GRAPE  Juice !!!   November 10, 1998
 
Good morning fellow Grape Arbor Relaxers,
 
     Let's talk for a minute about the old saying;
 
          Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.
 
               To that we might add the following,
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     until big business bars the door to your path, or beats your better mousetrap into pieces.
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     Take for instance (before it fades from the collective memory of the entire world) a better roach trap.
 
     It was a few years ago (maybe ten or twelve) that there used to be a better roach trap.  It was a very inexpensive "off brand".  I used them all the time.  You could set one out in a kitchen or bathroom and not see a roach for about a year, without having to change the bait trap!
 
     It was constructed as a white, heavy cardboard tube, about an inch or inch and one half long, and about one inch in diameter.  It had black printing on the tube.  Within the tube was a small rectangular block of pinkish colored bait. The bait was enclosed within plastic "bars" (like a  +  which allowed the roaches to get to the bait, and yet kept children safe from it.
 
     The roaches would eat the bait and then go back to their hiding places and die.  Roaches, being "cannibalistic", would eat the roach which had died from the bait.  The bait ingested by the dead roach would then kill the other roaches that cannibalized the dead one,,,, and so on,,, and so on,,,,.
 
     It was amazing....  Roaches would disappear for about a year!  Then, of course, you would simply have to replace the tube to keep them gone.
 
     Suddenly the small company, "off brand", cardboard tube, roach traps disappeared from the grocery store shelves.  I couldn't find one anywhere!
 
      About that same time, a major roach insecticide company came out with something "similar"....  Except it only claimed to be good for *three* months,,,,, and didn't work nearly as well for me (during the *three* months they claimed to be good for) as the "off brand", cardboard tube ones had worked for an  *entire year*!
 
     So much for the consumer's best interests!
 
     That's why I say,,,,
 
          Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door, until big business bars the door to your path, or beats your mousetrap to pieces.
 
Take care friends,
Washt
 
(C)  Copyright by Charles B. Edwards