Read this and save big money!

 If you count the time I spent as a kid peddling Cloverine Brand Salve and all-occasion cards door to door, I have been in sales one way or another for over half a century.  Worked in wholesale for a while as a warehouseman and then  order clerk, managed a photo store for a while, had a real wild ride as a PR guy selling state government for the masses (ask me about the Legionnaire’s Disease cover-up some time, I was there), now I have my own business.  As businesses go, it is maybe two notches up from the guy selling fake Rolexes on street corners, but I like it.  But I digress.

The purpose of ths is to share some of the things I have learned over the years so you will  be able to save money at any venue where prices are negotiable–anything from yard sales to flesr market to Turkish rug bazaars.  Here are some do’s and don’ts.

Never be afraid to dicker.  Dealers with any sense expect this and set prices accordingly.  I hate to dicker myself, but accept it as part of the business.  What I really hate is when some people just make a stupidly low offer, then repeat it over and over again, and then over again a few times. Transplanted Russians are notorious for this; everyone in business I have talked to hates them.  Sometimes I actually sell at their price just to get rid of them, but I spit at them as they leave and put a Gypsy curse on them.  Don’t do this.  A more polite, and productive way to get a lower price  is to ask “Would you take___?”  If you get a No on this, offer to split the difference between the dealer’s first asking price and your first offer.  Say the item is priced at $50, and the dealer turns down your offer of $20.  The difference is $30, split that and add, and you get $35.  Offer that and there’s a good chance you’ll get it.

The easiest and gentlest way to dicker is to simpy ask “Is that your best price?”  Ask nicely, not in a snotty or mean tone.  I ALWAYS ask this, even when the price seems reasonable to begin with.  Sometimes a dealer gets defensive, or poor-mouths at this, but that is his problem.  It NEVER hurts to ask.  But only ask once–asking more than once is insulting, and makes you look like an idiot.

Best times to buy–right before opening and right before closing.  Hit me first thing, and I am likely to give you a better-than-average deal just to get the day started off with a sale.  See me last thing–especially in the case of something like a set of samuri swords–and I may just give you a hell of a discount just so I don’t have to pack the damn thing up and schlep it home.  Another, sneakier reason to deal early and late–many folks don’t wake up first thing, and/or are really tired and fuzzy by the end of the day, not at their sharpest, deal-making wise.

A big don’t–don’t poor-mouth.  Say an item is priced at $40, and you say something like “Gee, that’s nice, but I only have $15″ or something lame like that.  You may possibly get a pity bargain–if you do, don’t you DARE pull out a $20!  If you are really indigent, you have no business being there wasting everyone’s time.  Another don’t–don’t dicker and dicker and then pay for your bargain with a check.  This tends to piss dealers off.  It is ,at best, tacky and poor form.  If you intend to pay by check, make that clear at the beginning.  One more don’t–do not find fault with the merchandise as a ploy to get a lower price.  This is another thing Russians like to do, and I wnat to shoot them when they do that.  Every time  someone stops at my stand wearing a dumb-looking sateen Cossack shirt, or I hear that ugly gutteral Russky accent, I wince and think “Well, here we go again.”

Sometimes we  dealers will take barter. I used to trade for dope, then I quit using the stuff.  Used to trade for gold, then I got burned with a fake gold nugget.  Nowadays, I  mostly just trade for food or firearms.  I have made deals at gun shows, trading a high-end knife and some cash for a gun.  This is great, it is a win-win situation.  But don’t offer to trade something the dealer does not sell.  I sell, among other things, rocks and knives.  I have traded my  knives for rocks, but I don’t deal in used knives.  If the knife you’d want to trrade isn’t NIB (new in the box), don’t even ask.  If you want to sell something to a dealer, don’t expect to get anything close toa wholesale price..  We will assume it is stolen; we are usually correct.  The last time I bought knives from a guy that just stopped by, I gave him a dollar a knife.  They were a recognizable brand name, NIB. He was glad to get it.

We  will often give quantity discounts, or big-money discounts.  I have an ongoing deal with my $10 knives–buy two, get one free.  With my spendier merchandise ,on a slow day, you can pick out stuff that would sell for $150 if sold piecemeal, I’ll take a c-note for the lot.

Finally, something I learned at a  street market in Mexico and re-learned again and again–there is no such thing as intrinsic value.  Any  given thing is worth exactly what one person is willing to pay for it and what someone else is willing to take.

