The only vendors that
came to my town’s farmers market this morning were folks like the artisan who
makes clever items out of cedar and the lady who makes bread. But conversation
among the visitors was great and even better than buying something, I think.
Here is a sample of an earnest conversation between two women I overheard:
“Do people ever sell
jewelry here? Some people wear necklaces that smell good.”
“Olfactory therapy.”
“Old factory?”
“Maybe I should say
smell therapy. If you smell something pleasant, it makes you feel better. Like,
for example, if you smell honeysuckle it makes you feel like springtime.”
“Do they make them
necklaces in an old factory somewhere? I know that old chair factory is
abandoned. I bet they make them necklaces there.”
“Keep that honeysuckle
off my fence row, is all I can say. That stuff will take over. Did you ever
pull the little stem thingy in a honeysuckle flower and drink the drop of
nectar when it comes out?”
“What am I, a bee? Thai
restaurants serve edible flowers with their meals sometimes. Or maybe it is
just decoration, but I think people eat them. I have heard that people fry
squash blooms and eat them. Cauliflower is really not a flower, is it? Where do
they make them necklaces?”
“Back in the day of
Gorgeous George, the wrestler, people used to refer to cauliflower ears because
when you keep abusing your ears they get this wadded up look like cauliflower.
Do you remember Gorgeous George?”
“Yes, I believe he was
the precursor of pretty boys like Liberace and Elvis and maybe even Tiny Tim.
Tiny Tim’s original stage name was Texarkana Tex. I don’t think he really had
any connection to Texarkana, though. I bet they make them old factory necklaces
in Fulton.”
“No they don’t. Back to
eating flowers, I read that book ‘Alive’ back in the 70s about the Andes plane
crash survivors and when they finally got below the snow line and saw wild flowers,
they ate them. They were some hungry dudes after such long isolation up in
there.”
“I love sunflower
seeds. I bet you could make a necklace out of them. Ever see one?”
And so the conversation
went at the farmers market. Don’t you love leisurely days when people start out
talking about necklaces and end up talking about sunflower seeds? It is an
exercise in associative thought. The funny part of it is that, at the moment of
the conversation there is nothing strange about it.