Rich,

Your right, I did expect that you would come back and no, I'm not 'sorry' - that was sarcasm.  I'm fine with both of us having and expressing our opinions.  I think that if we had this discussion in person, we would actually agree more than disagree.  I definitely don't see why you had to take a comment that didn't agree with yours and start talking about how maybe I am a cheat and thief too, but again that's your prerogative. 

I would be interested to hear how I flamed your character.  As far as I can see, all I suggested was that if you always deal with situations with physical intimidation, then you're eventually going to run into a situation that somebody escalates beyond what you can handle.  You've told plenty of stories on here about getting in guys faces about various things from when you were a truck driver, you told the story of chasing some guys down relatively recently with your daughter in the truck, you talked about purposely walking through a rough section of a larger city because you could.  All of these stories and others led me to believe that this is how you feel and if that's not correct, I'll be shocked, but I'll also apologize.  I'm not preaching at you that this is wrong, I just don't consider it very smart (that's my opinion about this behavior, not your general intelligence on other matters).  I deal with trouble when it comes to me, but I don't go looking for it.

To address your points:

Lots of people are 'pissed' by salesman that stop.  It's often not a convenient time and may not even be a desired product.  Just because I don't like them coming in the drive doesn't mean I should steal from them.

There's plenty of people that know where my farm is that I would maybe rather they didn't.  I have never heard of a theft resulting from a visit of these gypsies, but I do know of some that resulted after a 'scrapper' did some work.

When I lived in Mississippi, the N word got used more in a week then I had heard it the entire time I was growing up in Ohio.  I don't like it, but if they don't say anything, maybe it's not a problem.  I had a barn painted in Ohio by one of these groups.  This particular group came through every year and used decent paint and did a good job.  The group was about 5 black guys and an older white guy and he never used that term that I heard, but I wouldn't have been surprised if he had.

The whole check being ripped up deal may have happened, but who gives a new check to somebody without getting the old one back?  Seems like a pretty easy theft to prevent.

Mike