Organized Crime Eyes Rising Sagebrush Revenue

Reno, Nevada, August 9, 2011--Vinnie "Big Bonanza" Romano is finally a happy man. While sales at his International Romano Cheese Company are merely modest, street sales of his sagebrush products are finally going up in smoke.

According to sources who claim their lives "wouldn't be worth a played out silver mine" if they talked openly, Romano moved from Detroit to Reno three years ago when he realized the Sagebrush State was "a place where the big cheese in a well-organized family" could corner the sagebrush market.

"The landscape around Carson City, Virginia City and Reno is badder than the Badlands," Romano purportedly told his friends around a Vegas roulette wheel before there numbers were up. "But look at all the damn sagebrush, ripe for the picking."

Romano set up a factory in an abandoned silver mine near Virginia City in spite of the fact nearby signs told him the place was dangerous. The plan: to introduce a new product called Nevada Rubbed Sage that would steal business from the venerable McCormick Company.

Factory manager Mario Bruno sent gangs of sagebrush thieves out into the bad Nevada landscape to bring the stuff back to the mine by the light of the moon and a few well-placed flashlights. Beneath the rotting timbers where men once became rich extacting silver from the earth, Bruno's machines hacked, chopped and rubbed sage before depositing it into thousands of .5 ounce bottles with silvery labels.

According to chief marketing goon, Bill Smith, McCormick's sage is imported from Croatia which "last I heard, is unAmerican. Our home-grown product will help the poor Carson City and Reno economy while undercutting McCormick's $2.98 price."

Introduced at $1.00 a bottle three years ago, initial sales of Nevada Rubbed Sage were brisk even  though Trader Joe's, Safeway and Walmart refused to carry the product.

"Who are you going to trust to rub your sage," quipped Romano, "sage from a company founded by a guy named Willoughby or a jet-setter named Vinnie?"

Vinnie's rubbed sage hit the fan, informed sources believe, on Thanksgiving Day 2008 when everyday families dipped into mama's best turkey and dressing and realized that the ground up and rubbed sagebursh growing on Nevada's bad-looking landscape tasted bad.

Sagebrush expert Rider Purple explained to reporters gathered around a Nevada Rubbed Sage outlet on U. S. 395 that while the toxic sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata, smells like common sage (Salvia officinalis) when it's wet, it "tastes lousy and bitter and more or less like weeds on a plate."

After trying "weeds on a plate" as a green-oriented, natural-sounding, family-friendly slogan for his Nevada Rubbed Sage, Romano concluded late this summer that his rubbed sage was simply rubbing people the wrong way. According to uninformed sources, he said, "hell, maybe we can get those turkeys out there to smoke it."

To the chagrin of the legal and highly taxed cigarette companies, sales of Vinnie's Bad Smokes have been brisk.

--Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

This e-book parody of “helpful hints” newspaper feature articles is inspired by "In a Flash," by Smoky Trudeau Zeidel and by "Morning Satirical News," a weblog by Malcolm R. Campbell. Available for only 99 cents.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Montucky.wordpress.com]

Perhaps a moral to this story would be that before going into such a business Vinnie should have gotten some "sage" advice.

[Malcolm Campbell]

Sage advice might have saved Vinnie a lot of heachaches, Montucky.