The following morning, showered, shaved and wearing a business suit with an open necked shirt he began his search for a lending institution with enough foresight to realize that recessions didn’t last forever. By noon he was disappointed but by four o’clock he was downright discouraged. The second day of interviews resulted in identical response. Each time he presented his business plan it was handed back to him with someone telling him that the bank was not accepting real estate development loan applications at that time. Some suggested he return in six months, others didn’t even offer that much encouragement.
The third and fourth day yielded the same results and Wendell was moving his five o’clock cocktail in a little bar, walking distance from his motel, up to four o’clock.
On his fifth night, after tossing and turning for two straight hours, he snapped awake. He realized that despite the cool temperatures, he was sweating. One thought kept repeating itself over and over like an old fashioned record player playing a scratched record that skipped and repeated itself.
You have to think outside the box.
It was a common enough expression but not one he had ever used. So why was it stuck in his craw now. He didn’t even like the expression but some inner man kept repeating that mantra until he finally drifted back to sleep. The next morning was Saturday. When he awoke he slipped on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt and was sitting outside the Barnes and Noble store, drinking coffee, when it opened. He bought half a dozen books on marketing and maintaining positive mental attitude before returning to his motel room where he began to read. A few books, he discarded immediately. The fifth book he picked up caught his attention. It was entitled “Guerilla Marketing.”
You have to think outside the box.
The book seriously encouraged his mantra. He continued to read it throughout the day, even taking it to a Subway where he ate a late lunch and later to a Bojangles chicken restaurant where he ate supper. He fell asleep reading and picked up the book again in the early morning hours, finishing it just before dawn. He slept again until nearly noon.
Sunday afternoon was hot and sultry. Paying no attention to his appearance, he donned an old pair of shorts and a favorite tee shirt and walked the mile to the harbor section. The place was busy with tourists and he strolled around until he found a patio with a view of the harbor where he plunked himself down at a table and ordered a beer and a Reuben sandwich. He watched the boats in the harbor and the girls who walked by, not necessarily in that order. The day passed uneventfully and he finally wandered back to his motel where he watched TV until finally falling asleep.
At three o’clock in the morning he woke with a start half realizing he had let out a stifled scream. Nightmares were something he was unaccustomed to. He quickly categorized what he had just experienced as nothing more than a bad dream. He wondered what had caused the experience he could now barely remember and tried to focus his memory on the vague sequence. They made no sense at all. Just a jumble of weird images and events. He climbed out of bed and walked on steady legs to the bathroom where he urinated and spent a minute or two washing his hands and face. Staring into the mirror he muttered a statement he had heard somewhere; The garbage dump of the brain. That’s all dreams were. The mind throwing out the garbage.
Yet there was something else. An intangible thought lingered. He focused on something he had read about the subconscious. The mind never really stopped working. It continued to try solving problems during periods of sleep or on the verge of sleep and wakefulness. That was a concept he had experienced and was more familiar with.
The previous week had been filled with rejection and failure. Repeating the same process was surely not the answer. His business plan had been rejected out of hand. He needed a new idea. Something powerful enough to break society’s current train of thought and make them want … really want … his product. His subdivision had to be unique. It had to have a twist that no other piece of property could lay claim to.
He wandered back to bed but spent the next hour staring at the darkened ceiling. An idea was beginning to form. Outlandish? Yes. Illegal? Also yes, though it really harmed no one. Eventually he fell asleep and this time slept soundly.
When he awoke, he quickly made a pot of coffee using the ten dollar coffee maker the motel supplied. He cleared the writing desk in the room of all his business plans, stashing the bound copies he had brought with him out of sight in a dresser drawer. His desk held nothing but his laptop, a notepad and pen, and his coffee. Like his mind, his desk was free of clutter. Perhaps that thing about dreams taking out the garbage really had some merit.
In 1715, Charleston, South Carolina, was one of the busiest seaports in the Americas. That was all the information Wendell Forbes needed to know before firing up his computer and beginning a search of cemeteries that dated back three centuries. When he had compiled a suitable list he climbed into his Nissan Pathfinder and programmed their addresses into his GPS. His search took him all around the city, however, upon visiting them, he was grossly disappointed. They were all immaculately neat, scrupulously well maintained, many of them tourist attractions for history buffs. He spread his search further afield into surrounding towns and continued to do the same thing, every day for two full weeks. His results left him tired and depressed. Although he worked hard doing research and drove countless miles checking out cemeteries, he was losing faith in his plan. He had started seriously looking forward to the end of each day when he usually wandered down the road a couple of blocks to the bar that served sandwiches and beer.
Late one morning, after another week of searching out in the midst of farmland, he discovered a rundown family plot on a tiny hill. It was surrounded by twenty acres of tall pine trees. The grass had not been mown in several months and the surrounding bush was thick with undergrowth. It was at least a hundred yards from the quiet, paved road. He parked on the shoulder of the road in the middle of the afternoon and trekked in, carrying a satchel with a couple of granola bars, a bottle of water and an expensive digital camera with high quality, interchangeable lenses. He also carried a notepad and a sketchbook.
He scanned the graves, looking for names and dates, chiseled in the soft white stone. He surmised that he was looking at three generations of settlers. Although many of the markings were worn away by three hundred years of wind and rain, he was able to discern a few names and dates. He realized that he was looking at the markers of an eight year old, a ten year old, and two eleven year old children, all of whom had died the same year. Influenza, smallpox, or fire? he thought sadly to himself. He took a few moments to think about what life had been like, three hundred years ago. It had certainly been tougher. That was a time when Survival had not yet been trumped by Prosperity. He continued to study the graves, searching for a timeline that revealed a partial family history. There it was. The father had been the last to die having reached the ripe old age of forty-five. Laid to rest in 1761. His wife, who had predeceased him by a year, was five years younger. A tough life.
Forbes looked around, shot a couple of photos of the grave markers, drank half a bottle of water and walked back to his truck, studying the path for recent footprints or tire tracks. He saw a few beer cans at the edge of the bush but none looked fresh. The ruts in the road had coarse grass growing in them. He was fairly certain that no one had driven by while he was viewing the tombstones and was convinced that no one was currently watching. Regardless, as he drove away he studied the rear view mirror for over a mile. He then proceeded another mile, turned around in a farm path and retraced his route, watching for anyone at all. Young kids on bicycles or old farmers with straw hats. Anyone who might have seen him. He passed the graveyard almost without seeing the overgrown path into it but realizing his mistake, quickly leaned forward and pressed the trip recorder on his odometer. Five miles later he turned onto a busier road.
On the way back to the motel he bought a six-pack of beer and an adventure DVD. It had taken much longer than he would have guessed but the