These Things for Sale?

At 1:30 this afternoon I heard a knock on the porch door. I put down my bon bons and turned off my stories to see who it could be. I opened the door and found a somewhat familiar looking 60ish man on my porch. "These things for sale?" he asked.

I then went into the story of what the dICEHOUSES were, and why we were making them. I don't think he completely understood it. He said he and his wife didn't understand what the "H" and "Q" were on the main headquarters dICHOUSE (they are supposed to look like scrabble letters).

I told him he looked familiar and asked him his name. His name was John, and he lives in Shakopee (which is the first tier suburb of Mt.Holly). I explained who I was, and who Mike was. Shakopee having once been a small town, he knew both of our parents, where they currently or previously worked, what street one of them lives on, and even mentioned that he went to school with Mike's dad. We also figured out that the man lived across the street from my high school best friend. I asked him if he had heard of Mt.Holly, and he said, "Oh yes, we saw you in the paper a year ago." He thought it was pretty neat that we were trying to "make history" as he put it with making our own town.

Turns out he really didn't want to buy one; his question was merely a sort of pick-up line to start a discussion about the unusual fishhouses he had been driving by for weeks. He was impressed with the dICEHOUSES, and that we were doing something different and fun. He pointed out that it was something we could do with the family, and that he liked the idea of sitting down and playing games with the family on the ice.

I'm glad to know there are other crazies out here that will just knock on your door in the middle of winter. It's nice that there are similar small town folks in what sometimes still feels like a small town, despite the McMansions that popped up and condo's that killed the once historic downtown of Shakopee.