Have a Berry Nice Day

Nature can be very wasteful. Take blackberries for example. We've got about an acre of them growing in a thick tangle downhill from our spring here at Clear Creek Ranch. In season they produce thousands, perhaps millions of juicy, sweet, blue-black berry clusters.
When we first purchased our property we didn't know what to do with such a bonanza, but the local wildlife did. The deer browsed as high as they could reach on the outer edges of the patch. When those canes were bare, they moved on to easier pickings -- in our erstwhile rose garden.
The sweetest berries, of course, were in the impenetrable interior of the patch, where each cluster was protected by a phalanx of bloodthirsty thorns. Having torn myself to shreds in a futile quest after these succulent beauties, I forfeited all future rights to the airborne division: the neighborhood birds.
The ease with which they feasted upon their bounty irked me. Some perched on the very thorns that still bore traces of my shirt threads and dried blood. And the feathered freeloaders were so reckless and wasteful. A single peck at each berry cluster and then on to the next. Most of the fruit rotted where it hung. Things had to change.
That autumn I rented a brush clearing machine and mowed a a maze-like series of intersecting rows through the patch so I'd have access to the next summer's crop. To thwart the deer, who would have treated these new rows like additional aisles at the open air grocery store, I mowed a single entrance to the maze and secured it with an eight foot high wire gate.
This system worked great, as long as I remembered to close the gate. Soon we were feasting on bucketsful of the luscious berries. But even a steady diet of caviar and champagne gets old, I am told. (I've never had a first hand opportunity to research this, but I will consider any offers in this direction.)
Our berry-lust was sated long before the bushes quit producing, so we hunted for new outlets for our harvest. Unfortunately, the few neighbors who would admit to eating anything that didn't start out with hooves, fur, and/or feathers were already inundated with their own berry crops.
"How about a roadside stand," my wife suggested.
I told her of my bitter disappointment as a youthful lemonade entrepreneur on a lightly-traveled cul-de-sac somewhere deep within a bland tract development in outer-suburbia. My only sale had been to the neighborhood mailman. And even those sales figures were artifically inflated. (Mom, if you're reading, I've never mentioned this, but I saw you hand him that dime when he dropped off our mail just before he stopped at my stand).
Still, we had bushels of berries rotting on our screen porch and one of our neighbors had an abandoned vegetable stand out by the county road. It was a ramshackle affair, with sagging roof and peeling paint and had belonged to someone named Chuck, because "Chuck's" was scrawled in large free-hand letters on both sides. According to my neighbor, weekend traffic on the road was brisk, and chockful of rich foreigners from the city.
That weekend I carted my berries to the stand, hand painted my own addendum to Chuck's magnificent work: "berry's." I know that's the wrong spelling. But a dyslexic haze shrouded my brain as soon as I picked up the paintbrush. In addition to the Y' where the IE should have been, the first R was flipped backwards so its little leg pointed to the left. I adjusted my overalls, settled down with my crossword puzzle and nibbled on berries while I waited for my public to discover me.
Several hours later, when most of the berries were gone, they did. By then my hands, lips, and shirtfront were stained blue with berry juice. A carload of little kids stared at me like I was the tattooed carnival man. Their mother asked if I had restroom facilities for her squirming urchins. I pointed a blue finger toward the the bushes behind the shed, and even offered my crossword puzzle if she was in need of paper products.
"Give me a map back to civilization, you blue-faced yahoo!" she screeched. I extracted a waterlogged map from my truck glove box and she flipped me a $10 bill, not waiting for change.
Slight variations on this scenario repeated themselves throughout the day. A little "idea light" twinkled in my brain.
The roadside stand is now fruitless, but fruitful, despite an irate visit from the local chapter of the Apostrophe Abuse Council. Chuck's Berry's now houses a road map vending machine and two pay toilets. Business is brisk, and I don't even have to be there.
The outhouse, of course, is known as the Johnny B Goode.