Well, it's a silly jaunt, although not a whole lot of jaunting going on... You'll have to wait for later chapters.

 

Al's Everything Store, Chapter 1

 

 

Ever since she discovered the rickety stairs to the balcony at the rear of Al’s Everything Store, GeorgeAnn had made the dusty loft area her personal project space. A sort of unofficial back office above the store’s real back office, the space had once been used to display animated puppets—a talking moose, a bear reaching for a honey pot, a nodding cow. That was back before Al’s was an Everything Store and the building housed a hunting and farm supply store. There were still parts of the puppets up there. GeorgeAnn had canabalized them and used the bits to build her own variations: a crane that moved tissue boxes from one side of the room to the other, a marble race, and a scary mutant moose-cow creature that made weird sounds and snorted smoke at Halloween.

Mom complained from time to time that GeorgeAnn spent too much time in the loft. Truth was, she did spend a lot of time there. Over the summer she’d begun her model city named Inspiration. It now consisted of one street with half a dozen buildings along the outer edge of the loft where customers could see it. As she began populating the back side of the road with buildings, customers were less likely to see her in her private/public space. Now that summer was over, if possible, she was spending even more time in the loft.

Middle school had been boring, but mostly tolerable. Now, a freshman in high school, it was awful. She’d read all the textbooks years before, but the teachers didn’t know her, or didn’t care what she did or did not know. The students, even those she’d been in classes with since grade school seemed like different people. It was as if going through those doors labeled ‘high school’ had transmuted their brains. No, most kids weren’t as interested in building things as GeorgeAnn was, but at least before some of them seemed to be interested in things other than the games they played with each other on phones. 

GeorgeAnn had a phone. The most useful app was the calculator. After that, what she most often used the thing for was looking up information. To be honest, cell phone reception wasn’t all that good either in the house or the store, but Dad made sure that the wi-fi was good. For all that, he put strict limits on how much time the kids could be online. As long as her chores were done, however, he put no such limitations on her building things.

 

[Side bar: Wind Turbines]

 

For the next enhancement to Inspiration city, GeorgeAnn was planning a set of street lamps. As this was a city of the future, she planned to power the lamps with a wind turbine. Since the loft was inside a building, the source of the wind would be an electric fan hidden behind a building. The fan came from store stock: Dad bought a cargo container of fans of unknown origin on the ultra cheap because an unfortunate accident let the container fall off the ship from China. It had been recovered, but the fall and subsequent water damage destroyed the packaging and many of the fans. GeorgeAnn, her brother John Jacob and the twins sorting and cleaning what could be sold and coming up with ways to dispose of the rest. That she had kept a couple of the fans to cope with the sometimes sweltering air in the loft, Dad did not mind.

So she had the air supply, and had built a stator from door bell wire. Apparently, no one used bell wire any more and there were spools and spools of the stuff collecting dust in the back of aisle three. Dad charged her ten cents a spool. Customers, if there ever were any, were supposed to pay a dollar. For blades, she was starting with surplus fan blades, not ideal, perhaps, but available. Her alternator was constructed of magnets glued to a plastic disk: packing material from something. The tower, which was only four feet tall so that she could easily reach and affix the blade and turbine assemblies was barely taller than her tallest city building. After a generous coating of white paint and happy face stickers, it looked pretty cool. Better than that, it actually produced enough electricity to illuminate twelve LED based street lamps.

Even John Jacob who was more interested in sports, or projects that earned him money thought it was pretty cool. Paul Simon, her youngest sibling, thought it was her best project yet and came up to the loft whenever he could to focus the fan to give the wind turbine the best draft and watch the blades turn.

Classmates, when they came by the store didn’t appreciate the lighting apparatus. They probably thought the turbine was just a prop and the street lamps powered by battery. No matter. Even Dad had a hard time believing that his fourteen-year-old daughter could build a working windmill, as he called it. 

 

 

On the way from lunch to English, GeorgeAnn checked the clubs bulletin board. Being just outside the classroom, it was hard to miss. Mom had this idea that the transition to middle school would be easier if she joined a club. It would make getting to know more students easier and it might just be fun.

GeorgeAnn had her doubts. Chess sounded boring. The book club read fiction. She didn’t play a musical instrument, so band and orchestra were out. Mom would only let her join the robotics club if she joined another non-technical club and the thought of taking the late bus home twice a week was out of the question. She had work to do, things to accomplish in the store. Oh, why couldn’t her folks take up home schooling? Then she could avoid public education all together.

As far as GeorgeAnn was concerned, her day began when she got off the school bus. They dropped her off at the store since the house was on the lot behind the business. The parking lot was long and deep in front of the store, but she never minded the walk. She liked to survey how many cars were from out of state and from how far away. Most were from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They sometimes were more plentiful than those from Connecticut, given that they were located in the northeast corner of the state.

While she might have preferred to have gone straight to the store, the first stop was always at the house. Her job was to see that snacks were ready for the younger kids when they got home and to do any homework that hadn’t gotten done earlier. When John James and the twins got home, she went back out to collect Paul Simon from daycare which was at Mrs Johnson’s, three doors down on the street behind their house. Having deposited the youngest sibling with the others, she headed for the store.

