(Posted November 17, 2009)
I-35 bleeds through northern Minnesota. I speed along the arterial blacktop in my Pacifica towards another craft show. This weekend it’s an indoor show, the largest in Minnesota, held at Canterbury Downs in Shakopee. The show is four days long (Thursday through Sunday). I drive down on Wednesday, Veteran’s Day. Because the courthouse is closed on Veteran’s Day, I’m only burning up two vacation days instead of three. I listen to veterans’ stories on MPR, including a series of cassette tapes recorded by a Minnesota soldier while he was “in country” in Vietnam; tapes he sent back home to his family. Listening to his vision of “war is hell”, I think about the last American WWI veteran, Frank Buckles, now 108 years old. Though Buckles drove ambulances and didn’t see actual combat in the Great War, the fact that he’s still alive serves as a connection to a bygone age of empire building and senseless trench warfare and rekindles visions (nightmares, really) of senseless slaughter.
The PBS commentaries eat up the clock and, before I know it, I am parked in the Canterbury lot, trying to figure out where my booth might be located within the labyrinthine structure. I find someone who knows something (I surely don’t) and begin the slow process of setting up my booth.
I spend my days in my booth reading Lust for Life, a decent novel about the life of Vincent Van Gogh, and waiting for folks to stop in and buy my books. Few customers ply my wares. I grow closer and closer to Van Gogh’s madness as I wait…wait…wait. For the few patrons who stop, I repeat mundane descriptions of my books over and over and over again. I feel more like a used car salesman than a writer. Bored out of my skull, I fixate on the tender cartilage of my right ear and eye a comely young woman as she sashays by.
Maybe if I sliced off my ear and handed it to her, she’d buy my book.
Of course, I don’t dismember myself to sell a $20.00 novel to a stranger at a discount; I simply hold my breath and pout. Just like I did when I was seven. Didn’t work then; doesn’t work now. By Saturday afternoon when my wife, my sister-in-law (I’m staying at her house in Lakeville) and my mother-in-law traipse into my booth, I’m nearly as crazed as the Dutch painter, anxious for companionship, desperate to make sales. I’m also battling (as one of our female judges at the courthouse would derisively label it) “a man cold”; one of those little flu-like bugs that starts high in the sinuses and eeks its way down into your throat, eventually making you feel like crap. It’s just what I need while I work ten hour days surrounded by Luddites who don’t read.
Sunday morning. After four nights of sleeping on my sister-in-law’s couch, I’m ready to pack up. I sell a few more books and Jack (my twelve-year-old son) and my sister-in-law Colleen show up to help tear down. I leave Jack in charge of the booth and wander through the depleted crowd of last minute shoppers (99% of whom are women) to find my Pacifica, get in line with other exhausted, cranky vendors, and move my mini-van into position to begin the load out. An hour and a half later, I pull my car into an empty parking space and start cramming my display into the back of the Pacifica. My head cold has settled in nicely, clouding my judgment beyond the residue of dementia caused by finishing the Van Gogh book (Why would anyone shoot themselves in the stomach?); my back is once again aching, sending shooting pains into the toes of both feet; and my patience (the little that I was born with) has dissipated like summer rain striking sun-warmed stones. I send my sister-in-law home with scant thanks (I’ll need to do more; she and Jack put everything from the booth into boxes and plastic bins while I was listening to idiots talk Vikings football on the radio). Jack and I load the Pacifica and drive to a nearby McDonald’s. After a brief flurry of teeth on burgers and hurried slurps of milk shake, we head home.
If my musings don’t send you to a shrink (maybe we could share a therapist and split the bill?) come visit me at the Festival of Trees in Duluth this weekend.
Peace.
Vincent.
