An odd salary
The economy globally is based upon people being paid for the work they do. In order to make things work smoothly most of us agree to accept currency that is issued by the state. However barter is out there and my artist payment my whole life was one afternoon when I painted a boat and was paid with a siren. I will try to recall the details. The boat was large enough to be able to carry passengers and have them sleep on board. The paint for something that we called copper bottom. Probably rather toxic but at the time it was seen as a way to keep a boat in the water free of pests. And so I showed up at the Marina I was handed a paintbrush. I had already painted boats. If anything I was a trained professional after one summer. And so I took the job at hand and I completed it before dark. I am unsure at what point we decided that the correct payment would be an old fire siren removed from a truck about 30 years before. I was enjoying it. But here is the detail that you forget. A siren is loud. And it tends to attract a lot of attention. In a boatyard not so much, back in the university residence it was too loud to hide. On the few times that I demonstrated the siren it received much more attention then I had considered. Remember. Loud. I haven’t seen this the siren for many decades. It might be in the basement at a friend’s house. And I’m sure that he also figured out that this was the kind of prize you could not hide unless you hid it. Unlike money which is simply spent, an old siren the size of a football is out of place. Always.
