This morning, with the thermometer already hitting ninety and the humidity running even higher, I was busy making a big For Sale sign, big enough for everyone in our small town to see, big enough even for travelers driving through to notice. Look at that big sign, Daddy! I’m not sure yet what I’m going to sell or how much I’m going to charge, but when the time comes — and the time will come — I’ll be ready. I’ll have my sign.
“Having a garage sale today, are ya?”
My neighbor has stuck his head out his trailer door. Maybe my sawing and hammering had roused him from sleep. Or maybe I made too much noise when I was gathering the two-by-fours and the plywood from behind his trailer.
I don’t answer his question because it’s a stupid question. I don’t have a garage. Or a carport. Hell, I don’t even have a car. If he’d said “yard sale” I might have answered. As it is, I don’t even wanna give him the time of day. I can be cranky that way in the mornings.
“Whatcha sellin’?”
Persistent cuss. Sweat beads up on my brow and through my shirt. I mumble something, I’m not sure what, just to be neighborly.
“Ah, one of them things. You still got one of them old things?”
I should have paid more attention to what I said.
“I see you don’t got no price scribbled on there yet. How’s about givin’ me one of them ‘early bird’ discounts, whatcha say?”
I realize now that I should have worked on my sign inside and then brought it out only once I was finished with it. But the thing was too damn big to work on inside. That was the whole point, after all. Three two-by-fours twelve feet in length and a four-by-six foot sheet of sturdy plywood. I figured on borrowing my neighbor’s posthole digger and sinking the two-by-fours about two feet into the ground, secured by cement, which would leave the top of the sign at around ten feet. A four-by-six foot sheet of plywood ten feet in the air, with For Sale painted in large red letters. (I had the paint already, left over from an earlier project.) That’s the kind of big sign that I wanted, something to really catch the eye. But now here I was having to explain myself before I was ready, and I didn’t particularly like it.
“Earl,” I said. People call him that because that’s his name. “Earl, what would you think about having something unique.”
He didn’t answer. “Something that nobody else has.”
“I know what ‘unique’ means, Jim.”
Well then.
“I have no doubt about that, Earl. I have no doubt that you do. But what I wonder is, do you know the value of uniqueness, and do you know to just what lengths some people are willing to go so that they can acquire what’s unique and then call this unique thing their own? That’s what I’m curious about.”
And I could see that Earl was too.
“Well …”
“And do you know how people would look at you, with no small degree of wonder and amazement and maybe even respect — yes, I’m pretty certain even respect — because of that unique object that belonged to you and nobody else?”
“I can sorta see that, yeah.”
“And do you know that your mention of an ‘early bird’ discount shows real entrepreneurial acumen?”
“…”
“What I mean is, you’d make a good business man, Earl. That’s all that means. And by God, that’s right too.”
“If you say so.”
“I do, Earl. I do say so.”
I finished painting the words on the sign and stood back.
“What do you think, Earl?”
“Dadgum, I like it. It’s big!”
“It sure is, Earl. It sure is.”
“Ain’t nothin’ like it ’round here, no sir. A big sign like that, ain’t nothin’ quite like it.”
Earl gave me $50 cash for that sign, and I went back inside to get out of the heat.
