Once upon a time, there was a farmer named Brown who took a wife and lived in a dell. He was a pillar of the community and a tower of strength to his family, though he was only knee-high to a grasshopper. Size, however, didn’t amount of a hill of beans to him. He believed the bigger they come, the harder they fall; not that might is right, mind you, although the proof of that is often in the pudding.

Hard working and honest as the day is long, he toed the line and vied with the best of them, but it was a hard row to hoe. He toiled from dawn to dusk with precious little to show for the sweat of his brow. On he labored, hoping against hope that his ship would come in so he could eke out enough money to buy a fine kettle of fish. His wife could then cook up a storm, and they’d eat with relish to their heart’s content. But alas, it was not to be.

Nobody’d ever told them life was fair, and in fact, it was no bed or roses. With their noses to the grindstone while bent to the task, they gritted their teeth and worked their fingers to the bone. Farmer Brown yearned for a better lot in life, but feared it was a lost cause.

One chance in a million may have only been a pipe dream, hoping for manna from heaven as he did, and he knew the odds were against him. He would probably be no luckier than the man in the moon, but still he thought, “I can dream, can’t I?”

And so, he continued to grind it out, working his butt off on his poor patch of land, wondering if he’d ever get to sit in the lap of luxury.

And then he was put to the test. While working like a dog in the fields, what to his wondering eyes should appear but a wallet lying in a furrow next to the yellow brick road running alongside the old homestead.

He scooped it up and it was as heavy as lead. Opening it with trembling fingers, he saw a wad of bills thick enough to choke a horse. Suddenly feeling rich as Midas, he began to count his bonanza, nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof. He was between a rock and a hard place; was it “finders keepers” or “do the right thing?” He was on the horns of a dilemma.

Money, Farmer Brown had oft been told, is the root of all evil, but his life of hardship tipped the scales and giving the devil his due, he half-heartedly searched the filthy lucre for the owner’s ID. He was sorely disappointed, for as luck would have it, he found it.

“Oh, what to do?” he lamented. “We are dirt poor and there’s so much money here, more than meets the eye. Would it be missed if I helped myself to just a touch, or even the whole enchilada?

Father knew best when he taught me that honesty is the best policy, but many’s the slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip, especially with dear old Dad who was more often than not drunk as a skunk.”

That was it! All bets were off. Finally, it was to be Farmer Brown’s day in the sun, so he pocketed the loot and skedaddled helter skelter for the bank with the moola burning a hole in his pocket every inch of the way.

Without batting an eye and grinning from ear to ear, the teller deposited half of the new-found fortune and chortled “A wise decision to heed the fable of the grasshopper and the ant.

Penny saved, penny earned, and it’s prudent to be penny wise rather than pound foolish, Farmer Brown! I’m delighted you didn’t spend it all in one place or throw it away on cigarettes, whiskey and wild, wild women!”

“Yep,” retorted the farmer, running pell-mell from the bank to buy the little woman a trinket which might tickle her fancy.

He found one in a jewelry store, plain as the nose on his face, a ring with a diamond as big as a house. He said, “wrap it up,” and he strode home with a spring in his step, feeling like a million bucks.

But he was set upon by a pack of vicious hoodlums who knocked the living daylights out of him, swiped the diamond ring (overlooking the wallet in their haste,) and ran like hell. Too small to defend himself, Farmer Brown lay in the gutter thinking that money is an ill wind that blows no good, and then lapsed into unconsciousness.

The police arrived and found the wallet on his person. Thinking the ID was his, they carted him off to the hospital and notified the wrong family that their loved one had been laid low by loathsome scoundrels.

Thus, the true owner of the wallet arrived, demanding the return of his money and threatening to send the farmer up the river to do hard time, maybe on the chain gang. The farmer, both fearing for his very life and not wanting to spend the rest of it making license plates for the state, lied through his teeth and told of how it was all lost through no fault of his own, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The wallet’s owner left in a towering rage and the farmer leapt from his bed of pain and high-tailed it for home under a full head of steam. Whistling a happy tune, he decided the missus wouldn’t have liked a diamond ring anyway. Best of all, he still had half the money.

“Half a loaf is better than none,” he mused. “I finally have my nest egg, money I can spend like water, without a care in the world. It is not my intention to mend the error of my ways, since it has been proven time and again that nice guys finish last. Who would have believed it? Here I’ve gone from rags to riches in a twinkle and have found true happiness. It’s so trite, it’s almost a cliché!”

LC Van Savage is a local writer. Contact her at LCVS@comcast.net, or visit LCVanSavage.com.