When Old Paco retired from the government, he started a trash hauling business in his home town that eventually became very successful (decades later, he sold the company to Waste Management). I worked there a couple of summers, and I have to say, I enjoyed it immensely. I liked the guys I worked with, and we wound up having some genuine adventures.
Mrs. Paco was rooting around in a box of key chains this morning and found the one below, which I have always treasured, especially because it has the company motto printed on one side.
Am I missing something? Because 'Satisfaction Guaranteed Or Double Your Trash Back' is exactly the sort of business strategy I'd expect from Paco Enterprises.
ReplyDelete'Guraranteed' is how they write 'guaranteed' in the land Pacos were kicked out of.
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty witty.
Haw!
ReplyDeleteGregory: You know, I don't recollect getting a single complaint.
ReplyDeleteVeeshir: Your comment triggered (in a good way!) a line of thought: what if the misspelling was intentional, a sneaky way to avoid liability?
"Your honor, we never said 'satisfaction guaranteed'. We said 'satisfaction guraranteed'. 'Guraranteed' is a Cherokee word meaning 'unlikely'".
Obviously they were trying to write "GAR-un-teed", which is how it was pronounced in that neck of the woods.
ReplyDeleteSo did you just dox yourself, Paco? If we look up a garbage hauler named "Al Cart" have we stumbled onto the family tree?
ReplyDeleteI am assuming that his full name was "Al A. Cart."
Brilliant. My Dad contracted to haul bricks with his own truck during Sydney 1960s building boom, it beat spraying asbestos lagging which he did before that, and paid off 2 houses.
ReplyDeleteStephen: I've sorta semi-doxed myself (or my family) before. I linked a newspaper article awhile back that described the time my father arrested Junior Johnson, and his name is right there, in black and white. As for Alcart Sanitation Services, it was sold to Waste Management (in 1985, I believe). It was based in Albemarle, NC, but I don't think there's any trace of it on the internet. Too bad. I've got a lot of fond memories of the company, riding on the trucks, and smoking cigars with Old Paco in his office. I wasn't there when it happened, but the one time he got shot was just outside the front door of his HQ; he had picked up a Llama semi-automatic pistol from the front seat of his Lincoln Continental and jammed it in his waste band and the thing went off. He limped inside and told his secretary to call an ambulance. The bullet entered the top of his thigh and exited the back of his calf. He said it smarted pretty bad.
ReplyDeleteMake that waistband.
ReplyDeleteBack in '73 I saw the film The Last American Hero, with Jeff Bridges as "Junior Jackson." Of course the theme was the Jim Croce song "I Got A Name. At the time I had no idea it was based on a real person. Bootlegging to demolition derby to stock car racing. It seemed a typically silly Hollywood invention until years later when I learned the real origins of NASCAR.
ReplyDeleteYeah, quite a few future NASCAR drivers got their start hauling moonshine (including Richard Petty's father) Old Paco told me some hair raising stories about several of his pursuits of bootleggers and their insane driving skills. He used to say that he was only able to capture Junior Johnson because they were both on foot; he never would have caught him in a car chase.
ReplyDeleteI read that Johnson invented the "Bootlegger Turn," or what Clarkson, Hammond and May know as a "Handbrake Turn."
ReplyDelete