Text Two. «Handicapped People Do Useful Work»

«Handicapped People Do Useful Work»

Vocabulary: blind handicapped to earn a broom a mop

Joseph Emmons can’t use his eyes. He’s blind. He has a trained dog named Buster that leads him where he wants to go. Buster sees for Mr Emmons. He’s called a seeing eye dog.

Although Mr Emmons has a handicap, it isn’t a big problem. He has a useful job and he earns his own money. Mr Emmons sells brooms and mops to people in his part of the city. He works every day except Sunday.

Mr Emmons gets up at 6:00 every morning and eats breakfast with his wife. Then he leaves the house at 7:00. He holds Buster and walks from house to house. He carries his mops and brooms with him. While he talks to people, the dog sits and waits. The people choose a broom, and then they pay him.

Buster doesn’t let Mr Emmons talk to people very long. He likes to keep moving. It takes four and a half months to walk to every house in this part of the city. Mr Emmons visits each house every four months, and by then the people are usually ready to buy new brooms.

Mr Emmons likes his job. He’s very healthy because he works outside every day. But these days he has a problem. His brooms last so long that sometimes they are still good after four months. Then nobody needs to buy a new one.

Mr Emmons is proud of his brooms because blind people make them. He picks up a new supply of brooms every week. He says, «If you don’t sell people something good, they are not going to buy from you the second time you come around».