One of THOSE Days!

I wake  up this morning–again–I usually wake up every hour or so, see that it is finally time to get up.  Don my specs, get out of bed, pull a tendon in my leg.  Okay, so I’ll be gimping around  a little more than usual today, no biggie.  Then I notice a votive candle-holder on the floor.  I pick it up, see cat litter in it.  Then I see the cat shit on the floor–Silky seems to be telling me it’s time to clean the litter box.

Do that and get dressed without mishap, and am happy to see that my morning paper landed right outside the door.  I slide the door open, get the paper, slide the door shut, not noticing that I caught a bunch of hair in the door.  Straighten up, pull the hair out.  Ouch!  Oh well, I have a lot of hair for an old fart, no problem.

Turn on the TV, see Regis and the queen of Perky, remember that I taped Conan the night before, didn’t want to stay up that late,  Start the tape, see the beginning of The Terminator.  Fine.  I forgot to rewind the tape last night.

Start reading the paper.  Record storm in Nome, police brutality (cop’s victim got a millon bucks), more illegal antics perpetrated by our lieutenant governor.  Go to the comics–see that “For Better or For Worse” is lame and pointless, as usual.  Thank God, something I can depend on.

Finally get ready to go to the library–it is drizzling, probably another day off– get in the car,and go to turn on the wipers.  I turn on the high beams instead.  Oh well, I wanted the headlights on anyway.  Sigh.

So, how is YOUR day going?

Fall Gun Show Report

The AGCA Gun Club gun show at the state fairgrounds in Palmer started Saturday.  I was there.  Here’s the scoop.

 Friday,I had a semi-rough night, slept fitfully and had a few nightmares, mostly relating to my fear of economic insecurity.  Woke up at four, got to thinking about backstock, remembered I needed  more leopard-skin assisted openers, got up and put a few in a box, had a glass of apple juice, went back to bed.

My day didn’t start out so great.  I couldn’t find my belt–”Where the hell did it GO?” I demanded of my cat.  She wasn’t talking.  “What the hell did I DO with it?”  I had just seen it the previous night.  Then I remembered, I hadn’t done anything with it, just left it in the clutter where I found it again.  Got dressed okay, went to comb my hair, picked up a comb, found gravy on it.  “Rats!”  Almost threw the thing away, just set it aside, grabbed another comb.

I spent more time and care than usual picking out jewelry and rocks to carry, since I ascribe metaphysical properties to them.  I wore my usual quartz crystal dangly in my left ear–some years ago, I made a pact with the Quartz Deva–she would protect and serve me if I honored her by always wearing quartz.  It has worked out well.  Left ear –the receptive side–I wor  a diamond stud (diamonds=power, money, success) and an aquamarine stud to help my psychic sensitivity.  I also wore a big silver ring with a lapis cabachon on my left hand for the same reason.  In additon to the usual agates I carry for protection (in my left pocket), I carreied a rough emerald and some jade, both of which relate to money, success, and/or luck.

I had set up the night before, so all I had to do was take the sheets and stuff off my tables, put the bttle-axes in the rack, and I was good to go.  Before the show opened to the public, I made thr rounfs of other tables, spent some time at the rare coins guy.  Got a super deal on an 1893 Columbia half dollar (near mint uncirculated) and an 1858 Flying Eagle cent in good condition. (Note–the latter is rather rare, since they were only minted in 1857 and 1858, and only at the Philadelphia mint.)  The next day, I spent a lot of time picking out two wheat pennies , an old Argentine coin I got to go with my Argentine “Eva Peron” .38 special revolver (the gun was made in Spain, issued to the Buenos Aires police during the infamous Pereon regime), a weird 1940 coin from the British raj in India, and a French 5-centime coin just because I liked the looks of it.  Spent $21 for the lot–the catalog value is more than twice that, maybe three times.  I do a lot of business with the dealer and he gives me a break.  He wanted me to look at a selection of proof coins, but it turned out I didn’t have time.  This was  too bad–I don’t have any proofs, since they tend to be way expensive and uncommon.

