Florida, Oddly Enough

Roadside studio in Cleveland, SC

I chose a random photo from my camera roll this week, as a writing prompt. I had to think about it, see what it suggested to me. It made me think of a character, who found a nice piece of wood one day. Perhaps he carried it home from the woods, or loaded it into his old truck. He lined it up out back with some other nice logs he'd found. Oak, cedar, even some magnolia. He'd have coffee and mull over the pieces, wondering what was inside that he could bring out. A bear, a cobra, a cockatoo? It can sometimes take a week before he sees what  is inside the wood.
He can take his time because he doesn't have a regular job. He lives and works in his studio, and sells under an awning in the front yard, which has a wide swath of gravel across it. Cars can easily pull in from the two lane highway that will take them from Greenville and Traveler's Rest, to Paris Mountain and up toward Asheville, NC. Passersby are his main clientele. His bills are paid, his food easily gotten, his wants and needs few because he loves what he does, and the place where he lives.

One time he made a pig from some twisted cedar. A small but round pig, a pink and orange runt. Like Wilbur, in Charlotte's Web, his daughter's favorite book when she was young. He hadn't had that pig out for a day when a young woman and her son got out of their car to look at it. "My son loves pigs. We are in a pig loving phase." she says. She's visiting the area, and was originally from Greenville, but doesn't have much family there anymore. She remarks how it is the most fragrant part of the country she has ever known, and how nice and cool the evenings were in summer even if it had been a hot day. She wonders if it is still that way. The man notices how the boy gently pats the pig, as if were a round, warm, living creature. This is why he never puts prices on his work. He watches the boy. Pieces can bring from fifty to four hundred dollars. People love those big bears.

He wants the boy to have the pig. He tells the woman twenty dollars and she says she can't believe it! "Thank you! It's worth more than twenty!"
You watch her walk away, the cedar pig tucked under her arm, the boy squealing, "Oh, my pig, my pig!" as he climbs in the car. He turns and grins and waves, she does too, as they drive away.

Later he calls his daughter to tell her the story of the pig and the boy.

~Dorothy Dolores