Excerpt
The telephone rang. I picked it up.



"Hello," a lady answered, "Are you the guy who buys used roof slate?"



"Yes."



"Well, I have enough for a whole roof, and you can have it all if you want them."



"Where are they?"



"They're on my house!"



"They're still on your roof?"



"Yes! And you can have them for nothing if you?ll take them off."



I paused for a moment, then asked, "Why do you want your slate roof taken off?"



"Because it leaks. We've already bought fiberglass shingles to replace the roof; they're sitting in the driveway. We just need somebody to take the old roof off."



"Well ma'am, the reason I buy roof slate is because I repair and restore slate roofs for a living. Maybe I should have a look at your roof before you take it off." There was a pause at the other end of the line. I could almost hear the thoughts racing through the lady's head: What? I can repair my slate roof?



"But we already bought the shingles."



"You can return them and get your money back if you don't need them, which you may not. What kind of slates do you have on your roof."



"What kind? I didn't know there were different kinds."



"Slates generally fall into two categories - hard and soft. If you have hard slates, they should last the life of your house and you won't need to replace them. If you have soft slates, then you probably don't have a choice, you'll have to replace the roof. I can tell at a glance what kind of slate you have."



The next day I stopped to look at the roof. The slates were hard Vermont "sea green" slate with a life expectancy of 150 - 200 years. The house was about eighty years old. There was one slate missing from the roof - one slate! - and the roof had a little leak at the spot where the slate had broken off. Otherwise, the roof was beautiful. So I offered to repair the roof for a small fee, explaining that the roof should never have to be replaced in her lifetime.



The lady accepted, I did the hour-long repair job, she saved both her roof and several thousand dollars, and I haven?t seen her since. This is a true and typical story.



I can go on and on with these kinds of stories. One young lady who had a beautiful old Victorian house with a hard, Vermont slate roof in very good condition told me she also was considering having the slate taken off the roof. "Why?" I asked. "Well I thought you were just supposed to replace slate roofs when they got old," she replied. . . .