I usually buy a gun or two at every show.  This time I didn’t, partly because I didn’t make a lot of money, partly because there were no super-special deals (like the four-barrel derringer I got last year for $65!).  But there were a couple that caught my eye, that I might have splurged on.  The ones that got away.  I saw a Charter Arms Bulldog .357 magnum I bonded with.  I dunno why, but I never handled a Charter Arms Bulldog I didn’t like.  It was only $150, but I dithered, finally went back in the afternoon.  Hooray, someone else snapped it up, I didn’t have to make a decison.  There was also a .22 H&R semi that was tempting, until I remembered my conversation with the small-semi maven about how .22 semi’s tend to jam more than most .  Which fueled my desire for the Beretta Tomcat in .25 ACP–I have seen the same one at the last three gun shows I have been to.  It’s at a good price, but Alaska gun guys tend to be size freaks–a cheap .357 will sell way faster than an even cheaper .22.

Both days were busy, but I didn’t make any really big sales–I had three awesome sets of three  samuri swords ( you know, tanto, katana, and I can’t quite spell the waka-sushi thing), complete with stands–took all three home.  I had a bunch of battle-axes, didn’t sell one.  Usually, I sell at least four survival knives–they go well with the camo-clad set–this time, didn’t sell any.  And I didn’t sell as many of my “specials”–three $10 knives for $20–as I like to. However, I sold more of my $20 specials–the three-blade Cyclone for instance, and the awesome Triple Threat (illegal in seven other states)–than usual.  I sold more high-end knives–Bucks and Columbia River–than usual–of course, I did have them on sale at half-price.  This was a legit deal, too–I got them on close-out specials at way under the usual wholesale price, so I was really selling them at wholesale.

The biggest downside really caught me by surprise.  I am used to dealing with kids–my stand is a veritable kid magnet–and usually, I can just ask the kids to come back with adults when I get tired of watching over them, or have to deal with real customers.  The wild card this time was that most of the damn kids that were hanging around, chattering endlessly, waving swords around–were offical security guards!  Yeah, someone got the bright idea to ask some local high school kids in some sort of junior ROTC program to be security.  I needed security to protect me from the security.  I finally had to lay down the law to them, told them if they wanted to buy I’d be happy to give them a good deal, but that  the talk talk talk had to end, and the sword-play had to end. They weren’t little thugs or anything, just high-spirited and a tad thoughtless. They left me alone after that, unless they wanted to buy something.

I had fun with the switchblade issue.  Someone asked if I had them–it was a young guy, not really in the market.  I got this stern look and said “You know, possession of a switchblade is a third-degree misdemeanor under Alaska state law.  Merely by asking, you have committed the crime of conspiracy, which is a felony under state AND federal law.”  He got this amazing look on his face, never seemed to realize that I never did answer his question.  And in case you are wondering, yeah, I have been known to sell the occasional switchblade, but not to someone I don’t know.

Mid-afternoon Sunday, things got really wild.  At one point I counted 13 people clustered around my two tables.  Some people walked away before I could get to them.  I was demonstrating assisted openers, explaining my “buy two, get one free sale,” yadda yadda yadda.  An hour later, the dust cleared and I realized I had not made a single darn sale the whole hour.  Then a guy walks up, picked up the Rough Rider two-blade Muskrat that I got by mistake (I wanted the two-blade trapper), smiles, makes some remark about jack knives, plunked down a twenty and walked off.  Whole thing took less than a minute.  God, I love this business.

At five pm, the civilians had to leave.  I kept doing business with other boothies, finally started to pack up at 5:45 pm, after making almost another hundred bucks.  The same kids who were nuisances became little angels, helped me schlep stuff out to my car, which was fairly close–I was in a cripple space.  But some of the big guys carried boxes I was able to load so much that I would have gotten hurt carrying  myself.  This was stuff that stayed in my car, when it is in flea-market  mode.  What made the whole thing so complicated was that some flats had to have the knives laid out just so, so I could just lift them out and put then on my folding tables, other flats and boxes were backstock that had to go into my cabin, and still others were backstock to stay in the car.  Whew, I’m getting tired again just thinking about it.

But as soon as I get this done, I’m heading back to my cabin,  nuke a tasty chicken pot pie, make a salad, and kick back with a video.  Oh, and pet my cat.  She’s still pregnant.

And life is still good.

