Backdoor Bargains and Bactrian Camels

I’m cheap. Okay. I admit it. While some of my best friends wait around salivating for the newest J Crew catalog, I’m in Ross sorting through their latest shipment of Ralph Lauren seconds. These polos are only one-third of average retail price. The rider is missing from the logo and the left arm is four inches longer than the right. But, no one’s picky enough to notice little technicalities like that. It’s not that I can’t bear paying full price for things. It's more that I can’t bear to shop in stores where full price is even an option.

The thought of spending $75 on a 4x6 photo frame or $109 on a throw pillow causes me to break out in shingles. (My doctor confirmed this.) I have friends whose homes look as if each room was mailed directly from a Pottery Barn warehouse in Frisco, Texas. Even the dust motes are designer. My style comes from Marshall’s and occasionally Salvation Army. And I’m okay with that. I buy things for $3.99 that could pass for Crate and Barrell or Ballard Designs. At least I tell myself they could.

This kind of bargain basement behavior drives my mom crazy. When I mention shopping at TJ Maxx or a roadside flea market, she gets this shameful and crushed look in her eye, as if I’ve denounced Christianity and picked up a lesbian life partner in the same afternoon. (Neither of which is true. That’s how rumors get started). My mother has a beautifully pristine home, the kind that could be showcased in Southern Accents and where breathing is not allowed in formal living areas. She paid full price for everything. That’s why my teeth are still crooked and I’m a kidney short.

Since moving back to Georgia, I’ve come to enjoy frequenting an antique mall/flea market called Second Hand Sandra's. (My mom worries that people she knows will see my car parked there and she’ll lose her place in the tennis league.) Unlike big box home décor stores, Second Hand Sandra's has an “under the bridge homeless camp” kind of charm. Its owners are Floyd and Sandra, two locals who are basically harmless due to having no teeth. Floyd is an expert on vintage snuff packaging and anything Dale Earnhardt. Sandra loves to talk politics and has black rolling tumbleweed hair that seems to balance tentatively on her scalp, rather than grow out of it. One day I’m going to work up the nerve to ask her if she’s wearing a wig.

I visit their store about once every other week. Sometimes I buy. Sometimes I just browse. ALWAYS I shower afterward. I love taking an hour when the kids are at school and just wandering among knock offs, garage sale finds and things that were rescued from the side of the road—a long, long time ago. I believe that every item has a story that deserves to be told and it’s my duty to make it up.

Sometimes I find myself wondering aloud “if this Beverly Hillbillies ashtray could talk, would it tell me about sitting in a singlewide trailer dutifully accepting one Pall Mall butt after another from Thelma, its chain smoking owner?” Thelma was undoubtedly the kind of woman who went grocery shopping in a house coat and her hair up in rollers. (There just aren’t enough of those types anymore.) I hold up a honey blond wig made of something like burlap and wonder “was this a big seller back in the day? Maybe for women who had no nerve endings in their scalps. Maybe it’s the brand that Sandra wears.”

On more than one occasion I’ve gazed upon the mounted camel head on the wall above the cash register and thought “who goes camel hunting? And where? Is there any sport to shooting an animal that’s just standing there?” To me it’s like having a milk cow mounted above your fireplace.

Steep Digression. Will we ever climb out?
“When exactly is camel season?” I asked my husband after returning from a Second Hand Sandra's hunting trip of my own.

“Was it a Dromedary or a two-humper?”

“Honey, only the head and neck were mounted. I’m not enough of a camel expert to tell whether it was a Dromedary, or a ……..what’s the other kind called?”

Quickly, I performed a Google search to learn what two-hump camels are called. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have slept all night. I mean, would you be able to with a question like that weighing on your mind?

Mystery solved. Two hump camels are called Bactrians. They’re far less numerous than their singular appendaged counterparts. It’s fascinating stuff, really.

Dromedaries, which are native to Northern Africa and the Middle East, are now as common as a pack of Camel cigarettes throughout the world thanks to rancher exporting and the movie Casablanca. Bactrians, on the other hand, live in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and it never occurs to them to travel anywhere else. Not even after repeatedly being offered frequent flyer miles from Virgin Atlantic (which now offers more daily trips to the Gobi than any other carrier).

