Gigging frogs

The curmudgeon may have mentioned he had run into rather colorful people during his career.


I suspect Lou King is at the top of the list.  A rare outside hire, he was brought in to turn around an astonishingly mismanaged piece of the business - business telephones.  Overweight, overpriced, poorly sourced at the factory, the poor management hadn't missed an opening for, err, poor management.


Along comes Lou: he makes pretty much one good move - hire the curmudgeon's sainted wife to actually do all the icky stuff required, which with her usual focus and energy, fixes the business.


Unlike Wall St. or Fannie May, Ma Bell had no financial mechanism to reward such outstanding performance and results.  But Lou was thankful, and decided to gift her a frog gigger.


Lou grew up in the swamps of Louisiana, and dinner often consisted of whatever you were lucky enough to spear. The gigger was a 6' pole with a four-pronged, barbed tip on it.  Once gigged, that frog was dinner.


Being polite sorts, we graciously accepted this gift, although all the way home wondering what one might gig in suburban NJ.


Then the curmudgeon, ever resourceful and ever cheap, hit upon the perfect solution: use it to put up those Christmas light mini-stings in the tree out front.


Oh, Lou, how can we ever thank thee?