I had a dream about a painting I wanted to buy. I told the artist how much I liked it. She smiled politely and said it was $10,000.
“Oh,” I said, crestfallen. “I guess I’m going to have to wait then.”
I went back to look at that painting I would never be able to afford. Suddenly — the way these things always seem to happen in dreams — I found myself on top of a very tall building, looking down into a canyon of smaller buildings where my little painting had somehow become a multimedia extravaganza comprised of five huge pictures the size of Diamond-Vision screens, suspended in mid-air, each one showing a different action-packed vignette of a giant pterodactyl-like creature swooping over a grainy deep-blue metropolis. I was confused. Someone came up to me and asked if this was the art I’d liked so much.
“Um … no. Mine was a picture of a guy on a tractor.”
I remembered the dream as I drove to work, and I had to laugh. Even my dreams these days are banal.
I’ve been sick in a variety of unpleasant ways for the past three days. I have been an avid swallower of aspirin, Benadryl and Pepto-Bismol. I feel much better now, but I’m waiting for an outbreak of … I don’t know … the gout or something. I need to get me some Gout-Go-’Way tablets — just to be safe.
My chronic headache disappeared for a bit yesterday when the secretary of a former governor called and placed a $1,000 catalogue order (hallelujah!). Since the governor’s office is just a mile or two from the store, I asked if we could just drop the books by instead of mailing them. As the secretary was giving directions, I could hear the governor piping up in the background — that familiar scratchy old-man voice that used to annoy me so much years ago was telling her to tell me to take a certain driveway around the back. That sort of made me laugh, too. Protocol kind of goes by the wayside once one has been out of office a few years. I half-expected him to ask me to pick up a Coke and a newspaper for him on my way over. I pictured him out back, waiting, in a rocking chair, whittling, a dog at his feet — ready to peel off ten $100 bills from his Jed Clampett roll of cash. For some reason I desperately want to see this painfully wealthy oilman in overalls and a corncob pipe. I bet he only wears character-less Brooks Brothers suits. What a shame. At least Governor “Pappy” O’Daniel was brazen enough to have Bob Wills shill for him on the campaign trail. I bet HE whittled. But I don’t think Pappy amassed a great personal library … which, of course, is what really matters.
The catalogue has done much better than any previous catalogue has. I think my father used to aim for something like a 30% sell-through. This new catalogue has been out about two weeks and we’re at more than 55%. I decided we should experiment with a few new books (meaning newly-published books) and with some recently-remaindered Texana, and even the odd trade paperback — none of which has ever appeared on any of the store’s catalogues. Granted, the books are not as expensive as usual, but one takes what one can get.
Personally, I’m hoping we can sell 100% of the books so I can be well on my way to buying a $10,000 painting of a guy sitting on a tractor.
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