The Carpenter Who Never Fixed But Only Destroyed

 

There was a sad and decrepit carpenter who saw a crisis looming in every house on his block. He informed one neighbor that his front porch was in danger of collapsing and that he was just the person who could fix it. The neighbor was alarmed because he knew little of such matters, and so he trusted the carpenter to take care of his front porch.

 That very day, truckfuls of material were delivered and the carpenter and a large crew of helpers immediately got to work. With sledgehammers and jackhammers they went at it, instantly demolishing the front porch, along with a bit of the front wall of the house (it seems there was some dry rot there as well). In no time at all what once was a front porch was now a pile of rubble.

 But after that, things went more slowly. And soon the owner of the house with the demolished porch discovered that the carpenter was spending all his time talking his neighbors into getting their houses fixed instead of keeping an eye on the few workers who were still on the job around the clock and yet didn’t seem to fix anything.

 After landing a job replacing someone’s garage, the carpenter moved even these few workers off the job and moved them all on to the next one. Again, in no time at all, the crew demolished the garage to nothing more than a pile of rubble. But after this was accomplished, along with a little collateral damage caused to the next-door neighbor’s tree (which was in the way of the wrecking ball they brought in), the promised improvements were slow to be delivered. In fact, things were much worse than they were, because while the garage the man once had was far from perfect, at least he could park his car in it. Now, men with expensive equipment stood around as if nobody had told them what the job was they were sent to accomplish. And then one day, the little carpenter ceased to appear at the job site at all, leaving behind a small contingent of hired hands who did little to nothing to make things better.

 And so it went, the little carpenter time and again warned people of the imminent danger they faced should they not place all their faith in him and allow him to use all the force necessary to fix the problem.

 Soon, half the houses in the neighborhood had piles of rubble where imperfect but serviceable edifices once stood. Many people were forced to leave their homes because they could no longer live there. And yet the little carpenter continued to convince people that he and only he could save the neighborhood from the looming disasters that no one really noticed until he gave them a good thorough investigation.

 Never once did the carpenter fix a house the way he said he was going to, although the prosperity he brought to himself and his partners was incontestable. Yet never once did anyone in the neighborhood seriously question him about the terrible work he was doing, for as soon as the subject was broached, a new catastrophe was discovered which needed the focus and attention of everyone if they did not want property values in the neighborhood to plummet.

 The moral of the story goes, if the word “moral” can be used regarding such a story, is that if you are a horrible carpenter that can only destroy and never improve, you better have one hell of a public relations firm to back you up.