As a prospector, I always wanted to strike it rich. I always wanted to go up in them hills and make the big claim. You know. Find the mother lode. And the second thing? That’s easy. As a music fan I always wanted to see The Rolling Stones.

So I spent the last twenty years tramping through those hills, chiseling those rocks and looking for those telltale yellow streaks that would make me rich. Yep, I crawled up and down those mountains and panned all those streams in hopes of finding gold. And while I was searching for El Dorado, there was only one other thing on my mind. The Stones.

Mick, Keith, Charlie and whomever is playing bass for the band these days. Yeah, thoughts of The Stones kept me going during the twenty years I was searching for gold. Like when I was stuck up in that cave during a blizzard, all the while humming “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” while the temperature dropped. Yeah, that’s when I got me a nasty case of frostbite and I had to amputate my left big toe. Or during that forest fire when I duked it out with Smokey The Bear over which album was better – Tattoo You or Exile On Main Street, resulting in me having to stitch up my own right eye. Yup. The Stones and gold. That’s all I ever wanted.

Then it happened. It was a Tuesday. A ruby kind of a Tuesday and I was up on Satisfaction Ridge, a diggin’ and a chiselin’ when I saw the biggest vein of gold in the world. Man, oh man, talk about an emotional rescue. I was rich!

You can guess what I did next. I loaded up my wheelbarrow with all the gold it could hold, and then I rolled it down that mountainside into town and marched straight for the Ticketmaster. I went right up to the clerk, showed him my wheelbarrow full of the precious of all metals and said, “Gimme one of those Gold Circle seats for The Rolling Stones. And make it snappy!”

But the clerk just looked at me, and it was then that I realized my mistake for I could see sympathy for an old devil like myself a brewin’ in his eyes. You see, I had spent twenty years up in them hills. Twenty dad-burn years looking for gold and thinking about The Stones. And during all that time, I guess you could say that I lost touch with the real world, and it all came crashing down on me when the clerk sadly shook his head and said that he couldn’t help me. That’s when I realized that I had made a big mistake by trying to buy primo Rolling Stones tickets with a wheelbarrow full of gold.

You see, I should have used a bigger wheelbarrow.