The Haul (YMCA vs. Goodwill Part One)
I am (imp)ulsive. Saturday mornings are busy here at the Easy Chair but the afternoons are sleepy and we close at two o’clock. An evening off is a rare gift and I decided to spend one feeding The Gentle Madness. I had about thirty dollars to spend. First stop, the YMCA Thrift Store in Blacksburg where I found these books. I was pissed off to find Bee Season in the free pile on my way out the door, not because it cost me two bucks but because I don’t actually have time to read it. Not while I have Infinite Jest to finish, or Colum McCann’s This Side of Brightness, begging me to forget about Infinite Jest, enticing me with words like sandhog and manlock. The copy I found at the Thrift was dogeared and it contains this:
“When he was a ten-year-old boy in the swamps of Georgia, Walker forced a water snake to stay on a rickety wooden pier for five hours. He had heard it would dehydrate in the sun. The snake fought ferociously at first, wiggling from the pier toward the water, but he kept pulling it back by its head and tail. Remembering an old saying, he knew the snake wasn’t poisonous: Red and yellow kill a fellow, red and black be nice to Jack. He didn’t want to kill it himself, he just wanted the snake to die in the heat, but it just kept on thrashing. The sun began to sink low in the Okefenokee sky. In frustration, the young boy put his foot on the snake’s neck and slipped his knife in. Its innards were warm and he knocked them into the water. He brought the skin home to hang on his wall. Most of the house was made with logs, but his own room was composed of cinder block. He made a lot of noise hammering the nails. When the snake was stretched above his bed, his mother came in and asked him where he had gotten it. He told her the story, and she whipped him for his lack of respect.”
All right. So, score one for the Thrift. Add a New Stories From the South anthology and a near-new copy of Midnight’s Children to the mix and the Y is out in front. (Insert foreboding here.)
So, what happened at the brand-spanking-new Blacksburg Goodwill Store?
