I know a good share of my readers are women and hence cannot relate to the sensitive matter of impulse buying. I, however, have had enough experience with men to understand the problem in great detail.
Go to any garage sale and you will see women looking and looking over gadgets last advertised on TV in 1985. These gals paw over yesteryear’s treasures like they are looking for gold on Oak Island. (For the uninitiated, that’s a TV show about searching for a lost treasure that never materializes --- yet.)
Now men, on the other hand, are really something. They don’t like the art of perusing but they sure do seem to enjoy buying and that’s the reason they often come home with the darndest stuff.
My friend Uncle Si is a garage sale aficionado and has enough stuff to host his own Pickers show. He does get some amazing things but having three billy clubs may just be overkill no matter how good a deal they are.
Advertising is set to draw men in mostly with scantily clad women shown in alluring poses while operating a home saw mill. Any man who has ever visited a saw mill and seen that metal rip through those logs making perfect boards wants one.
The advertising seems to work well and he might even want the sawmill, too. The big freight store has them pretty cheap making it almost impossible to resist. The sawmill, that is.
What they don’t tell you is how heavy the logs are, how expensive new blades are and, most importantly, the bank-breaking cost of a trip to the emergency room. All because your beloved wants a dream house.
The reality after buying a saw mill is that you mostly end up with only enough wood to make a small book end and without a kiln to dry the wood it ends up warped around your old school copy of Gulliver’s Travels.
Ol’ Dutch is not immune to the call of the saw mill but has resisted thus far. Tractors and implements, cows and wood stoves, old muscle cars and antiques are beginning to worm their way into my psyche and with any luck, I will soon have my barn full of such treasures.
Colorado has its own version of wants and needs to a man and nothing says freedom and adventure like a Jeep. What man can resist that old CJ7 sitting in someone’s backyard just waiting for restoration. The seller has long lost his love affair with the entire affair and his wife has told him either the Jeep goes or I do.
Thinking it’s probably cheaper to part with the 4x4 at this point he puts a sign on it and the next gullible shade tree wannabe mechanic soon has his buddy Bill helping him tow it home.
Soon the new backroads adventurer has installed new seat covers, floor mats, light bar, tires, wheels and other niceties to the aging hulk even though it has not run in about a hundred years.
It can be missing the motor and transmission but those will have to wait for some other day as they cost too much and cannot be fixed by most “wanters.”
This is the point where a whimsy turns into a doozy and the Jeep is soon relegated to that back acreage to sit and rot awaiting the next dreamer of dreams.
Ol’ Dutch is a pretty good shopper when it comes to finding deals but that darned impulse to jump in with both feet still hangs on like Aunt Martha’s Lintel Bean Soup. It looks good on the outside but later you pay for eating it.
 
Kevin Kirkpatrick and his Yorkie, Cooper, fish, hunt, ATV or hike daily. His email is [email protected]. Additional news can be found at www.troutrepublic.com or on Twitter at TroutRepublic.