The Color of Hoss

I really think I am onto something this time. There could be big bucks in this one. In which case Making My Pile will be assured.

For anybody who hasn't been here afore, Ol' Hoss desperately needs to make a pile of money before he gets figuratively buried on the Lone Prairie because he don't plan to be buried but to be cremated. And it is expensive to take care of these particular cremains, which is funeral director-speak for ashes and bone splinters.

See, what I been thinking is to have my ashes attached to Halley's Comet so you can see me coming your way every 76 years or so. I also have contemplated having these cremains attached to a gray whale so I would get to go south every winter. Cold weather kind of conflicts with my idea of happiness.

Well, I don't need to decide this today because my doctor said I have two years left. Now that was in March, so I guess now I have 1 and 2/3rds years left. Plenty of time to make life or death decisions about wise use of cremains. One thing I have decided is that I want my cremains remaining all together so that when the medicos figure out how to cure what killed me they'll be able to reconstitute me, sorta like they do with freeze-dried food.

So the bottom line is I gotta make some money to pay for all this, and what better way than to invent a new color? I have spent a lot of time on this. I don't have a kitchen, so I've had to do my scientific work in the bathtub, which is okay because I am not making bathtub beer.

I have been in touch with the Crayola people and, naturally, they is intrigued, because as any fool knows, 120 colors is not enough. People everywhere are demanding new colors for their shirts, ties, shoestrings and footballs. And if there is one thing Ol' Hoss is good at (and there is), it is meeting pent-up demand. Remember how I invented the Budweiser bottles made out of bacon cracklings? "Meal in a Bottle", I called it. Unfortunately I didn't make any money on it because the Chinese can make bottles out of imitation bacon cracklings a lot cheaper than I can.

Bein's as I am a nice guy, I am going to tell you what color this new color is. It's frobitzer. Don't that sing? You got that in your mind's eye, what a swell color frobitzer is?

Well, maybe you don't. It's kind of hard to describe. It's sorta red but more like bronze with seafoam green and maybe some wood lavender. You'll know it when you see it.

I hope Crayola doesn't take more than a year and two-thirds to pay me.

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My favorite word today is red-faced. Adj., sorry about that. Def.: In brushing a fly off a lady in the bar you discover it's a wart.