A Day at the Market
The Wasilla Farmer’s Market, that is. This is my pleasant day each week. The local historical society sets up tables in a little historical park behind the musem and rents them to venders. The name is a misnomer–there are a few folks selling produce, but there are also crafters and folks selling fresh-baked bread and out and out venders like me. Anyway, it is a welcome change from the dust and noise of the strip, and I get a better class of customer. More affluent tourists, fewer drunks and meth heads.
This blog is about two groups of customers who were especially interesting–”Interesting” in the sense of the Chinese curse, “May you lead an interesting life.”
A couple of tourists–well off middle aged white folks–stopped by. The guy saw my knives and complained about his being lost at airport security. I commiserated, added a bunch of subversive, not to say treasonous comments, about the futility and stupidity of the system–and for good measure, told them how easy it was to get a gun on the plane. (Details on request.) Anyway, he dicided to buy a replacement, and the fun began.
He had made some disparaging comments about Chinese knives, with no explanation, so I steered him towards the American-made (and way more expensive) ones–Buck and Schrade. (The old Schrade, not the new crapola.) His wife was like a kid in a candy store–she must have looked at darn near every Schrade I had, and some Bucks, and a few top-end TigerSharps made in Taiwan for good measure. They looked at one Schrade–a nice little lockback, MSR $34.95–about four times and I was sure he would get it.
Surprise, surprise–he finally bought what my sweety calls the Swiss Army jalepeno–a little green knife shaped like a pepper, which has a scissors blade and a can and bottle opener blade besides the knife blade. I sell it for $10–and it’s made in China. Go figure. My two boxes of high-end knives were in a shambles, but they had so fun, I didn’t really mind cleaning up their mess.
Toward the end of the day, a family came by which just made my stomach tighten on sight. Two grubby little boys, aged around seven and nine. And I DO mean grubby–I was afraid they’d get the knives dirty as they fingered them. The woman was this big fat Wal-mart shopper, nattily attired in dirty t-shirt and stretch pants. The guy–”Uncle” someone–was maybe 6’3″, and must have weighed around 400 pounds. I mean, really–you google “fat slob” and you get his picture. He was crammed into sweat pants and a (surprise!) a dirty t-shirt.
Well, the kids fingered and fooled with the knives and made feeble efforts to put some of them back in the boxes–finally, I just asked them to leave the knives out, since I had to clean them off now anyway–they didn’t get the hint. Uncle fooled around, clumsily, with a butterfly knife, which made me nervous, seeing those big sausage fingers fumbling with a knife in my general area. Finally, he bought $5 worth of throwing stars and a $20 set of throwing knives. Cool! After some more fooling around, one of the kids bought a butterfly knife for $10. Finally, the other kid bought a Venom Stinger (don’t ask!) for $20. The total sale of $55 was my biggest sale, not only of the day, but of the week.
I should have been grateful, but it was such a hassle dealing with the group that my profits were well-earned indeed.
But the day ended well. Traffic was slow, it being the day after the fourth–several of the regular venders hadn’t even showed up. Some were grumbling about the slow day and packed up early, but me–the old Turkish rug peddler–I had record sales for the day.
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