Shop 'til you drop

Thanksgiving has come and gone and I hope you all survived the Holiday festivities with relatives and friends. Benjamin Franklin once said “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.” Now that’s pretty good wisdom from Ol' Ben, but, I’ve always wondered about the man’s sanity when he flew a kite in a lightning storm.

 Although that makes for a good story any way you slice it and he did survive after all making advancements in electrical sciences and inventing the Internet. Oops, wrong fella that was Al Gore, I hear.

So anyway, another Thanksgiving came and went like a flash of that proverbial Franklin lightning and Trixie and Ol' Dutch ended up spending a nice quiet day alone on the farm cleaning up the messes.

 For those of you who have not heard, Ol' Dutch got himself a small ranch down in Texas and with that inherited a nasty trashy mess of unbelievable proportions.

 I have heard about how people can trash a place but this is just plain gross. Food left in the cupboards has turned to green growing masses of moving amoebas, holes were kicked in the walls, something or someone pooped on the floor and piles of trash, old clothes, worn-out video games, and just plain filth are everywhere.

 They left a 99 Chevy truck and a nice tractor and lawn mower where they stopped and we got 10 huge bags of trash out of the truck alone.

 Picking up all that “stuff” that these poor people could not live without when purchased, got me to thinking about our rush to consumerism.

 Trixie and I have made it a yearly goal to go to the local Wal-Mart wherever we may be on Thanksgiving night just to watch the “crazies.” Many a time we have been treated to fights and flying box cutters as people refuse to wait on the staff there to open up the pallets of crock pots and Little Susie Dolls.

 Of course we always stayed far back out of the way but the sights and sounds are something to behold and make for a good story no matter who you are.

This year however, the stores have decided to not have the limited sales and thereby totally eliminated the rush to get more junk. The crowd was calm and there were not many more people there than a normal day of shopping and Ol' Dutch was thoroughly disgusted.

 Nothing says Holiday joy like seeing someone get beat over the head with a television and there was none of that to be seen that night.

 So on the following day known as Black Friday in the shopping world, Trixie and I found ourselves in the hunt for crazy. One good thing about living full time in an RV is you really cannot buy much of anything as there is no room to haul it. The 40 inch TV's for $125 were so tempting but alas, no room at the inn. The story of the ages so it seems.

 We went to Bass Pro Shops and it was a tad nuts but I was able to get out of there with some ammo. Having seen me purchase bullets in the past, Trixie had the audacity to ask me “just how much ammo does a man need?” Now what kind of foolish question is that?

 We finished up with a stop at the local Verizon and they talked me into a new phone and even reduced my bill by doing so. I am milking them along and before you know it they will be paying “me” to use their service.

 So all in all it was a poor year for fights, scraps and nasty words while shopping. Next thing you know there won’t be any reason to even get out and go to the store. We’ll just await the Amazon.com drone bringing it to our Thanksgiving feast.