Economy

Friday Fictioneers: Julie’s Gold Mine

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot. Click picture for Rochelle’s blog.

Julie said, “Dad, you don’t understand. You buy used cars. Same thing. It looks like a lot, but you’ll get change.”

I said, “I see. One person’s trash is another’s treasure.”

“Exactly!”

I handed the cashier a twenty. She held out my change, “Would you like to donate to our feed the poor project?”

I said, “Of course,” handing her another five.

When shopping came up at dinner, Steven said, “Secondhand sales and peer-to-peer marketing is a hundred-billion-dollar business. In Austin, the fastest growing retail market is in junk stores. And there’s the rental game.”

“My, how things have changed.”

Look both ways to see that resale and rental retailers are thriving in the pandemic – and not just because brick and mortars were shuttered.
Mind the gaps. They may have fleas.

Click on Julie and Hoss to read other FF stories.

 

Prose Poem: Sammi’s Weekender – Devour

Need of Greed

This economy lies with deceptive pleasure – destruction, pending one hell of a bill to pay. We suck and devour the heritage of descendant’s gifts, their demise through our greed. When the well runs dry, the piper calls for payment, recovery of burnt offerings to self without gods who care for a prayer. Easy plunder blinds our need for air, water, food, and fire. Misery awaits death and disaster, sending ignored warnings past personal pleasure.

It’s not yet too late to reverse unwanted ends with the wisdom of science, we can turn the page. What higher cause to save humanity, perhaps the planet, our tiny corner of the universe?

Look both ways to past mistakes, future consequences,
bookends for today’s wisdom.
Mind the gaps in human psyche for sources of timely recovery.

Poetry: Watching the World go by

Standing by the side of the interstate
I see the traffic, signs of our active
economy.

Semi drivers draggin’
the line from DFW, Abilene, and
points east; toward Midland,
Odessa, El Paso and places
with fewer murders.

Swiftly passing here – in the midst
of nowhere, eight out of ten
are trucks, most 18-wheelers
dragging all manner of trailers,
some rides with goosenecks
for smaller loads, others following
piggy-backed FedEx loads

doing seventy, noisy diesel engines,
flatbeds full and west-bound,
empty east-bound to fetch more
Permian Basin bound oilfield
supplies, and back again.

Moving trailer homes and machinery
and all manner of truckable
paraphernalia by employed
truck drivers. Most cars and SUVs
are a minor nuisance
in the weekday world
of transportation work.

And all this wild panic seen
from three amazing minutes
standing near the side of the road.

Look both ways up and down the arteries of commerce.
Mind the gaps. They fill rapidly.