July 8, 2006

           You’ll have to take my word that the average Saturday around here is a lot more exciting that what you’ll get today. Sales were good, but not enough to make me consider the horror of doing the same thing (or anything) a full forty hours a week. For that matter, robbing banks is probably preferable to a dead end job. If you get caught, they just put you in a different kind of prison. Did you know that even medieval peasants didn’t work forty hours a week?

           I almost sold that 1860’s picture. It must be standard for bargain hunters to point out they “don’t like the frame”, like that would make me lower the price. I am no judge of art but this is one old painting, the signature looks like “ECSlick” or “WCSlick”. Help me out here.            I’ve seem several novel pictures in the store, including one made from black stitches on a coarse canvas. No other colors but from a foot back it looked like one of those black and white lithographs. It sold before I could scan or photograph. For unusual items, we have a bread pan, also from the 1800’s. It is cracked, but otherwise in museum condition. That one is set aside for Dickens to examine.

           It is hand-carved and as rustic as you can get. Apparently it is not exactly a bread pan, but rather a large bowl for letting the bread rise into a loaf shape. You knead the dough and cover and I can visualize the thing covered in flower, rocking around from the kneading motion (it is also round on the base).
           The individual carving marks are clearly visible and the surface is worn smooth from years of use. The bowl is sturdy yet it is very light-weight. If it is a collector’s item, maybe Dickens and I could go on that Roadhouse show for ‘tards and do that phony “I never thought it was worth that much” act. That has got to be one of the lamest shows ever conceived.

           Oh, remember that Pignose amp that has been there forever? I sold it today. To a lady who needs an amp to do her puppet show. Also gone is that Sears buttonhole attachment. That was a tough one and it was no help whatsoever to find out that Sears, an outfit who ought to know better, do not have an index on their web page for model numbers. You kind of have to guess [what you are looking for] by using the size of the machine.
           I decided not to go out for the evening. Instead, I am finally reading “The Bonfire of the Vanities”. It is a great title but I have not yet read the part that explains what it means. The book was published in 1987 at a time when people who had obviously never visited California actually thought New York City was the “greatest city of the 20th century”.
           It is full of New York crap so far, but maybe it will pick up. It typifies what most of the US thinks of the Atlantic northeast. Full of politicians, lawyers and tax collectors but nobody getting any real work done anymore. Nobody dreams of creating anything, just of becoming rich enough to live in an apartment. Yeah, if it is such a great place, why did even Al Capone clear out?

           Right at quitting time these three ladies came it. It has been at least ten years since I’ve heard three of them all talking at the same time. Oddly, they had the ability to follow each other where I had to repeatedly stop them and get clarification. I appreciated their whipping out credit cards for everything but a steady diet of that chatter would drive me bonkers. Again with that annoying Florida bad habit of asking the same question over and over and over in slightly different words. They had great difficulty with the concept that a 5 volt and 12 volt power supply were not the same thing.
           I know just the television show they would enjoy.