Lost and Found and Lost and Found Melody Fragment

In a happenstance  that seems like it came out of an episode, Kathy actually used  rough copy of some Melody that had never been published as packing material for some rocks.  I found it, decided to blog it, then it got lost in the clutter in my cabin.  Then I found it.  Here goes:

 

We had come to the fourth day of the cookout.  Greysox and Josephine were still getting along swimmingly, Naomi and I were mostly over our respective hissy fits, Kathy Clonehead packed up and left in a  Snit (a small Yugoslavian sedan built on a lawn-chair chassis), Greyface had pretty much gotten over his overdose of amanita baklava, and Dingo JuJu was just getting ready to start her presentation on Flatcatomancy, the art of divination by reading roadkilled polecats and other more or less moribund feline quadrupeds.  Suddenly we saw a band of folks moving in our general direction singing “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s saving souls we go. . . .”

The apparent leader was a tiny wrinkled figure in a nun’s habit (as they all were) who looked like a cross between Yoda and the Lucky Stars leprachaun in drag.  She proceeded to march up to the unsuspecting Naomi, the closest one to her, pulled out a water pistol with a crucifix handgrip and squirted her three times square in the mush whilst intoning beatifically “Begone oh evil one, I conjure you in the name of the One Lord.”

Holy water pistol, Batman!  It was Mother Charisma, the redundanrt noun, er renouned nun, from Smellbadda, India, known for her work with lepers, AIDS patients, and people who park in handicapped spaces.  But what was she doing here?

Greyface strode up to her, squared his jaw, hitched up his .44 magnum, played with his beard, tugged at his right earring and said “See here, madam.  While we are honored, nonplussed, and peregrinated at your presence, I must ask  you to kas-pplb blap plahh. . . .”

He, too, had gotten the old holy water in the kazoo treatment.

Dingo JuJu came to the rescue.  “Mother Charisma, I am honored to splut blechhh pootooey. . . .”

Old Mother C was three for three.  She smiled beatifically and whacked Greyface in the cojones with her cane.

“I am here to bring peace,” she said beatifically.  “It has come to my attention that there is even as I speak going on a convocation of Satanists  going on here, those who would mock Our Lord.”

“No way, dudette,” said Greysox, with so much conviction (or at least a couple of indictments) that Mother Charisma was at once convinced of the unforked nature of his furry tongue.

“But how can this be,” she wailed beatifically.  “I was told this by an emissary of  His Selfimportantness, the Holy Poop of Schroom.”

“Hey lady, you can’t believe all the poop you hear,” riposted Greysox.

“You mean I’m not among a den of nasties,” she asked disappointedly.

“‘Fraid not,” said Greyface, having wrung the holy water out of his beard.  “Now let me be straight with you. I am no Christian.  Fundies have threatened me and harassed my clients, not to mention  all my kinsmen wiped out, tortured, or brainwashed by missionaries.  However, I want to say that, number one, some of my best friends are. . . no, never mind, NONE of my friends are Christians.  But regarding the Nazz himself, he is a cool dude in my book.”

“I, too, respect the supremacy of the Master,” said Dingo JuJu.

“You mean our Master, Jesus of Nazareth?”

“More or less. . . .To be specific, I mean Michael of Nabadon, who incarnated as Yeshua bar Joseph, known to some as Jesus Christ.”

I have no idea how she did it, but Mother C managed to look both beatific and chagrined at the same time.  Smiting her forehead with her tiny fist, she exclaimed “Oy vey maria!”

“See, it’s like this, mumsy,” Greysox chimed in.  “What we got here is a bunch of more or less spiritual-minded people, folks who like to heal, and wake up the machine, and chop wood and carry water, and all that good stuff.  Some of us might be called pagans, some animists, some gnostic Christians, some wiccans, whatever.

“We try to be more interested in the food than what’s  printed on the menu, you dig? We’re collectively tired of arguing over maps and never getting to see any of the territory.  We are, perhaps, united in our desire to obtain spiritual perfection.  But not by singing  ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’  We wish to experience Spirit by and for ourselves, to transcend fear and manifest unconditional love.  We do not think we are God, or even little gods, but human beings who each carry within ourselves a bit of god, which some of us call the Tao.

“None of us has, I think, any quarrel with you or anyone else as long as you stay out of our faces.  So you can either stay here and share our love, and teach, and maybe even learn something, or you can get behind my Hummer and suck on the tailpipe!”