She and dad had a quick production meeting in his office beneath the loft. They discussed the new stock that had come in during the day and any areas that needed work. Since the end of last summer, GeorgeAnn’s special area of responsibility was merchandise display. It was her job to find ways to display slow moving items so that they sold quickly.

“I’ve got a challenge for you today, GA,” dad said. He smiled. It was that kind of smirk that said he had something unusual and he thought, beyond her abilities. Her favorite kind of challenge.

“Bring it on.”

“I got a pallet of china—dishes today. But we can’t sell them in housewares because they aren’t food safe.” His smile was gone. This was something he saw as a genuine problem.

“Who makes dishes that aren’t food safe?” It seemed inconceivable.

[Sidebar about food safety and ceramic glazing]

“Oh, they are probably fine, or would have been in the country where they were produced. But they don’t meet American standards for food safety.”

“So why did you buy them.”

“I didn’t. Exactly. They came as part of a lot. And I really wanted the other items in that lot.”

“So, you wouldn’t mind if John James and the twins broke them up and used them to fill holes in the parking lot?” Whenever something came in that seemed to be completely worthless, they considered if it could be used to repair the parking lot. Almost always a better idea came along, but anything was better than putting something in the trash. It cost money to haul trash away.

“As a last resort.”

“Of course. Are they on the dock? So I can see what I have to work with?”

“Tomorrow. Your birthday present was part of that shipment. And mom says that I can’t let you see it until you’ve told her which club you’re joining.” He looked her in the eye and knew the answer without asking. “You haven’t joined one yet, have you?”

 

John Jacob called the meeting to order by passing out juice boxes. The twins, Abbey Mae and Bethie Lou helped themselves to the Heffer Donut Holes on the table while Paul Simon frowned and gave a whimpering look to GeorgeAnn that said, “Anything else.”

GeorgeAnn frowned back. There were four cases of said pastries in the pantry and while they might safely be edible into the next century, she had no plans to try. Besides, having less satisfying snacks from time to time made the better munchies seem glorious in comparison. Variety is good, she thought.

“Paul Simon,” John James called, “carrot juice or apple-chokeberry?”

“No plain apple juice?”

“Sorry,” the older brother said handing over the apple-chokeberry.

GeorgeAnn sat quietly waiting for everyone to be ready. Having served his younger sibs, John Jacob opened his carrot juice. Only GeorgeAnn abstained from the bounty. She’d had her cranberry-mango-goji juice earlier and couldn’t stomach Heffer Donut Holes. As the plate of those emptied, mainly going to John Jacob, she reached down and brought up a box of Celestial Delights Easy Living Dinnerware and began to empty its contents on the table.

“New plates!” squealed Bethie Lou. Housewares and dolls appealed to the twins.

“No,” GeorgeAnn explained, “new project.”

That got everyone’s attention.

“The box says, ‘dinnerware,’ but according to Dad they aren’t safe to use with food. So we get to come up with some other ways of using and marketing these things.”

“What’s the payout?” John Jacob asked. He had his eye on a new skateboard, but not the funds to purchase it, yet.

“Depends on product.”

“You know that,” Abbey Mae chimed in. And he did, but as the person in charge of the meeting, John Jacob felt it his duty to lead the conversation with business-type questions. It amused GeorgeAnn and groused the twins.

“There are lots and lots of these sets to work with,” GeorgeAnn continued. “So we can potentially do a bunch of different things with them.” There were, in fact, more than four pallets full of the worthless dishes. They were going to need to come up with a lot of projects to get rid of them all.

“Flying saucers for your city?” Bethie Lou held a pair of saucers together like a frisbee. GeorgeAnn hoped she didn’t launch them in the kitchen.

“Who’s going to buy decorations from GeorgeAnn’s loft?” John Jacob asked.

“We could mark them with passport stamps and include little books of their travels,” Abbey May added excitedly.

“Sounds like a lot of work,” he said.

“No, most of the book is blank,” Bethie Lou added, “for the customer to record new travels, we just get it started with something like, Mars, port of origin, Al’s Everything Store, first visit.”

“Start working on a prototype,” GeorgeAnn made a note of the idea. She loved it when at least one of the kids came up with an idea before she was forced to do all the thinking. “Let me know what materials you need. Also, I was looking around the internet and lawn ornaments made out of dishes are popular projects. Perhaps you could look into that as well?”

“Yea,” John Jacob asserted himself again, “I know what you mean. Things like wind chimes and bird feeders and sculptures.”

“If the dishes can’t be used for food, how can you use them for a bird feeder?” Paul Simon was dissecting a donut hole into crumbs. He wanted to be on the production team, but only because that’s how snacks were distributed. He’d rather be digging holes in the flower garden with his toy trucks.

“I’ll check with Dad about bird feeders,” GeorgeAnn offered and made another note. “Any other ideas?”

The twins stacked cups and saucers into small towers. “Bowling?”

John Jacob twirled a dinner plate on the tip of his finger, “Magic tricks? Or, maybe, juggling?”

“There’s another box of dishes under the table. Play around. See what you come up with. Remember everything to be cleared half an hour before dinner time. I’ve got to get to the store now.”

With that, GeorgeAnn left her younger sibs to ponder and play. Maybe they’d come up with some good ideas. Tomorrow, she’d give them drawings of her ideas of garden sculptures and some glue to see what they came up with.