By Tim Brannon | Posted in Best Practices, www.rurallifestyledealer.com
Many decades ago, we sold the old Marliss grain drill. It was a pretty good no-till drill with sellable features and a few that needed some engineering help, as in all products. We, with the blessing of the company, kept a rental unit for demos and true rentals, with the agreement all rental money be paid in and applied to reduce the price of said drill. It worked well.
We sold drills and the reduced-price unit always had a waiting list of buyers. Marliss noticed the success and sent a freelance journalist down to do a story on an owner of one of their drills. The rep — Pat Patterson — suggested my dad as the best subject to be the endorser of his product. I immediately drew a deep breath. I have a lot of Dad’s genes, and a lot of them are hardcore, negative attitude, spiral helix attached DNA crazy, but nothing like what ole Harold Hamton Brannon’s genes contained.
Harold was a child of the depression, a barefoot Tennessee farm boy, a 50 caliber, Ma Duce machine gunner on a M3 Half-track in the 4th Armored Division of Patton’s 3rd Army who spewed lead all over Europe. He could bite off a chaw of “Bull of the Woods” raw chewing tobacco and never miss a word in a sentence while doing it. He didn’t mince words and didn’t know how to tell a fib. This, was going to be good.