Mother Charisma looked totally dumbfounded and abashed while the Denial Center gang burst into a chorus of “Yes! Yes!” and Greyface got misty as he realized that his evil twin was not a total asshole and creep after all, and Melody and Naomi realized that Josephine had not become irretrievably deranged after all (and Josephine was not a little relieved to realize it herself), and the other cookout people realized that they had already gotten their money’s worth and the thigng wasn’t over yet, and Dingo JuJu missed half of it, havong ducked out for ice cream.

Beatific, indeed, I thought.  Beatific!  The world needs more tifics!

Having come mostly back to earth, Namoi said quietly,”You know, this might just solve that huge problem that the Sorority of the Sows was dealing with when we called you.  Remember the Witch Wars?–all the pagans and New Agers and some of the other most enlightened beings on this poor planet at each others throats, because they could not agree what to put on the menu while they were all eating the same food.

“All we have to do to defeat our enemy is to love him, and then he is no longer our enemy.”

Another Short Dog Tale

On the way into Willow to pick up a knife order, I saw a musher exercising a small team, six dogs in harness running along in front of his quad.  I say his, but it might have been DeeDee–I just got a glimpse, but he or she looked slightly built, and the musher’s hair was all pulled back and tucked away.  I had not yet gotten over that when, a few miles farther along, I saw another dog team–a full-sized one, six or seven pairs plus a lead dog in front–running along a musher who was definitely a guy (the full beard was a clue).

It really gave me a lift, I love seeing critters of all sorts as I drive along, especially when the critters are safely off the road.  One of our neighbor mushers lost some of his best dogs a few years ago when a truck hit his team as it was running along the highway.

Some time later, heading back to Wasilla, I saw two dogs ON the highway, a smallish adult and a pup,  just  your basic mutts.  I slowed way down and sounded the horn for probably the first time I ever used it on the highway, and they ran off onto the shoulder.  I was thinking, geez, I hope they STAY off the highway, looked back and saw a small human taking care of them.

Whew!

Did I do the Right Thing? Comments Invited

Every now and then, I blog about my NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) as part of the therapy.  Here I go again.

A major part of the therapy–maybe the only part, really–consists of simply paying attention to what I am saying and doing, asking myself “Is this right?  Is this practical?   Is this reasonable?  Or is it just NPD?”    This  constant self-examination (at least when I remember to, which is far from really being all the time) makes for an uncomfortable existence, but therapy was never meant to be comfortable.  This time, regarding a few specific occasions, I am throwing this out to everyone who reads this, and I invite your comments.  This may not be the best place: arguably, there is a higher incidence of NPD among bloggers than among the general population, but here goes anyway.

The other day at my flea market stand, a huge double-trailer truck pulls up right alongside me, the driver hops out, leaves the motor running. I think, okay, the guy wants directions, or wants to buy something, so I get out of my car.  The trucker proceeds to walk across the highway to a construction site, disappears into a building under construction.  This gives me a problem–the truck totally obscures my stand and takes up all the available parking.  I was pretty much out of business for the duration.What’s more, this is during evening drive time, when traffic is heaviest and I often do the most business.  After a few minutes, I head-tripped about slashing his tires or spray-painting some rude words on one of the trailers–this was pure fantasy, by the way.  I am capable of doing some pretty heinous shit, but not when there is such a good chance of being seen, nabbed, and punished.

After half an hour of stewing in my own juices, not to mention his diesel exhaust fumes, I decided to give up, call it a day, and close early.  This in itself was mildly distressing, not only because of the potential lost business, but also because I had told someone earlier in the day that I would be staying open until seven.  After a lifetime of casually breaking commitments, now I make an effort to keep them.  Before I left, though, I took down the “how am I driving?” 800 number, and the ID numbers on the truck. The truck was still there when I left.

The next day, I called the number, reported the incident.  I took pains not to exaggerate– exaggeration being another NPD trait–and  conceded that I didn’t know if the incident had really cost me any business–heck, it’s a slow time of year, maybe no one would have stopped anyway.   But it was still a pretty egregiously selfish thing to do, I thought.  The strip is like a half mile long, he could have parked anywhere else and not have troubled me, he would have had to walk a little farther, though.  Alaskans ,as a rule, do not like to walk.

