Don't Get Many In

Somewhere off a dusty track in the rural backyard of the Stated United American land, Billy Bob waits for customers to his mercantile store.

For years, he wished he had ordered that neon sign to attract people from the nearby highway. Then his electricity went, and his hand-cranked dynamo got a bit difficult to turn what with his arthritis and all, so even his 40 watt bulb that shone several miles out on a good day wouldn’t do much but glimmer like a firefly.

Billy Bob still waits and hopes, and occasionally passing photographers click their shutters and shout a timid howdy. He wonders why his old 35mm film stock doesn’t interest them any more, it was the latest greatest Kodachrome shit when he got it in. Something about an information super-highway and digital (finger?) technology. He just sits back and listens to his old crystal set and wonders what a television might look like in his back room, if ever he could have afforded one and got a young lad to crank the dynamo real fast.

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