Selling Out in Austin and Thinking Inside the Box. (original) (raw)
Who knew there were so many newspaper rack stories?
This story took place in the 1970s in rural Texas long before cell phones. Back before people needed to know �what are you eating now?� No, these calls were more urgent � more of the �Yeah, honey, I know, but just come pick me up�� variety.
It happened in a one-store town between San Antonio and Houston. Slightly closer to Houston, if you must know. The store was one of those once-common hybrid bar/ store/ pool hall / gas station / petting zoo / Mexican import stores � the kind you only see in movies today.
The proprietor of this business was notoriously cheap. He was honest-as-the-day-is-long � just cheap. Any service he provided came at a cost. He was thrilled the day that someone invented the coin-operated compressed air hose. Restroom use was free � but you could see that that �Bill� was working on that.
The telephone company had recently decided that the pay phone out in front of Bill�s store wasn�t generating enough income to justify the expense of sending a collector, so they removed it. One day it was there � the next day it was gone.
Now, Bill had a private phone behind the bar and everyone knew it. Deprived of the pay phone, they started asking Bill if they could use his phone. It irked Bill to no end that suddenly everyone�s phone use became urgent.
Each request required him to lift the phone from under the bar and replace it after the call was completed. He got a lot of thanks and �much obliged� � but in Bill�s mercenary mind a phone call was worth a quarter and he wasn�t getting it.
After a few weeks of placing the phone on the bar to his patron�s increasingly-sweet requests, the pool sharks started noticing the phone was being placed on the bar with such force that the needle on the jukebox would sometimes become un-grooved.
One slow morning when there wasn�t a customer in sight, the newspaper man came to fill his lone rack. A light bulb went off over Bill�s head that would�ve made any cartoonist proud to have drawn it. It was a 75-watter.
Bill brought the newspaper man a free cold drink - something he had never done before. If someone had been observing the two � they would�ve seen Bill pull a few moth-eaten bills from his billfold and hand it to the newspaper vendor, followed by a firm handshake.
The next evening at 6:30, one of the regulars asked Bill if he could use his phone. The pool sharks instinctively reached out to hold the billiard balls in place, but instead of reaching under the bar � Bill smiled and stretched his neck in the direction of the end of the bar where stood a (slightly dented and paint-chipped) newspaper rack � with Bill�s well-used phone inside.