Saturday Market

Eric Winters felt a searing pain in his hip as he went down to pick-up the ten pound tub of corn. It was difficult to lift things nowadays due to his decaying joints, but he did it anyway, as if anyone else would bother to do it. Of course they wouldn't! They were lazy and did not care for his farm, at least not in the way he did. His grandfather, a bitter angry man had told him as he lay dying: "Take care of the farm you stupid idiot! Without it, you are nothing!"

And so he did work, tirelessly, endlessly, day in day out, just himself and the farm, and, of course, the legions of idiots he employed who cared nothing for the farm's success. Even his own son, Elliot, cared little for the farm. All Elliot cared about was video games and women! Probably. It was hard to say what that idiot was interested in, they talked so rarely and when they did talk it was only in terms of what needed to be done next on the farm or to yell at each other. If only his son could understand what truly mattered in life! Hard work and money, of course, for without those, you are nothing. Nothing!

Suddenly he heard a small voice over his left shoulder. It was his wife, Rita. Rita was a polite woman who spoke softly and treated people with respect, and, by his estimations, was a total imbecile. It was hard for him to remember most of the time why he had married her. To have a son to keep the farm running, he supposed, but beyond that, her importance was minimal to him.

Oh, dinners, she was good at making him dinners. He never could figure out the whole cooking thing. Not that he had any time to, what with all the working he did!

He found her so irritating nowadays, she worked so little, or at least as far as he could tell. He did not actually know what she did for a living, but he knew it wasn't farm work -- the most important work known to man! After all, as his father had always said, what is to happen to us without farms? We should starve, and no one wants to starve. Though he wished those damn liberal pussies in North Portland would starve. The type that lived off the government day in and day out with no ambition or desire to work every waking hour of their lives.

He set down the tub of corn and glared over at one his employees who, in fact, was from North Portland, a tall spindly, terribly ugly man (in his opinion) who never worked as hard as he wanted him to. A real hemorrhoid -- a term he had come up with himself and enjoyed using whenever he had the chance. A pain in the ass! Often he would say it out-loud and let everyone know just how clever, and more importantly, bitter he was.

The tall kid from North Portland, who went by the name of Tyrone, was currently writing signs for the market. He stooped over the table where he wrote the signs and he seemed to be writing a bit too slow, as though he didn't care enough. As though he could not comprehend just how much this farm meant to him.

Everything, essentially.

"Hey, get those signs done! I'm not paying you for nothing you dimwit!"

Tyrone, who never showed him any respect for some reason, answered back with a sneer in his voice that could only be brought on by too many years of liberal education, self-delusion, lack of reality, and book-reading, "What does it look like I"m doing!?"

"You're probably screwing up those prices just like you do every week! And just like you do at that Thursday market where everyone runs around like rabbits with their head cut off!"

Tyrone didn't reply, he just kept writing those signs, way too slowly. Typical work ethic from someone with an art degree. Art? What the hell is that worth? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Could you feed an entire army on art?

Nope.

Alas, there was hope at the end of the tunnel, for soon he would die and he could stop working, but not after having established his legacy of working.