Who Says There’s No Good News?

Who says the news is always bad? Relax, this isn’t a pop quiz. Didn’t you used to hate pop quizzes in school? Worry and stress every day as to whether or not there’d be a test that day, and in what class, and at what point in the class, and so on and so forth. They had to know that school was stressful enough as it was so why the idea of a pop quiz? What iniquitous individual is responsible for the insane idea of the torture knows as Pop Quiz?

Why, if I had my way, I’d make them test-givin’ varmints dance.

I would have seriously stopped going to school because of those pop quizzes but no one would accept pop quizzes as a valid reason for not going to school back then.

Anyway, you don’t have to answer that earlier question if you don’t want to. You may answer if you want, but it’s not required as this is a pressure (and pop quiz) free zone. I’ll give you a little time to decide what you want to do and in the meantime I’ll think about questions 67 & 68. Take your time. 

What’d ‘ya decide? I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t want to answer either.

Happily, the news isn’t always bad and here’s a nice story to prove it. There’s this restaurant in Discovery Bay, Washington, called Fat Smitty’s. In 1985 two Caterpillar equipment salesmen stopped in for a drink and dinner at Fat Smitty’s and when they were done eating, one of the salesmen asked if he could tack a dollar bill, along with his business card, to the restaurant’s ceiling. Smitty said he could, and he did, and by doing so the salesman started a tradition that has continued on for twenty-seven years. The walls and ceiling of Fat Smitty’s have become a part of life for residents and visitors to the Discovery Bayarea.

Carl “Fat Smitty” Schmidt and his nephew, restaurant manager Casey Carson, recently took down all the dollar bills tacked to the restaurant’s walls in order to redecorate and they collected $10,316 in the process. Rather than keep the money, they’re giving everything to charity. Three thousand dollars will be going to the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Center in Memphis, Tennessee, and the rest of the money will go to the Boy Scouts Camp Parsons kitchen in Brinnon,Washington.

Fat Smitty’s closes during the winter and Carson said he hopes that customers will once again start tacking their dollar bills to the walls when the restaurant reopens on March 1st.