(Posted June 28, 2010)
- Rochester Minnesota. The Think Green Festival. I drop my third son Chris and Jimi, my wife’s wiener dog, off at Chris’ girlfriend’s house in Minneapolis before resuming my drive from Duluth to the home of the Mayo Clinic. It’s hot and muggy. I’m late, arriving fifteen minutes before the event, a one-day, indoor environmental exposition, is to start. I find my table in one of the barns at the Olmstead County Fairgrounds and begin unloading my books and paraphernalia. I’m set up before 10:00am, just in time. The day grows hotter and more humid as I walk to a portable toilet to change shirts.
I sure seem to spend a lot of time visiting these porta-potties, I muse, thinking of all the festivals, where such toilets are iconic necessities, I’ve sold books at over the past decade.
The Charlie Sheen-style polo I remove in the sweltering privacy of the john (think “Two and 1/2 Men”) is drenched. I pull on one of my festival standards, a blue Hawaiian shirt with a crazy floral print, don my Cloquet River Press baseball cap (branding is everything, or so I’ve heard) and wander back to my booth, perspiration streaming down my face.
I work the crowd for the better part of the day. I meet some nice and some not so nice folks. An older woman (older meaning beyond my fifty-six years) stops by and chats with me. I can tell from her body language (and doing this selling thingy for ten years) that she’s not about to buy a book, that she’s stopping by because she has an agenda.
“I worked for a legislator who knew Willard Munger,” she says. ” He was a conservative.”
“Oh,” I respond. “Willard was anything but, though he got along with many Republicans better than some of his Democratic colleagues.”
“How are you related to him?”
“He was my uncle.”
“And what do you do when you’re not writing books?”
“I’m a judge up in Duluth,” I say. “But I’m just like my uncle. I’m a crazy Liberal,” I say glibly.
The woman stares at me with what I perceive to be scorn.
“You can’t be a very good judge if you’re a Liberal.”
You get the idea. I’ll spare you the rest of the dialogue. Needless to say, I wasn’t about to convince her that, regardless of philosophy, the judges in the Duluth courthouse pretty much decide cases based upon the law and not political ideaology.
The day grows long. I sell a few books, not enough to improve my bottom line but enough to give me hope that, by 9:00pm when the event is over and I drive off to my little Kamping Kabin at the local KOA, I won’t have lost my shirt. When I show up in the 4H building to talk about Mr. Environment, the guy who had the time slot ahead of mine is still at it. He doesn’t yield the stage so I go back to selling books.
A missed opportunity.
I sell three books in quick succession once back behind my table. Then one of the volunteers from the festival stops by.
“We’ve decided to close down at six,” she says, never blinking an eye.
I look at the time on my cell phone. It’s quarter to six. My ears redden. I just smile.
I wouldn’t have paid the money to stay at the KOA if I knew you were going to close down three hours early, I think. I could have driven home. It’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow. I could have been there to make her breakfast in bed.
I’ve never had this happen, not even at an outdoor festival in a thunder storm. I’m speechless. I don’t really know what to say. When six o’clock arrives, I simply pack up my stuff and shuffle off to the KOA. At the campground, I strip down and put on my swimming suit. My piled clothes are etched with salt from sweat. I walk to the swimming pool; a towel thrown carelessly across my shoulders. I drop my sandals on the concrete apron and dive in. The pool is clean. The water is cold.
There’s always tomorrow.
Peace.
Mark