According to The Hatch Report, Bactrians are much more mild mannered than their cousins. That probably means spitting less and smiling more in the realm of camel etiquette. They also grow long, shaggy hair each winter to cope with the plunging Gobi climate. It all falls out by spring when temperatures begin to rise again.
Since Bactrians are scarcer in numbers and cop fewer Terrell Owens-like attitudes, they sell for much higher prices than Dromedaries. So, if you happen to have a Bactrian grazing in your backyard or giving your kids rides around the neighborhood, don’t accept the first offer that comes along. He might just be your ticket to the next tax bracket.
End of Digression

Adding to the flea market’s “salvation” ambience is the slightly louder than necessary Southern Gospel music, compliments of AM 1450. Last Wednesday, after listening to Power in the Blood, Changed by the Blood and Saved by the Blood, I couldn’t help wondering if the deejay was some kind of evangelical vampire who happened to be a little thirsty. However, I bet more people that we realize have Second Hand Sandra's to thank for leading them to accept Christ as their savior. If I were Sandra and Floyd, I’d have to brag about that. Put out a press release like the following-

“Second Hand Sandra's: Saving Housewares and Human Souls Six Days a Week”

It might be a little off-putting, though, to be examining a Depression Era butter dish and overhear someone shouting in tongues on the plastic jewelry aisle just a few feet away.

The other day, as I stood appraising a bed pan once used by James Oglethorpe, the song Grandma’s Feather Bed by the Chuck Wagon Gang began twanging through the speakers. I couldn’t help but reminisce about my own grandma’s incontinence and her love of church hymns. Years ago, Granny killed a low growing house plant because she mistook the ornamental planter, in which it was potted, for a toilet. My dad, musing at his aged mother’s lapse in judgment, said “I thought only cats did that.” We then realized that her cataracts was worse than her incontinence, and that perhaps the latter was caused by being too blind to find the toilet. That’d be terribly frustrating. Come to think of it it’s the stuff that nightmares are made of.

Imagine that you’ve just digested a yummy bran muffin. You grab the Wall Street Journal and head to the bathroom looking forward to some productive paper work only to discover that the commode is missing. After doing three double takes, you anxiously dash down a long hallway, opening doors to the right and left only to find that not a single room contains a toilet -- or a mop bucket or even a Starbuck’s cup.

That just might be worse than the “falling off a cliff” or the “giving a speech and discovering that you’re naked” nightmares. It could also have unfortunate “beyond sleep” consequences that would necessitate a change of bedding upon waking.

If you repeatedly have this dream and need to stock up on bedding—Second Hand Sandra's has an excellent selection of new, used, and contaminated sheets sets for under $5.

Notes from a Narcisist: there's a place for ugliness and it's not the fast food drive thru.

Warning: If you suffer from conditions relating to a weak stomach, easily grossed out syndrome, restless leg syndrome, or a strong dislike of people who are irrationally boastful and full of themselves, you may want to pass up this entry and read something less controversial. Anything by Victoria Osteen or Newt Gingrich’s daughter Jackie should do quite nicely and cause your overall IQ to drop three to five points…during the first chapter.

This needs to be addressed.
Sometimes a topic speaks to me, begging to be written about. It camps out until I sit down at the keyboard and exhorcize it from my brain.

Occasionally these topics are so controversial that even Geraldo Rivera and Anderson Cooper wouldn’t dare to approach them. However, I’m willing to take a tough and straight forward look at the human injustices that surround us, the ones that we don’t dare speak of at the dinner table for fear of offending someone less attractive. After all, God made them that way and they can’t help it.

Oh yes they CAN. And if they choose not to, then they shouldn’t work in the food service industry. Forgive me. I know that's harsh. There are plenty of occupations practically begging for ugly people to apply—such as security guards, corrections officers and mad scientists’ laboratory assistants.

Some of you are saying “Hold on, I’m not following you.” Have you ever driven up to an Arby’s menu, completely starving, ordered your food and then in anticipation waited for your turn at the window?

Yes, I think we all have.

Have you ever gotten to the window and beheld a person (and I use that term lightly) so physically unattractive holding your food that you suddenly lose your entire appetite as well as your oatmeal from breakfast?

Yes, yes I think we all have.

I’m not talking about the occasional fast food counter person with an unfortunate hair color job, a face like an Easter Island statue, or an untimely hormonal zit. Those are forgivable, yet pitiable maladies. What I’m referring to is worse. See, example below.

I’m not sure why Mr. Arby’s thought it was smart to hire an ex-convict with a collar of naked woman tattoos around his neck, nasal blackheads the size of toilet spores, a crop of facial psoriasis that would ruin even a stoned person’s appetite for pizza. This topped with hair that has a little too much in common with a Christmas snow globe. Doesn’t that just make you want to shout “Make Mine a Biggie Size!”

I think not.

I can’t help but shudder, wondering what this man has done with my Beef n Cheddar and curly fries before placing it in the bag. Had he washed his hands like the bathroom sign suggested? Judging from the condition of his yellowing claws, I would assume that Reagan was in office that last time his hands experienced the feel of soap and water simultaneously. If this is what the customer service person looks like, what kind of physical, not-of-this-world, horrific deformities must the back-room employees possess?

