I went on a road trip to Savannah last week to update my Aunt Betty on the latest family photos. I drive down every few months, take along my laptop, and give her a slideshow.
The trip was also a chance to get my periodic iodine fix. I live in North Georgia, which has no seafood restaurants worthy of the name, so I have to drive down to the coast occasionally. This latest trip was four days, four seafood restaurants, and I feel much better now.
On the way home, driving north on U.S. 1, I passed through the little town of Brundale, which consists of a few buildings and a caution light. As I drove past the light, I happened to look to the right, and I saw a pickup truck parked in front of a church.
The truck was backed up under a portable awning, and a bunch of stuff was displayed on a table.
I couldn’t make out what the fellow was selling, but before zooming past, I was able to read the hand-painted sign on the awning: APPLES & WOOD ROSES.
Apples I can do without, but wood flowers can be pretty cool. Not always, but sometimes. So I braked, did a u-turn, and went back to check them out. I parked and climbed out of the car.
The sign was literally true: the merchandise consisted of apples, wood roses, and nothing else.
“Howdy, friend,” said the proprietor. He was a short, portly, 60-ish country fellow with a cigarette that never left the corner of his mouth. He wore overalls and a blue-striped engineer cap. I haven’t seen an engineer cap in 15 years.
“Howdy,” I replied.
“You musta liked somethin’ you seen,” he observed. The cigarette bobbed vigorously as he talked. “That was a pretty quick u-ie you done there.”
“I wanted to take a look at your roses.”
“I got some mighty fine apples you might be interested in.”
“Thanks, but I’m not much of an apple person,” I told him.
“Oh, apples is wonderful things,” he said. “Nature’s perfect food. I eat ’em regular. Course, that ain’t hard, me bein’ in the apple business.”
While he was extolling the virtues of apples, I was assessing his wood roses, which were displayed in bunches wrapped in cellophane. He had 40 or 50 bunches standing up in apple baskets.
They were a disappointment. I thought they might be higher quality — genuine craft items by an artisan — but they weren’t. They were machine-made and dyed an array of appalling colors that brought Popsicles to mind. I’m sure he got them from China or Mexico.
“I got two sizes of my roses,” he explained, “The large and the small.” He pointed to each size with a practiced gesture.
“I get five dollars for eight small, six dollars for six large, seven dollars for 12 small, eight dollars for eight large, nine dollars for 16 small, and 10 dollars for 10 large.”
He lost me after six dollars. I was busy fishing through the bunches, looking for a color that did not assault the senses.
“I’d like to sell eight small for four dollars,” he said wistfully, “But the economy bein’ the way it is, I got to get five.”
He shook his head sadly. “Makin’ a livin’ ain’t ever easy, but lately — it’s the shits, you know?”
“Yeah, these are bad times for sure,” I said. “How long have you been selling out of your truck?”
“About a year. I worked 40 years at the kaolin mine in Sandersville, but the layoffs caught up with me. I figured they would, sooner or later, and they did. 40 years…”
By then, I knew I had to buy some wood roses from the man, even if they were psychedelic purple.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Big companies don’t know what loyalty is. You got a family to support?”
“No — thanks be to God Almighty. It’s just me and one dog, We get by okay.”
He flipped the cold end of the cigarette with his tongue, and a hunk of ash fell to the ground. “One more year, and I’ll collect my Social Security. And my Medicare kicks in, too. God knows, I’ve earned it.”
“Amen to that,” I said.
He watched me digging through the bundles of roses for a moment, then asked, “What color you after?”
I wasn’t sure how to phrase it. “Something sort of subdued,” I said.
“You mean somethin’ that ain’t eye-poppin’ chartreuse? Hell, I ain’t got normal colors. Can’t sell normal colors. No point in stockin’ ’em. People want bright colors, like fuchsia and electric blue, so that’s mostly what I got.”
Meanwhile, I had found two bunches that weren’t bad. One was a sort of medium shade of eggplant. The other was an eggshell color with faint pink highlights.
Oh, well. The eggshell bunch would have to do. “I’ll go with these,” I told him.
“Eight small — that’ll be five dollars.”
I got out my wallet, gave him five ones, and thanked him.
“You did good,” he noted. “Those are pretty subdued. They’ll make somebody happy.”
“I hope so,” I said and turned toward the car.
As I walked away, he called out, “Whoever gets them roses won’t believe they’re wood! They’ll call you on it, you wait and see! When they feel of ’em, you just watch how surprised they are!”
I looked down at my bundle of wood flowers and realized that in worrying so much about the color, I hadn’t even touched one of the things. I gently squeezed a bud and ran a finger carefully along the edge of the petals.
Damn, he was right. They were surprisingly realistic. Cheap and machine-made, but very realistic.
“They surprised me, all right,” I answered.
He laughed a belly laugh and waved. “See there? You stop again, next trip through!”
I probably will.
The more popular colors.
My choice.
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