The Stories, The Poems, and The Prose of Nadine Sellers

Imagine with me the trajectory of one given sweater; from material to disposal. Fabric, be it animal or vegetal, (please allow me some discretion in choosing naturals). I fancy myself to be an organic existentialist. Whether alpaca or cotton, a farmer, somewhere wakes up early to feed the beasts or to plant the stuff, for simplicity's sake, I'll go wool, as quoted on this discounted item in my hand. So, farmer john has to rise before the sun one morning, while I am still asleep, to go to the fallow lands and ride the tractor pulling a plow, to grow hay for some woolly thing to make fuzzy stuff. Never mind him, his wife has to get up even earlier to cook his ham and eggs first. And the sharecropper, down below, has to get with it even earlier, just to gain a head start on the tired fields. They eke out a living from dirt for tax and pittance. I'm tired already!

Okay! so, let's assume this particular sweater is made of alpaca, there! I can better visualize the critters, you've seen them on TV, like llamas, only much cuter. Sorry PETA! I enjoy watching animals in all forms, especially when they're hopping across the screen just as I am about to take a bite of my emu steaks.( alpaca wool is the platinum of knitting goods).

We step this up a notch. Doctor Smith and his faithful wife, the dentist, have recently purchased eighty acres from a well advertised source in the local paper; they are using their retirement investment to raise a flock of the rewarding creatures, somewhere green and temperate, to imitate the original climate of the original breed. A Peruvian immigrant herder completes the picture, his cousin lives in Argentina and plays gaucho to a bunch of temperamental vicuñas. Come spring, the animals meekly shed their coat for the profit of the retired professionals. So far the earth has been kept in fair balance, providing the long neck sheep didn't depend on antibiotics and the manure was spread evenly on the pastures, the economy has been fairly distributed, assuming Herr doctor has declared his share A Priori, and Jose Peruviano has enough dinero to sneak his lonely wife stateside for a much awaited visit. Gets a might lonesome out in Anglo-land.

With sweaty wool in truck, and migrant shearers easily paid, the white plastic fence salesman wants to see his share, for the miles of picture perfect demarcation he built, along with his unsteadily recovering AA crew. They managed to erect a straight edge, dividing the haves from the have nots. His brother, the sign maker also wants his kudos before the dough vanishes up the dentist's nose, so, line up little slaves and assorted business gurus, while the earnings are fresh!

The gas station owner requires a cut, all those four wheelers need liquid fuel, and the turbo charged diesel trucks don't save much fossil petroleates and distillates.

The satellite communications don't come free, see, we are already embroiled into the irreversible trek toward productivity. The web master want his trice late payment to be made, today. Or else the little white alpacas will quit dancing on the Internet ads.

From the hills of Kentucky to the knitting factory on the outskirts of Memphis. The road crew is busy performing maintenance on the freeway south. Someone has to repair the wear and tear, did you think trucks of wool don't use up the road as much as eighteen wheelers full of steel? it's a matter of degree.

And then the waitress at the truck stop near Nashville serves up some mean fried okra with hush puppies to die for. Somebody's got to feed the hungry drivers. Never mind the tip and the coin operated shower, poor guy's got to go to beat the deadline, and speed on home to the wife he ain't seen in four days. Mighty lonesome on the highways full of speed traps and roadside whores. Danger everywhere.

Unloaded and cataloged by union certified workers, the fine combed material travels another half mile through washing and sifting, pulling and stretching, until it looks little like the warm coat on the camelid relatives that donated the stuff in the first place, even the smell would be unrecognizable to it's original owner.

All that in exchange for a climate controlled barn and a manger full of hay. The accountant should be happy about the numbers so far, but the middle man needs his cut. By the time the yanking and the squeezing's all done. The blue silkiness resembles a fine synthetic version of modern concoction.

Now we are getting closer to the actual clothing. Leaving stage one of carding, dying and drying, spooling and shipping we should arrive at the knitting factory. Not the one in New York, but close enough. More trucks, more crates, more lights and night watchmen, what? You don't realize how valuable our wool is by now? So take the price of the raw material, multiply it by the fractions of preceding functions and allocate fairly among each faction of each working group which has crossed path with the stuff so far; quite impressive!

It gets better; sideline this a minute. The girl in the shipping office is a trainee from the job placement service; to help her get off welfare, her caseworker has urged her, firmly, to take this job and get with the program. That means few options; wake up sleepy little tikes long before God arises, take the kids to her sister who's flunked rehab three times. Or, if all else fails leave them with the boyfriend with the bad temper. The consequences of this story are fodder for sensationalistic newsmen and job security for school counselors.

Now back on tracking the darn spools: two toll roads away, we arrive at the Brand Name back yard where mechanics repair diesels. Someone has to repaint the scratched logo on the tractor trailer sides, must look good to get good money, right?

By the way, that nice kid with the air brush? He could have been an artist, but his girl got pregnant and mom's preacher called the shots, so, good luck Junior! he'll be at this awhile. The shop foreman happens to be his father-in-law, don't laugh, there's more! His mom drives the lunch wagon; there's just no escape for the faithful.