Since I had cooled down in the interval, I was even civil, didn’t cuss and bitch and moan.  I did say that I wanted to be notified of any  disciplinary action taken.  The person at the other end thanked me for calling, I thanked her, and that was that.  Then I began to second-guess myself?  Did I do the right thing?  Should I just have kept quiet?  On the other hand, the Pepsi company did provide a toll-free number for such complaints. What if the guy finds out I was the one who complained, comes back and confronts me?  Truckers tend to be big and sturdy and I am not, although I AM usually armed at the stand.  So I dunno.  The thing is done and I’ll just have to wait and see what, if anything, happens.

Next.  Although my attitude towards other people tends to  range from indifference to dislike to contempt, I do have a soft spot for critters.  I hate to see them abused or neglected or endangered, which led to my calling Animal Control.  Here’s  critter case number one.  My next-door neighbor, like many other denizens of Felony Flats, is a doper with no visible means of support.  He keeps odd hours.  He also keeps a dog, which howls and whines and cries when he is away.  One night, the dog woke me up at 3:30 am, kept howling and so forth until around four, when the guy returned.  He also lets the dog run loose, in defiance of local ordinances, and I am getting tired of chasing the dog off my porch, where I store merchandise and stuff.  And, I am getting even more tired of the dog pissing on my car.

Yesterday was the last straw.  The dog was confined in his pickup truck, and it was making an ungodly racket.  I don’t know if the guy was at home or not.  Anyway, I called Animal Control, they offered to mail me a complaint form or give me a FAX number.  I got the FAX number, wrote out a compaint, and went across the highway to the UPS store and faxed it.

While I was at it, I mentioned another neighbor.  She has these black lab puppies, cute as hell, all feet and foolishness.  She lets them run loose most of the time, which bothers me on two counts–three, if you count the fact that she is getting away wth breaking the law.  I tend to not like it when other people get away with stuff that I wouldn’t do in the first place.  But more seriously, I have seen them playing on the edge of the highway–they run out on it, and they could get killed and/or cause a major accident.  It’s a busy highway.  Also, they come down to my stand and eat the food I put out for the cats there, so the cats have been going hungry lately thanks to them.

Again, I dunno.  Should I  have confronted the dog owners myself?  Then again, I tell myself, it is not my job to enforce the leash law, and it IS the dog owners’ job to know and abide by the law.  Then again, someone once write that the moral thing to do is usually the hardest, most troubling thing to do.  Maybe I did right.  Damned if I know.  I DO know that when my NPD gets me off the rails, sometimes I get so damned far off the rails that I don’t even know that I’m off the rails.  Then if someone points this out, I often react with petulance or sulks  or hostility. 

Sigh.  It ain’t easy being mean.  I’m working to get past it, to transcend it.  I know I have a long way to go, don’t know how far exactly, but it IS a really interesting trip.

PS–Now I am even wondering if the act of calling for comments is just another manifestation of NPD.  Oh well. . . .

The Cop and the Hippy

I dreamed about Bob Manlove last night.  (What a wonderful name for  gay guy, but Bob was a straight arrow.  But I digress.)  Bob and I worked together at the James Lett Company, oldest photo store in the country–Matthew Brady purchased his wet plates there for his civil war pictures.  He was a tall rangy guy, absurdly good looking–like a cross between Robert Urich and Tom Cruise, blue eyes to die for.  And he was real easy going,  customers trusted him on sight.  Anyway, he wanted to be a cop.  The troopers wanted him to do undercover work on college campuses, befirend dopers and then bust them.  He was above  this heinous crap, and ended up working as a patrolman for the Camp Hill PD.

He’s working there maybe a week, heading home at end of shift, and he gets a call–burglary in progress.  Instead of ignoring it, like any smart off-duty cop would, he heads for the scene, sirens and lights blazing. Protect and serve and all that.  Until he gets hit, head-on, by a drunk driver.  He was all smashed to shit, was hospitalized with many broken bones and internal injuries.

I decided to cheer him up, visit him in the hospital.  Now at this point, you need to realize the mind-set of the times–early 70′s.  Cops hated hippies–we tended to disrespect lawn order, wore the flag on our butt, and pelted the fuckers with bottles and rocks when they tried to break up our anti-war demonstrations.  We in turn, hated the cops–”Off the pigs,” as a popular chant of the time had it. And many of us had the living shit beat out of us with nightsticks for no good reason.  Okay, I was more  a freak than a hippy, but we’ll save that distinction for a later blog.  But I looked the part,  had hair half-way down my back, plus a fu manchu mustache and a goatee.

