My Tuesday morning was spent working on the screenplay I’m writing for the upcoming Twister Alley Film Festival. It’s a heartwarming tale about two lesser prairie chickens who manage to outwit a witless hunter bent on bearing witness to having feathery-footed fowl for dinner.
Okay not really, but it’s a better idea than what I am working on. Hey, it’s not easy writing a screenplay from scratch. Plus, there’s that whole must-be-formatted-a certain-way thing. Yeesh…people are so picky. Years ago, I wrote a screenplay based on a novel and that was a lot easier. Essentially, I used every fifth page of the book and threw out the rest. See…easy. Maybe I should try writing my screenplay idea out as a story and then convert it to a screenplay…nah, not enough time. Entries are due to the festival organizers by the end of December. Stupid screenplay. So anyway, that was my morning…sitting in the backyard here at the compound staring off into blue sky as the pad of paper on my lap was ripped to shreds by near hurricane-force winds. I didn’t get very far along as you may surmise. At noon, I was on the motorcycle trying my best to get somewhere though it was a bit tough going east or west with near hurricane-force winds straight out of the south (and hell) forcing me to lean the bike 45 degrees into the wind just to keep it on the road. The afternoon, though, now that was quality time. We are still unpacking boxes of crap we brought from the east coast. Oh sure, there’s mostly boxes of essentials, including countless DVDs of Laurel and Hardy shorts, John Wayne movies, Clint Eastwood movies, etc. El Niño-Mel Schmiño, I’m prepared for a bad winter…don’t you watch Happy Hands Morgan in the afternoon? (We’re all gonna die!) He’ll probably have everyone drive to Boston when the snows come. While living on the east coast over the past ten years, I would spend my weekends frequenting estate sales/auctions and/or yard sales looking for quality items that I could resell. I didn’t actually have a retail space from which I could sell stuff…instead, I became an eBay rat. In case you haven’t noticed though eBay moved from being the world’s biggest flea market to something else. Once they started making life tough for little guys like me, it just wasn’t worth it anymore. I’ve always had my hand in buying and then selling quality junk. My best experience doing that was while living in Southern California. There, those pesky Californians have year-round swap meets. It’s a quality junk dealer’s dreamscape. Most of the crap was sold before I could even unload it at the site…people were pulling it out of the back of my pickup and shoving cash into my hands. I WAS LIVING THE DREAM, I’M TELLIN’ YA! Of course, the flip side of that is that you’re living in Southern California, which other than the generally great weather (70 degrees and sunny on Christmas day)…there’s the traffic, the cost of living, the crime, the friggin’ earthquakes (ain’t got nothing on central Oklahoma tho…just sayin’). But, I digress… So it was that I kept unpacking boxes yesterday afternoon and acting all surprised and excited when I unboxed one of my estate sale treasures that followed me from Virginia. I started thinking I could actually get something going here if I had the right location to sell from. I could maybe set up shop along Highway 183 headed out of town to get the most traffic. Or, maybe I could just hire out that gazillion-dollar events center over at the fairgrounds since they don’t seem to fill it very often and turn it into a weekly indoor flea market. I’ll bet after a few weeks of me filling their space with quality junk sellers, the Woodward County Commissioners would allow a flag with my face to be raised on the unused flag pole that they denied to local veterans (no money there, I guess). Eh, I still like the idea of opening a retail space along Williams Avenue somewhere and truly live the Fred Sanford life. Every morning my friends, Bubba, Grady, and Rollo can stop by for coffee and gossip. Maybe I can get the nephew to be Lamont. Hey now…he even has a big truck that we can use to haul treasures from all over the country. I’m telling you this has possibilities. I’ll get Cousin Fred from Western Arkansas involved. He’ll work the counter while I’m in back drinking (coffee) with my pals and Nephew Lamont is out working the truck. I’ll bet if I ask nicely, my sister would do the Aunt Esther thing. You know, come through the store swinging her purse and chasing us “fish-eyed heathens” out the door. Actually, the sister enjoys buying quality junk as much as I do and she’s very creative. She’d be really great at re-purposing quality junk into flea market chic! Hey…as an added bonus, I’ll sell bootleg BBQ out the backdoor. Of course, that assumes I’m finally able to settle on a new grill and IT DOESN’T GET STOLEN before I can get it assembled. For every quarter-rack of ribs and Robin’s (aka, Fred) special coleslaw that someone buys, I’ll throw in a genuine stainless steel (ignore the rust spots) surgical probe (made in Pakistan) with the Oklahoma state motto (“sic semper looney-toons”) engraved backwards on the handle. I bought 4,000 of them at an estate sale down in Vici last week. Can’t pass up a bargain! Comments are closed.
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