Only in Texas

Some of the things that happen to me while working the 'hoods are kind of weird. Today this one man answered the door in his underwear. It was 2 in the afternoon and I had woken him up so he was pretty bleary eyed. After I made my pitch he said no thanks and then closed the door. So I go back to my truck and just as I'm about to toss his picture into the reject pile he opens the door (still in his underwear) and says he's changed his mind that he wants the picture. So I go in and while I'm putting the clips in the back, he finally goes and puts a robe on. He said he worked late last night and was still half asleep when he answered the door.

This area has a lot of ranches so some of the roads to these houses are pretty remote. One road here is called Talbert Ranch Road and it goes a couple miles into the boonies with only about three or four ranches branching off it. When the pavement ends you go another mile or so on a dirt road and you finally get to the house. By then you're hoping somebody is home so you don't have to keep coming back out here to catch them at home. But I wasn't so lucky during the week so today I had to make the trip back out there.

Just before the pavement runs out, there was a gated house that I had visited earlier in the week. Some of these gates, if you push a little black button near the actuator, the gate will open. Depends if the homeowner has it activated or not. This one happened to be so I was able to drive up to the house. I ended up having to leave a doorhanger as they wanted to think about it. (Ninety percent of the time this usually means 'No') Once I leave a 'will call' doorhanger, I don't come back until the end of the roll if I haven't heard anything from them.

Today I'm driving out to the Talbert ranch and right when I'm coming up to this gated house, I see a llama. The lady of the house has got a bucket of food trying to lure it across the cow grate of her gate. I stop because the llama is right in the middle of the road. So it walks up to me and sticks it's head in through my open window and I'm eye to eye with a llama. I'm thinking if this thing snorts on me I'm going to be pissed. The lady asks if I was coming to her house and I said, "No," that I was headed on up the road. But I could see that she needed help and the silly llama obviously was curious about me so I slowly drove in through her gate and we almost made it but the llama wouldn't go through. She had put a couple pieces of plywood across the cow grate but every time the llama stepped on the plywood he'd back off and go back into the road. The llama's name was Franklin Louie and he wasn't hers but she had him over to breed with her female llama. I tried helping her for about 15 minutes but Franklin wasn't having none of walking on the plywood no matter how good the food in the bucket was. Finally he went up into the weeds by the fence and I was able to back out and get on down the road. She had to distract him so he wouldn't follow me.

I made the sale at the Talbert ranch as they were home this time. I asked them how many acres they had and the man said 2000. He lives in the house with his mother and works the ranch by himself.

When I drove back past the gate, there was no sign of the llama. If she calls me to order their picture (which I doubt) I'll have to ask her how it all turned out.