Chapter Three, Lemons: Friday, May 26 (Day 6)

It’s a straight walk past the T-shirt and ceramics displays of the Cracker Barrel gift shop. No trying to discretely slip by without making eye contact before you reach the safe haven of the women’s restroom. I liked this because for some reason I couldn’t get over the feeling that I was doing something wrong. I guess its something about walking into a restaurant with all your toiletries stuffed into a backpack that makes you feel like you’re breaking some kind of ordinance.

The enchanting aroma of pancakes and coffee had ignited my stomach the instant I entered the home food cookery. Sadly my hunger would have to wait. Josh had plans to visit the tire place across the street before feeding us. Sigh.

Tomo and I stayed outside while Josh went in search of trailer tires. I got out of the truck to stretch my legs and spotted a neighboring car wash.

"We could take a shower over there," I said to Tomo through the open car door. "Can you imagine it? We could have Josh drive us through and we’d stand in the bed of the truck."

I was seriously debating the feasibility of a car wash shower when a lady parked by the dumpster in an old Ford truck yelled over at me.

"Nice trailer!"

"Huh?" I looked at the lady, followed her gaze to our shabby rig on wheels and looked to Tomo for back up...he shrugged. I looked back over at the lady.

"That sure is a nice trailer," she repeated. "I wish I had one like that."

"Oh, this?" I stuttered, turning around to take a better look at the rusted 30-foot monstrosity on wheels that had become my home. "Thanks." I guess.

"Can you believe that?" I whispered to Tomo. "This thing? Nice?"

"Oh no...you’ve got company," Tomo said, his eyes looking over my head. "She’s coming over here."

"No! Is she?"

He nodded, smiling now.

I turned around and sure enough here she came crossing the length of the lot smiling from ear to ear. She wore her mouse-brown hair pulled into a haphazard ponytail covered by a straight-billed trucker hat. Styleless circle glasses sat atop her nose which jutted out over a face covered in pimples, her skin weathered by a life less glamorous.

"How much did you pay for it?" she wanted to know, now standing inches from me.

"Uhhhh..." Not only did I not know how much the beast cost but I think I was still in a state of shock that I was actually having this conversation.

"It’s not ours, it’s our buddy’s," Tomo answered, making up for my dumbfounded silence. "He’s inside getting some new tires."

"That’s nice," she repeated, as her eyes longingly scanned the length of the trailer. "I just bought me one over eBay, got a real good price on it, four hundred dollars. Now mind you mine’s not nearly this nice but it’s still a real good deal. I’m a flea marketer...I know how to spot a bargain."

I could see Josh exiting the building over the top of the woman’s head. He shot a curious look my way and climbed into the truck with Tomo.

I needed to make an escape but the lady rambled on as I patiently nodded my head--until I heard Josh yell from across the way.

"Shelly!"

I turned to see the guys motioning for me to come back over to the truck.

"I’ve got to go before they leave me. Nice to meet you!" I yelled over my shoulder as I jogged over to the rumbling Dodge.

"Made a new friend, Shelly?" Josh asked, a sly grin playing across his face.

We crossed the street back to the Barrel where we cleared our plates of pancakes, eggs and biscuits in record time. Then we pushed on for the next mission of the day. Lemons.

If you’ve ever wondered what the innards of a wholesale produce house is like I’d ask you to imagine walking into a real-life Frogger game. Everywhere you turn little forklifts full of melons and various citrus zip and zoom past going meep meep. I felt like I was watching Wiley Coyote dodging the Road Runner as Tomo nearly got flattened out by a zipping forklift but jumped back just in time.

Josh met up with the man to be spoken with. Paperwork was signed. Money exchanged hands and we left, headed for the festival grounds loaded up with more lemons and oranges than I’d ever think I'd see in one place in my lifetime.

Once we arrived at Piedmont Park the guys sprang into action pulling out long steel beams and planks that looked like they belonged to a high school stadium’s bleachers. I wanted to find some way to be of use to the set up process but was at a loss as the guys began to pull out bamboo stalks.

"This will all make sense to you after one or two shows," Josh said reading my confusion. "It’s probably best just to watch for now."

So I stood back and watched in amazement as they constructed a two-story fortress out of it all. I wasn’t the only one impressed. All the other carnies kept stopping by in awe of the design, tilting their heads back to take in all twenty-five feet of its glory.

"I’ve never seen one that’s two stories," the hippie to my right gushed.

I followed his gaze down the row. The gyro stand to the right sat level to the corn dog booth, which stood even to the funnel cake cookers, which was connected to the snow cone makers.

"Yeah, you’re right. I don’t think I have either," I said, acknowledging the power of the oddity for the first time. I stood a little taller and puffed out my chest ever so slightly wondering if this was how the man who built the first skyscraper felt.

"Hey Shelly, I’ve got something for you to do," Josh said, pulling me back in from the crowd of admirers. Yay! A job.

I was given the duty of making the lemonade banner. It sounded like a fun, artsy project but resulted in me spending an hour and a half kneeling over a blue tarp meticulously pressing yellow letter transfers into it. The goal was to do this without trapping air in between the yellow and the blue which resulted in ugly bubbles. The job was painstaking.