Sometimes it’s the owners, rather than the employees.
I attended college in _________ville, GA, home of a notable asylum and a Dairy Queen restaurant that boasted an absurdly high number of customers saying “oh never mind” upon reaching the counter.

As I write this, I feel a tinge of guilt equal in offense to laughing, pointing, and telling a new mother that her baby is a freak, or purposefully tripping a special ed student with leg braces. I take no pleasure in what I’m about to describe, but it must be done for the good of humankind, especially those unsuspecting travelers who enjoy DQ Blizzards and may find themselves driving into the city limits of a college town that ends in “ville” one day.

Growing up in a small town with only a Dairy Queen to serve the hungry masses (well, one mass and it was sparse) I became all too well acquainted with everything on their menu. After a few weeks away at college, the pangs of homesickness sank in along with intense cravings for a DQ chili cheese dog. My friend Mike, who was always in the mood for a double cheese burger, onion rings and a large orange drink, offered to drive me off campus, down Wayne Street to ________ville’s DQ.

I was excited. I was hungry. And Mike was reeeealllly good looking. My only concern, other than eating a long awaited chili dog, was trying not to smear cheese on my face or scarf my food down like a hyena, as I tend to do even today.

My earlier concerns instantly became irrelevant once I approached the counter. The cashier was obviously wearing a Halloween mask. Upon getting closer I realized it wasn’t a mask, but it should’ve been. I can’t quite describe what the guy looked like because I’ve pretty much blocked it out. I think he was purple with lumpy masses all over his head, one of which contained an eyeball, but was not where a normal eye should be. That’s all I remember.

When I began to stammer about suddenly craving a Big Mack or a Whopper and could we go elsewhere NOW!!!. Mike realized my dilemma. In an attempt to make everything okay, he explained, “that’s just Mr.________. He was shot in the face a while back.” I felt really, really bad. Mr. _________ was probably a nice guy, a pillar of the community, one who gave thousands of toys and cheeseburgers to needy kids each Christmas, and dutifully visited the elderly and shut-ins. And there I was judging him by his appearance. I felt lowly. I wish he’d have slapped me with his normal appearing right hand. No matter how much I chided myself, I just couldn’t muster up the acceptance to eat anything at the _________ville DQ the entire time I lived there.

A full 15 years later, I’m still wondering how a gun shot could turn one’s skin purple. It’s beyond me. And not something I’d ever feel comfortable asking Mr. ________.

More than the “how” of his appearance, I still wonder why Mr. _______ decided to purchase a Dairy Queen franchise and become the front counter manager. Hasn’t he noticed a high number of patrons suddenly remembering that they’re on diets?

I’ll never know, because I’ll never ask.

Didn’t he ever think “Maybe I should be an accountant?” Or “I wonder if that ‘Igor’ position is still available down at the lab.”

There is an upside.
Okay, here's the one silver lining to this foodservice cloud. Beastly customer service people offer a valuable, yet oft overlooked service to dieters looking to crash their calorie intake. Why just the other day, I received a letter from “Jane” a reader in Plum Chew, Mississippi. Here’s what she had to say.

Dear Brilliant Blogger,

After having a successful day of counting calories, I drove past an ice cream place that will remain nameless. I thought “You’ve done so well today, Janie. Go ahead and have a treat to celebrate.” Now any dieter knows that this is slippery slope thinking at its best, but already, I was beyond the point of reason.

I wheeled my pink Caddie around, hung a u-turn and before I could say double scoop of caramel brownie in a waffle cone, I was ordering a TRIPLE scoop of caramel brownie in a waffle cone. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, there were three cars in front of me, so I had to wait my turn. While I was sitting in line, I got that feeling of “self sabotage” as my Weight Watchers buddies call it. I didn’t really NEED that ice cream. If I got it, I’d eat every bit. If I ate every bit, I’d hate myself at Weigh-Ins tomorrow morning, especially when Rhonda Wilhite would be there bragging that she finally fits into her wedding dress from her third marriage and will be able to wear it to her sixth marriage.

Well, not to worry, the Lord works in mysterious ways, even when we’re trying to wreck our waistlines. I’ll have you know I pulled up to that window and the person waiting to hand me my ice cream looked like an ugly stick beaten donkey dipped in too-strong moonshine. Need I say more? Honey, the growling that my belly had been doing turned into scared whimpers. I floored that Caddie and drove directly home. I did not pass "Go." I did not collect $200.

I am grateful because it’s now 9 PM and I’m STILL not hungry. I might never be hungry again.

Sincerely,

Jane *&^%$^