Labyrinth of Itching Death
Many a closing time at the Pilot House, the cramped little watering hole at the South End Yacht Club, P.T. Barney could be heard over the country western twanging away on the jukebox — “With the right advertising, you could sell anything!” He had variations on this theme. With the right advertising you could sell a cow milk. Or my favorite: With the right advertising you could sell a crab a new set of claws.
The point being, Barney was THE South End huckster, no question about it… and if you know how many hucksters have rolled through, that’s no small brag. P.T. wasn’t all talk either. He put his money where his mouth is and if neither are with us today, well, it wasn’t for lack of effort. If you know where to look, you can still see a half rotted wood sign back by his old place, hung over what once was a small barn but became South End Tourist Trap—Bait Inside! P.T. Barney Prop. Course now most of the letters are flaked off and another potential Wall Drug or Reptile Garden or Lookout Mountain has gone to the snake oil burial ground of roadside attractions.
I guess maybe Barney was a bit ahead of his time… or the curve … or himself. He hung Burma Shave style signs from the freeway exit to the South End. He stocked postcards and doo-dads and Chinese crap, all with South End printed on them. He sold birdhouses that hung upside down. South End Bat House. He had T-shirts and sweats. I Survived the South End. Well, you know what he had. Every trinket shop from L.A. to Boston has it.
But what they didn’t have — and what ultimately ruined Barney’s grandiose plans for World Novelty Hegemony was the labyrinth he constructed behind the aptly named Trap. P.T. thought if the corn farmers could sell a maize maze, by god, he could clean up with the Labyrinth of Stinging Death, a 50 cent per person attraction through a maze of nettles. What seemed a good idea in March that first and only year became a lawsuit in the summer when a tourist family from Iowa, unfamiliar with Urtica Horribilus, found themselves lost in that jungle of carnivorous plants 8 feet high. Once they were stung a few times they panicked like puppies in a hornets’ nest. Poor little Jimmy, the five year old son, tried a shortcut on his hands and knees and was soon swallowed by the prickly predators. An hour later he emerged, covered hairlick to toenail in welts.
P.T., sensing disaster afoot, tried bribery, but a few T-shirts that said I’m With Stupid weren’t a bulwark against the ensuing lawsuits, child psychiatric witnesses on Post Nettle Trauma Syndromes, the entire public flogging that played out in the papers from Portland to B.C. In the end Barney got the last word and true to his creed that he could sell anything, last we heard he was selling custom skateboards to the kids of hi-tech execs after a series of sales positions in used car lots, an RV/trailer outfit and a brief stint in door to door cutlery. Couple more years, P.T. will have sold nearly everything.
Hits: 55