Lucky for me Renee came by to pick me up after work. She arrived just in time. I was covered in five days worth of funk and ravenously hungry.

Renee is my older sister. She’s the night time version of me. If we were Barbies I would be Malibu Beach Barbie, all sunny and sporty. While Renee would be Downtown City Barbie, with dark hair, dark clothes and dark past time hobbies ranging from burlesque to trapeze.

"What do you want to eat?" she asked, as she slid into the driver’s seat of her Chevy Cavalier and reversed out of the park.

"Oh I really don’t care. Anything would be good at this point. "Food."

Renee guided us to a generic-looking fast food joint wedged into a strip mall.

"What is that? Titanium?" Renee asked.

"What? This?" I lifted the hair off the top of my ear to give her a better look at the industrial piercing. "I don’t know...why? Weren’t we just talking about food?"

"Because Brian can color it and make really pretty, but not if it’s stainless steel," she said, whisking out her phone to dial. "Hey Brian, how long are you going to be around tonight? My little sister is in town and I want to take her by to get her jewelry dyed."

This was followed by a series of uh huhs and mm hmms. Then she turned to me with her eyes all aglow.

"We can make it if we hurry."

As exciting as the idea of a beautifully dyed piece of jewelry sounded the grumbling in my stomach was demanding attention. "Ok, that sounds cool but we are going to eat first though, right? I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast and I’ve been sweating my ass off in the Georgia heat."

In honor of my request we zipped into the Zaxby’s for a time-efficient nutritional fix. She ordered a house salad with Ranch and I got a Santa Fe with low fat ranch.

"Do you want to try it? It’s amazing," Renee said, lifting her fork.

I thought I noticed a disapproving look as I declined the bite. Was it my imagination that her scowl then landed on the tub of dressing sitting to the left of my salad plate which I had only used half of? No...that would be silly. How could she judge me for not using all my dressing? I dismissed it as nothing.

We drove to Little Five Points and turned left toward Candler Park where The Piercing Experience sat across the street from one of Atlanta’s finest dining establishments--The Flying Biscuit. Brian, the dude on the phone, checked out my jewelry and told me not only was my piercing not titanium but that it wasn’t pierced through the right places in my ear which was causing my ear to be agitated.

"I can fix you up though. I’ll just add a little bend here and get you a new piece," he said, still fingering the rod with a scrupulous look.

He tried to sell me on some crystal balls that were painfully beautiful. I wanted them very badly but couldn’t swallow the idea of spending thirty-six dollars on them. Come to think of it, the idea of spending any amount of money stressed me out. I had a father’s grim disappointment to weigh heavily on my mind.

Dad had made no secret that he greatly disapproved of my decision to quit a steady-paying job with benefits to travel cross-country selling lemonade out of a trailer without compensation. I could understand why it would cause any father a great deal of mental trauma but in this case I knew the rift ran deeper. I owed him money and I had made a very conscious decision not to make any. I hadn’t talked to him in weeks. He hadn’t returned any of my calls and wouldn’t pick up the phone. The silence was killing me.

So, with that in mind the present situation was making me feel more than a little uncomfortable. I had a sinking feeling that all these ‘favors’ Brian was proposing to perform on my ear weren’t going to be free. I felt trapped. I looked at the door desperately wanting to quietly sneak back out where I came from and escape this money pit I had walked into.

"Are you ready, Shelly?" Brian asked, holding my new jewelry in gloved hands.

I grabbed Renee’s hand and followed him back to the piercing room. I barely noticed as Brian slid the old out and the new in. I was too busy rambling on and on about my newly transformed ‘carnie’ lifestyle and how I hadn’t showered in five days.

"Well, that’s what that smell was," Brian said with a smile, sitting back on his stool. "You’re all done."

"Really?" I asked, fingering the new piece of jewelry.

We stopped at the market on the way to the car at my request. It had been close to a week since I had had a drink and at the risk of sounding like an alcoholic I was in dire need of a margarita. I found some new ‘margarita in a bottle’ and carried it over to the cashier. I was reaching for my ID when the clerk stopped me.

"That’s okay," he said in a ‘don’t bother’ kind of way. "You look like you’ve had a margarita or two before."

Wow. Thanks. What a charmer. I walked out into the parking lot with a paper bag-wrapped bottle in one hand and the other searching my face for wrinkles. Man I really needed to take a shower, I thought.

I entered the foyer of Renee’s apartment, threw some laundry into the wash and poured myself a glass of the margarita. Then I went to find out what my big sister was up to. I found her knee-deep in piles of clothing covering her walk-in closet floor.

"What are you doing?"

"I have all these old clothes that don’t fit me anymore. I’ve been meaning to drop them off for charity but I always forget. So I figured I’d let you take a look at them."

She was standing beside her bed now laying the ‘give-away’ clothes out for my inspection. My eyes followed the action and noticed something familiar.

"Holy shit! Are those my old GAP pants? I gave these to you like a decade ago...I cannot believe you still have those."

Suddenly I was enthralled as my hands worked through the layers of clothes that I never thought I’d see again. It was like flipping through the pages of an old photo album as if each shirt was an old friend with stories to tell. Against my better judgment I picked two shirts out to take home.

We stayed up well into the night until I was dozing off sitting up. I didn’t shower.