This piece was written for the Six Sentence Challenge, with the prompt word of ‘fair’
As Mr. Orr’s son, Welles, trudged slowly along to Hardly Fair, sitting on the bone-rattling seat of his cart pulled by a horse he’d borrowed (Clyde’s ‘Dale’), he speculated on what prices the goods he had on board would fetch.
He had no real head for trade and was easily confused when he had to calculate how many apples were in a pound of grapes and whether a wigwam for a goose’s bridle was considered essential for a man of good standing or a luxury that few could afford.
He knew that he could always rely on selling a few left-handed screwdrivers and some cans of striped paint and a couple of boxes of skyhooks to the dimmer folk but he always rode home thinking that what he really needed was something considered universally necessary by his largely impecunious customers eking out a living on the Aero Plains.
He grew barely enough to feed himself and his family of undiscovered artists, alchemists and potboiler authors (whose only real talent seemed to be procreation and who constantly complained that their genius was being stifled by the lack of an indoor toilet), so he had no agricultural surplus to sell.
As his spine almost cracked crossing the rock-strewn Crickety Creek, it dawned on him that the answer was right beneath his feet (or at least Dale’s feet), namely water, so the next week he rode to market with crates of bottled water labelled “Welles Water – Sourced from a pristine mountain stream and guaranteed free of cholera, typhoid, anthrax and all manner of other diseases present in Crickety Creek!”
On his way home in his newly-purchased flatbed truck, he collected the water barrels filled by his ne’er-do-well family from Crickety Creek and set out for his bottling plant.
Six Crooked Highways 
I’d be a curious customer looking over those “left-handed screwdrivers” and “cans of striped paint”. Nice description of the undiscovered whose “only real talent seemed to be procreation”.
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Many thanks, Frank.
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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I LOVE the puns!
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Thanks, Marla, that makes me smile as well. 🙂
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They are great. And the fact that it’s a full story in 6 sentences is amazing to me. I’m not that amazing at punctuation, and I’ve had it drilled into me that run ins are a criminal offense lol
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Damn the nay-sayers! Write how you want to write, use a grammar checker, and then discard half of what it tells you. 🙂
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Oh I will never use a grammar checker. I mean if it’s built into the word processor and it runs while spell check is going, fine. But otherwise, the only grammar check I use is my own eyeballs if I remember to proofread before posting. The grammar checkers always tell me everything I write is terrible and they freeze up my computer (it’s a Frankenstein build from computers dating from 2015 and before as I had the parts and have no money). So, I just proofread myself. And sometimes a run on gets through, so do the dreaded “fragments”. But overall, my brain screams “that’s a run on! If it had to be two sentences, make it two. Don’t keep writing one long sentence!!!” And then that big floating red F pops into my head. But you have motivated me to try to undo some of that brutal training that you are sent to school to learn. I wonder if I could write a full story in 6 sentences like you did. I tend to go full story but very short with my 6 sentence stories. I wonder if I could go longer… it’s a challenge anyway lol
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Go for it, Marla. Don’t give an F about the F. 🙂 Cue Pink Floyd ‘Another Brick In The Wall’. Teacher, leave them kids alone! 🙂
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Hahaha that is what the plan is. If I can get that harpy out of my head 😂
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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Congratulations! Good luck with it!
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Many thanks, Marla.
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You’re welcome, Doug.
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I have a feeling this will not end well for the townspeople, or Orson.
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Mind like a steel trap, Liz. 🙂
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>>CHOMP!!<<
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Well, there goes that foot. 🙂
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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Success at last 🙂
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Yes but for how long? 🙂
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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Thanks for letting me know, Doug!
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Isn’t that a sign of the times 😞
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Indeed but I sense it was ever thus. Chaucer told us about ‘priests’ on the road selling pieces of the One True Cross as the genuine article that must have been sourced by clearing a forest or two. 😉
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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It’s on my list Doug. I’ll be making my purchasing next week 🙂
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Thank you so much. 🙂
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I too, love those puns, Doug! Welles could try bottling fresh air too😉even if it doesn’t have quite the same ring about it. It should go down well with the owners of those left-handed screwdrivers!
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Thanks, Chris. I remember many years ago homesick Australians in England buying cans of eucalyptus-scented air. Not quite up there with pet rocks but very enterprising. 🙂
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🙂
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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Fun Six.
Interesting, how, when someone executes a tale as cleverly punny as this, one can’t resist the temptation to, somehow, join in. (Alas, don’t have the vocabulary… though I barely resisted a comment that mentions a war of the worlds…
‘cellent wordifying
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Thanks, clark. Never resist the temptation to join in and puntificate to your heart’s content. 🙂
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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That seems to be quite the turnaround for his business. Let’s hope they don’t realise where the water ‘actually’ is from.
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I think they just might eventually, Bernadette.
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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Sounds great! Congrats!
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Thanks, Bernadette
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Unfair Trade water, such brilliant marketing. Fiction wrung from headlines?
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Indeed, D. 🙂
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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You know, Doug, I find reading everyone’s comments and your responses almost (I said almost, lol) as enjoyable as your stories. Once again, I smile 🙂
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… which is always my aim, Denise. 🙂 Like you, the comments are a community lifeline that I value so much.
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You waste no words in the pursuit of humor!
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The strict economy of six sentences is sometimes a boon. 🙂
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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Oh, how i liked this! Puns are the best.
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Many thanks, Mimi.
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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You had me with the first couple of words and it just got better and better! A tale of a chancer, nice one.
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Thanks, Keith, glad you enjoyed it.
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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I guess, Doug, that all’s Welles that ends Welles.
At least until it runs dry…
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Very punny 🙂
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Dear Six-Sentencer. With Denise’s permission, I am letting you know that I have recently self-published a collection of short humorous pieces, some of which came from the Six sentence challenges, called Raving and Wryting. It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and as a paperback. With the e-book, you don’t need the Kindle app if you don’t have it; once you’ve purchased you can simply read it in your browser via Kindle Cloud Reader. https://www.amazon.com/Raving-Wryting-Bite-sized-desperate-times-ebook/dp/B09NXMXB3W
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