For all the juniors, so glad to get a job, there's one that got away. Right back of the knitting building where the girls park their shiny Toyotas. There's Bubba guzzling a cool tall can of lager in his big honkin Ford with the supercab hiked up on monster tires. He's waiting for his gal, eager to impress her with the proceeds of his clandestine mountain cultivation; you bet there's major finances to be gained from this latest crop!. There's a whole culture surrounding the wool there, let's say a moonlighting opportunity. It keeps Bubba's girl giggling all the way to legal age.

The buck doesn't stop here, it keeps on going, making a few rich and continuing to haunt the many poor; the labels have been commandeered by the stout secretary. The ink has been on order from China for weeks now, the boat must be held up on dock by the homeland security forces. There could be some dockworkers strike, or yet another National security alert of some sort.

The computer generated logo is on back order while the prematurely bald whiz kid gets over his last overdose (uh! Sorry- - Flu symptoms). Sure are a lot of orders to go through!. Well! These little tags that irritate the back of your nape when you wear the sweater? they are finally ready to be shipped from Pennsylvania. The mail truck runs into fog and overturns on the freeway, we won't mention the extent of injuries, of course, not to overload the reader thus far. Assuming you are still following me on this hard luck scenario of industrial trips. And you thought it was just a simple sweater?

Of all the garments you have donned, have you ever held deep discourse about the implications of buying yet another consumer item? Let's hope you do not engage to such length every time you dress, but do try to engross yourself in some running thought about whatever object you hold in your hand. Enough of that, let's return to our omniscient adventure.

Okay, the little guy who approves the garments is the only male inspector on the line, or on the job ( number 10 by code). Someday I'd like my purchase to be inspected by number forty eight or forty seven, odd numbers, preferably. Well, this guy sees a small snag on MY sweater, but it's five minutes till the bell and he's tired. His teenage daughter wants braces and the pile of rejects is at an all time high. The girls back in knitting told him they'd have his huevos in a bind if he didn't slow down on the overzealous culling, so, what the heck? Pass that one on and devil may care, hoping God won't hear him till next Sunday.

An army of desperate part-time help folds and wraps in the clanging noise of the large building. A very thin Lizzy frantically slides the blue knit wonder into its box, then slams it into a crate, all stamped with invoices and shipping orders, iron to wood, ink to paper. The typed and collated, colored and outlined, official material is affixed by pride and paycheck. From the designer label to the designated carrier, my sweater and all its knitted siblings bump along a multicolored multitude of merchandise. Officially on its way to the superstore, it will enter through the rear entrance, the stock boy with adult acne will stack the input, mark the incoming traffic and yell at the saleslady for not moving the stock fast enough. That night, the lady in question will down a couple whiskey sours at the local pool hall and rip her man to shreds when she veers off the driveway into his cabbage patch.

I will cheerfully seek the price tags of the latest bargains. Starting with three dollars and fifty cents worth of gas to drive up to the mega shopping mart in the next town. Then i will plunk three dollars for the combined estimated maintenance on the family van, including oil and tires. Consumer anxiety will drive me to waste five dollars and twenty cents for one hamburger-coke-with fries and supersize to satisfy some plebeian appeal. My noon-numbed senses set on digestive mode are sure to be otherwise engaged. I won't spend less than one hundred and twelve dollars from the food side of the center. Where else could you pick up Mexican jicama and Finnish fisk? Oh! and let me not forget to factor in the cost of the new hair dye from the box with the suave red head on the front. I could go on like this practically forever, but you probably want to know what happened to the darn sweater?

As luck would have it, I push my two ton cart full of groceries and assorted delicacies around the sale bend, and bingo! There but for my very own eyes, a table load of goodies of the cheap kind; “marked down”. Two simple words and the pennies I have squeezed so hard to save are now clanging to escape the confines of my purse. The hamburger additives are crowding my brain , the coke is drugging my better judgment, and the freedom fries lie heavily on my paunch. Too late! I see it, the sweater, I mean, strictly consumer appeal, the touch, the feel, the price, oooh!.

I am home, faced with the dilemma of space versus thing; bigger budget, bigger closet, bigger assets? Okay you don't need to know everything! I never will meet all the persons involved in bringing this item to my collection of unnecessary possessions. I can only remember the quaint older lady who greeted me with a pamphlet and a basket at the store entry. I still see the bald guy who wears the manager label on his belly, how could I forget him? The cashier was totally unaware of the perspiration spots on her synthetic uniform. I will also never meet the garbage collector, nor the train conductor. By the time my precious purchase dies an unseemly tear and moves to browner pastures, another wrinkle will have streaked across my face.

But I won't soon forget the effort of so many brave Americans and more or less legal immigrants who have earned a living off that one item. May their babies be born with all their fingers, may the pulp mill dioxin bypass the stream they swim in. And above all, may all the cute little alpacas run free, free of people like me.