ve seen a lot of people advertise that they can do income taxes. My uncle Mike does income tax in his insurance office. He said he makes sure people buy an IRA from him when he makes out the taxes that way he greatly increases his profits.

I looked into selling IRA’s to my clients but it seems you need some sort of license. It seems like you have to have a license to do anything now days. I need a license to sell securities, a license to drive, a license to go fishing. As far as a fishing license is concerned I’ve been permanently banned from fishing in most of the mid-west.

And as far as Canada goes I am banned from even crossing the border for the next five years. I guess it has something to do with the Winter Olympic Games they recently held. It seems you just can’t go out and compete in the down hill skeet shoot without being sponsored by a country. I also found out that skeet were just round disks people shoot in the air. I thought “skeet” was just another name for “skeeters” which is what we call mosquitoes in Northern Michigan. I was shooting at every pine tree I passed hoping that I might just wing a few skeeters.

I kind of wondered before I strapped on my skies, why you would be shooting at mosquitoes in the middle of winter. But, I figured Canadian mosquitoes are a lot larger than the variety we have in Michigan so they must have enough blood stored up in them to survive a cold Canadian winter. In Michigan our mosquitoes hibernate in places like my parents screen door. That way when spring first comes and you‘re lying in your bed the mosquitoes are ready to buzz around your head.

Now getting back to my income tax business, it seems that a lot of people need help filling out the forms. I started out offering tax services for just $10.00. I got almost 40 people to come in and have me fill out their forms for them. Of course I only charged $10.00 for the first week because I’m just getting started so the first week of customers is sort of practice. Next week I’m going to look at filling in some deductions for people. This week I just gathered up the basic information and sent the forms into the IRS. Nobody this week will be getting any money back from the government. Of course just to make people happy I made sure that I entered a zero for “taxes owed”. The people that come in next week will be getting some deductions and money back since I’ve decided to charge $5.00 for every deduction I fill in on the forms. There are a lot of forms that deal with deductions so I hope to make my clients and more importantly myself, a lot of money.

Making a lot of money by filing tax forms for people should be really lucrative so there might be some question as to why I’m not filing any tax returns on my tax return business. In addition, I am a bit concerned that since I am new to this business, that some of the forms I fill out might not be filled out correctly. Therefore, to avoid any problems I decided to fill in the name “Abraham Lincoln” where the tax preparer is supposed to sign. I believe that no one would question the integrity of “Abraham Lincoln” and besides, he’s not just a former president but, he’s a lawyer so who would want to haul him in for an audit.

NORTHERN MICHIGAN INTERNATIONAL CRICKET CHAMPIONSHIP

By Ted Colin
Each year the Northern Michigan International Cricket Championship draws people from all over the world. We have people come from places as far away as Grawn, Fife Lake and, Mancelona. Many of the people who show up each year speak different languages and have very different customs. For instance, many people who attend these games can’t understand why we have pay toilets when the competition takes place in the woods. Personally, I really can’t understand the pay toilet deal myself. Especially, since the pay toilets only take $5.00 bills. I put in a $10.00 bill and I didn’t get any change back. I guess I won’t be buying any more pop from the concessions stands since it costs more for the pop going out than going in.

Well, although there are many differences between the teams and spectators at this year’s cricket event there is one overriding factor that brings everyone together: we all love watching those little critters duke it out in the ring. The main ring this year is an old hula hoop I found out behind one of the pay toilets. It looks like a car ran over it but, it is still holding together well enough to be used as the main ring. The other rings are just drawn in the sand.

Now before you can compete in a cricket match you have to find a cricket. The best way to find a cricket is to leave your front door wide open for a couple of days. Sooner or later out of all of the bugs, animals or looters that comes into your house there is bound to be at least one cricket. Of course getting a cricket into your house is just the first step in catching one.

In order to catch a cricket you have to stay up real late and get really, really tired. Then, when you turn off the lights and try to go to bed the cricket will start chirping so loud that you will rise up like a zombie from the dead but, instead of yearning to eat brains like a zombie the only thing you will yearn to do is get a hold of that cricket. Of course the cricket creature itself has the ability of a ventriloquist in that it can throw its voice to any place in the entire house. It is almost like the cricket just sits and watches you as you look all around under furniture and in closets, in the cloths hamper and behind the washer and dryer. Sometimes you just want to yank out the gas stove even though it has a gas line hooked to it. You are so tired and desperate for sleep you just don’t care anymore. After a while you can almost hear him laughing when he sees you about to find his hiding spot and then the cricket suddenly stops chirping. Then, you just stand there waiting for the creature to start chirping again hoping beyond all hope that you can find the little monster and get him to stop his hideous sounds so you can finally get some sleep. Of course he doesn’t start up again until you’ve turned off the lights and climbed back into bed.

Eventually, the cricket will make a mistake and you will catch him mulling around in the shower or just outside of the refrigerator. Now although the temptation to get revenge upon the cricket for keeping you up all night is strong, it is important that you keep a cool head about you and try to capture the little beast without harming it. After all, a squished bug is not going to win the cricket boxing tournament for you. And, if you accidentally rip off its forearms then he will be disqualified because the bug will no longer be able to wear the tiny boxing gloves that are mandatory in the sport of competitive cricket.

Once you have your cricket you have to put him through a vigorous training program which includes getting your bug to bulk up. Lots of sugar water is a good start to any weight gaining strategy whether it is for humans or bugs. Most people train their crickets to box by at first placing a tiny little mirror in front of the bug in order to get his competitive juices flowing. Then, placing live crickets with your potential champion in a confined area like a shoe box will be all you need to do to hone those talents that are the stuff that all champion bugs have pent up deep within their souls. Of course several hours of meditation should be a part of your potential champions training regiment. That way by the time of the big match-up your bug will be in complete harmony with the universe and he will have gained inner peace. At that moment your cricket will be able to rip the exoskeleton off his competition and eat those blue-green cricket guts all the way up to the eyeballs.

This years champion was named “Killer Bug”. Now Killer B. was not the actual last bug left with its insides in tacked. The last bug left was Spider Snyder but Spider S. was disqualified when the officials realized that he really was a spider and therefore was not really eligible to compete against crickets. The rules might have been bent a little if Spider Snyder happened to be a grasshopper or even a fly but, spiders are not even insects; they are arachnids. The officials just decided that an arachnid fighting an insect just was not a fair fight so Killer B. won this years championship posthumously since Spider Snyder had already devoured all of Killer B’s soft tissues. Hopefully next year the officials will be more on the ball and disqualify non-species entries before they are allowed to compete in the cricket matches.