Making it to TV

A little history:

Last winter I decided to sell some junk on eBay. A few items got sold, and, as a result, I was in the market for more junk to sell. My friend John had this old, wooden Century runabout somebody had given him. The boat was under cover in his yard, under a foot or more of snow and ice.

One day I went over to John's house and found him cleaning out his house and shop, I asked him what he planned to do with the old boat. "That rotted old thing," he said. "I'm going to cut it up with a chain saw and take it to the dump."

I went over and looked under the cover and lo and behold there was indeed a rotted old boat under there, but it had a good deal of its original hardware, and even the original flathead engine. The transmission shifted, and the inside looked pretty clean. I offered to sell it for him on eBay. "Knock yourself out," he said.

Literally, as it turned out, I did just that.

To get some photos of the boat, I had to remove the cover and do some cleaning and straightening. The whole endeavor -- uncovering the boat, straightening and cleaning, taking inventory and photos, covering the boat again, listing it on eBay, etc. -- took a few hours, maybe half a day. But right off the bat the listing had a lot of hits and watchers, with a few interested parties requesting additional photos. I went back to the boat, removed the cover, which was now ruined, and took some more pictures.

Cover ruined, I folded it up and threw it in the back of my truck. To keep it from blowing out on the way to the dump, I picked up a piece of blocking. This was a 16" x 16" timber that had been cut about 3-1/2' long. Must have weighed at least 50 or 60 pounds. I picked this thing up and was about to throw it over the tarp in my truck when I slipped on a patch of ice under the snow and fell backwards, folding my ankle in a way it was not suppose to be folded. As I hit the ground on my back, the timber landed on my chest and knocked the wind out of me. As John had suggested, I had knocked myself out. I'm pretty sure I also broke my ankle.

Boat sold for $103.50, half of which I gave to John.

Hence, I wasn't all that excited when John asked me if I wanted this old Si-Tex recording fathometer he was throwing away. When I finally looked at it, however, and remembered owning one myself, I had to have it. Another item for eBay, I thought.

I kept that useless 60 pound hunk of metal and ancient technology in my garage for six months. Tried to sell it on eBay all that time too. $10.00. No takers. Then one day, fed up with looking at it, I loaded into the back of the truck. It was bound for the dump.

That night, I watched this TV show for the first time. Called Surface. About an infestation of dragon-like marine creatures and the people who discover and are affected by them. Kind of a Spielberg-esque thing.

When I woke up the next morning, there was an email in my eBay inbox from the Prop Master of the show. He wanted to buy the Si-Tex recorder.

The Recorder went from being on its way to the dump to national exposure on a prime time Network television show.

If I'm not mistaken, the episode appeared last night.

-seabgb

Copyright © Bob G. Bernstein (seabgb) All Rights Reserved!