My buddy sells exceptionally cool carvings of bears and moose. His animals have an attitude, personality and the ability to draw crowds off the base of Spit Road with ease. The Bearman normally sells a ton of his work so when I failed to even give away a business card they were still nice enough to write it off without obvious deep sighs and looks normally reserved for those so incompetent that they wear slip-ons because they can’t master tying a shoe lace.
They also took into account that I had been fishing for hours and showed up looking like a cross between a camouflaged water buffalo and a slime-line reject. That alone probably scared off anything from AARP tour groups to bikers’ clubs interested in his critter carvings. But I digress.
Confessions of a concessions stand, stand-in (part two) started early on the last day of the holiday weekend. Since I don’t own a cell phone, they wanted time to make sure I wouldn’t end up inadvertently calling a confused fish monger in Australia requesting a shipping price quote for a five foot spruce moose and a couple of moosequitos.
When the family finally agreed I was ready, they headed toward the airport pausing to look back only a half dozen times before leaving the parking lot. I was humbled by their faith in me and told them so every time they called to see how I was doing during their short flight to Seldovia.
I felt more confident this time around because I had Armoralled my XtraTufs, sprayed Frebrez on my Raider’s fishing hoody and sported non-camo pants. All I needed were customers. It didn’t take long.
Two seasoned citizens drove up in a Cadillac Escalade that was so huge it had a Hummer 3 in the cargo department as a spare. They had a good time looking and playing with the moose until the old boy fiddled with an antler on one of the $700 models and it popped off in his hand. Talk about a CPR moment. The guy had just reached critical mass when I mentioned they were detachable for shipping purposes. His wife said that they’d return after he had his internal defibrillator retuned. I hope they gave him some blood. His face could have used a couple of quarts.
The day heated up quickly with both the sun and a steady stream of tourists stopping by to take pictures of the displays and ask questions. No, I couldn’t barter. No, I didn’t carve the cute moose. I do a pretty good Thanksgiving turkey though. No, the spectacles on the geezer moose are not carved. Why, ’cause his teeny chainsaw keeps scratching the glass.
And so it went until a Russian lady arrived with her daughters and walked directly to the wood critter I called the bare butt bear. It was a two-foot long crouching bruin with the flap missing on his rear end. The piece was a crack up (sorry about that) and not inexpensive. She decided the bare booty on the beast would be fun to rub for good luck and bought it.
As I recorded my first official sale, the phone vibrated. It was the Bearman clan checking in to see if their place was still standing. When I bragged that I just sold the bear with the exposed gluteal region, there was dead silence.
“Ya know, the one with its bare @$& sticking up like a mail slot,” I explained. Still silence. I thought the caller had passed out. It turned out the signal dropped off. Yet, another reason I don’t own a cell phone. Anyway, they were happy that everything was in one piece and have hinted about using my growing talents again.
I’ve decided that concessions may be my forte. I mean, how many people double their sales in just two attempts?
Maybe I’ll apply for that sales job at the Homer News but first I have to figure out what a full-time, temporary job means. For some reason that just sounds so wrong.
Nick C. Varney can be reached at ncvarney@gmail.com. Maybe.
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