Kettering once made a wager with a friend that if the friend would hang up a bird cage in his house, that the friend would eventually have to buy a bird to put in it. The skeptical friend took the bet.
"I bought him an attractive bird cage made in Switzerland," Kettering recalled, "and my friend hung it near his dining room table. And, of course you know what happened. People would come in and say, "When did your bird die?"
"I never had a bird," Kettering's friend would answer, only to be asked, "Then why do you have a bird cage?"
Finally, despite himself, Kettering's friend decided it was simpler to buy a bird than to keep explaining why he had an empty bird cage in his dining room.
At this point in his story, Kettering would tell his listeners, "If you hang bird cages in your mind, eventually you go out and get something to put into them.
From The Howe Herald.