Anyway, I decided to don my most outrageous regalia, maybe give him a laugh.  So I go bopping into his hospital room in this purple shirt, and hot-pink corduroy bell-bottoms (with aqua and canary-yellow patch pockets), and sing out “Peace and love, brother!”

His room was full of cops.  Big cops, little cops, cops with hidden guns.  State troopers in bullet-proof vests, dripping with riot gear.  County sheriffs  wearing cowboy hats and fucking pearl-handled Colt 45s.  Barney Fife-clone deputies, but still armed and dangerous.  They stared coldly at me. They hated me on sight.  Every  last one of them wanted to kill me.

I gulped, said “Um, hi.  Um, hope you’re feeling  okay.”

Bob almost fell out of his body cast laughing.   The other cops gave him this “Do you know this guy?” look.

My mission complete, I got the hell out of Dodge, went home and smoked a LOT of dope.

Hoard, sweet hoard!

Kathy (aka SuSu) recently mentioned finding my ephedra stash and maybe blogging about hoards, so I decided to do it myself.  Actually, I prefer the term “stash” to “hoard”–to me, “hoard” implies a stockpile that is not meant to be used.  I don’t know what the dictionary definition is, don’t much care–like the Red Queen, when I use a word, it means what I want it to mean.  But I digress. 

 About hoards.  Lots of hoards.  Hordes of hoards.  (Don’t tell me you didn’t see THAT one coming!)  We have rocks and gems and crystals stashed all over the place.  There are still some rocks over at our old place, mostly on the floor amidst the trash in the mud room.  There still may be a few over at my old trailer, assuming that the would-be new owner hasn’t tossed them out.  But we do have rocks tucked away in all sorts of nooks and crannies in our new trailer.  One day I was  putzing around in the back room–the one we used to use as a grow room, now it is for storage–and I found, in a box with some other atuff, a baggie of emeralds.  Not jewelry-grade by any means, but real honest-to-gosh emeralds.  Maybe $100 worth or so.  We finds stuff like that almost any time we look–it is kind of like living in Ali Baba’s cave. (Come to think of it, his cave didn’t have plumbing or running water either, so it is a more apt metaphor than I’d thought. . . .)

Early this summer, a local market had Campbell’s Chunky Soup on sale, half price.  I got maybe six cases of the stuff, and would have gotten more if I had more room in my cabin–it is 10×12 feet–3×4 meters, for the metric-minded.  More recently, canned veggies went on sale and I got four or five cases.  Again, I would have gotten more if we had more storage room. Right now, I am in the process of building up our squash hoard–the stuff keeps well, it is healthful, and we both like it.  We may have 100 pounds of squash stashed here and there (mostly there) by the time the season is over. 

I keep the backstock of knives and battle axes and machetes and like that in my cabin.  I guess you might call that a hoard.  Right now, I have several hundred folding knives (everything from the three for $20 cheapie specials to a titanium-handled jobbie from Columbia River with a $124.50 suggested retail), over a dozen Oriental swords, two or three machetes, ten switchblades, and three revolvers.  But the guns aren’t for sale–not yet, anyway.

Then there’s clothing.  Kathy and I both love bag sales–which reminds me, there is one tomorrow, woo hoo!  We probably have way more clothing than we really need.  I have around five silk shirts and two super-expensive Harris tweed sport coats.  (Ironically, I couldn’t afford this sort of stuff new when I was relatively rich.  Now that I am poor, I get it second-hand for next to nothing.)  I have more socks than I can fit into my sock drawer–most of them set me back 25 cents a pair.  Ditto with Jockey shorts, at fifty cents a pair.  And don’t get me started on t-shirts–between the cheap ones from the thrifts, and the free ones from the dumpster, I am like the Donald Trump of t-shirts (only with better hair).

And Kathy doesn’t do bad in the clothing department herself, largely because she is a past master of the fine art of getting ten pounds of sugar in a five-pound bag.  When she starts taking her finds out of one of those brown paper grocery bags we use at the bag sales, it is kind of like watching one of those clown car acts in the circus–you know, where maybe a dozen clowns get out of a little bitty car.  I have lost count of how many pairs of Gloria Vanderbilt–we call’em Glorious Vanderbutt–jeans she has.

Well, I could go on and on, but time’s a’wasting.  I want to get back to the cabin, check out my coin collection.