Boy, did I score some great junk the other day. The kind that makes you feel all warm inside. Makes you happy. Makes the world seem like a better place. NO, not that kind of junk. Yard sale and estate sale junk. My Saturday hobby. The thrill of the find. That elusive search for the $20 table that turns out to have been made by Pennsylvania Shakers in the 1800s and is worth far more than my house and other worldly goods put together. Haven’t run across that one yet, but this past weekend’s finds were a small but beautiful painting of the Madonna (not the singer), a hand-carved wooden cigarette box, and a certain kind of corkscrew. I figured between the three of those I might get some kind of relief when I wake up in the middle of every night in the midst of a full-blown panic attack. I did, however, pass on a giant painting of a ham. A ham. In the dining room of one of those beautiful mansions on Belvedere. Go figure. My other great find of the day was a headline in The Commercial Appeal that read: PUTIN SHAKES UP STAFF, PUSHES STALLED REFORM. Couldn’t someone there please rerun that with a typo so it reads STALL REFORM? Is that asking too much? I think not. BUT the most wonderful find of the week came in the form of a tidbit of information passed along to me. It seems that the Memphis Airport Authority has contracted with a photographer to find the perfect away-from-their-desks settings to photograph each member of the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission for a display to be installed at Memphis International Airport. This is too good to be true. And such an easy one that I almost hate to take a potshot. I mean, c’mon. Barbara Swearengen Holt posing in front of The Pyramid? Please. Maybe a photograph of her on the toilet (speaking of stall reform) at the City Council calling someone at The Pyramid from the bathroom’s $800 telephone that you and I paid for. Or she could be calling to have Ricky Peete paged at Shoney’s to tell him to put down the bread. And of course the exhibit must include County Commissioner Michael Hooks at home in the kitchen sweating over a hot stove. Sorry, couldn’t help but make that crack (and neither could he, apparently). And what photo exhibit of our celebrated officials would be complete without a photograph of City Councilwoman Pat VanderSchaaf on a shopping spree at Marshall’s in Raleigh? Oh, wait. There are already photos of that, aren’t there? Poor Pat. I still love her. Anyone who skips a council meeting because of a sick pet is A-okay in my book. At any rate, all remarks made in fun, as I am certainly not perfect myself. I wish only the best for the photo exhibit, for the City Council and County Commission members, and for everyone, because I am just that kind of guy.
