By Bill Mead
Columnist Emeritus
IRS has a funnybone
The Overall Picture
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Today, We Honor The Overall Man Classic Bill Mead
With everybody tossing rotten tomatoes at the beleaguered Internal Revenue Service these days, I thought you might like to hear that the IRS did have a sense of humor at one time. I will violate one of my sacred principles just this once and tell you the absolute truth.
Many years ago, I converted our garage into an office for my consulting business. Foolishly, I made it big enough that it encouraged my wife and daughters to cram it with their junk, which included a hamster in a cage. It proved to be a girl hamster, as evidenced by the little hamsters that appeared in the cage one morning.
About that time, I got a letter from the IRS about some routine matter that I have since forgotten. I laid it on my desk to take care of later, but you know how that goes. When I got a call from the IRS much later, wanting a response to their letter, I couldn’t find it.
Not wanting to needlessly provoke the tax people, my wife and I launched a frantic search of the office, but to no avail. Then my wife, watching mama hamster tending her brood, noticed shreds of paper mixed in with the pile of shavings the rodent had scooped together in a corner of the cage as a nest. Probing further in the nest, we found scraps large enough to identify the remains of the IRS letter as well as other letters that have disappeared from my desk.
It was clear that mama hamster had been able to squeeze out of the cage at night and gather nesting material from my desk. There was no other possible explanation.
At that point, common sense would have told me to call the IRS, tell them the original letter had been lost, and ask for a duplicate. But I’m a hack writer and creatures like me love to spew out bad prose. I decided to write a letter that might ruin some poor revenue agent’s day.
My letter to the IRS laboriously traced the sequence of events concerning the purloined letter, omitting not a single boring detail. I attached a diagram of my office, showing the most likely route mama hamster had taken in her nocturnal scavenger hunt. I closed with a sarcastic plea for mercy, noting my wife and three children, a dog and cat- not to mention several hamsters- that might perish of starvation should I be thrown into debtors prison.
I was pleased with myself until I got a call from the IRS office manager, thanking me for brightening everybody’s day and announcing that my letter had been given a place of honor on the office bulletin board.
Some days you can’t make trouble no matter how hard you try.
Reprinted with permission
If you don’t know Bill: Bill Mead was the longtime publisher of the Tehachapi News, along with Betty Mead, his wife and partner of more than 50 years. Known for his keen wit, which could be gentle or scathing or somewhere in between but was often self-deprecatory, Bill’s writing won him a wide following among News readers. His column “The Overall Picture” ran in the News for more than 25 years, and in 1999 he published a collection of his columns in a volume entitled The Napa Valley Outhouse War. His book is currently available for sale at the Tehachapi Museum for $10.
Bill had a remarkable mind and because of his intelligence, humor and appearance he was regarded by many as Tehachapi’s Mark Twain. As Betty used to remind him, he was “older than the oldest Model A Ford” and his wealth of life experiences and rural upbringing allowed him to bring a thoroughly American, 20th century perspective to his reflections and musings on the everyday. Bill passed away in 2008 but his writing lives on.
[Publisher’s note: I read Bill’s articles during the 80s and 90s and 20s and I am grateful to share them now with our current readers. I hope you enjoy this touch of nostalgia as much as I do.]
