The Myth of Wile E

One Big Antiques Roadshow

The dump made itself heard before it made itself seen. A squabble of seagulls hovered over it at all times, like the cloud of dirt over Pigpen. From a mile away, I could hear the seagulls shouting Eureka! at each other. "Oh boy, can you believe it?-Garbage!" they shrieked in delight. And then, a minute later (because seagulls are pathologically forgetful), "Oh boy, can you believe it?-Garbage!" I've never seen anybody more excited about discovering the treasure in trash than seagulls. To seagulls, life is one big Antiques Roadshow.

I made my trade at the dump-shiny flattened cans for shiny flat coins-and trudged on.

Five-ish miles down the Old Mill Road I came to Main Street, and the beginning of what you would I guess call the "commercial district," at least until the shopping center mogul had his way. It featured a post office, bank, and library, a grocery-and-sundries store called $ave-$mart, and a bunch of shops I'd never been in, like a religious bookstore, a feed store, a perpetually-going-out-of-business furniture store, and a chain electronics store.

(Also, there was a place which used to be called Everything's a Dollar, but between you and me, they weren't being one hundred percent honest about that. I went in one time with a dollar and told them they had themselves a deal, and they could keep the building itself, as I only wanted the inventory. They gave me a strange look and ushered me out, kind of like the bouncers at the giant actor traps. Then they locked the door behind me and changed the sign to "closed." Disappointed, I went about the rest of my errands. As I was walking past Everything's a Dollar later in the day, the store had reopened, but they'd covered part of their old sign with poster board and it now read: EACH! thing's a Dollar.

Oh.)