Southern Hustlin': Tall Tales of Making It Work

By Julie McLin

What do a sexy fruit bowl and a designer tote bag have in common?

Nothing, but I wouldn't have been able to see these things if my old man hadn't slapped my butt that morning to wake me up. Ain't that how all entertaining stories begin?

Mix in some dumpster diving, bidding on old storage units, and a dabble of online English tutoring.

What do we get? Not a whole lot, but our straight-laced neighbors are freaks, and nearly anyone will pay to listen to a Delta gal teach.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Julie McLin
• Release date: Nov 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215479506

Julie McLin

A reporter turned sarcastic book author, Julie McLin now entertains her audience with stories of humor. With fictional settings inspired from her home state of Mississippi, Julie explores the crossroads of humor, bad days, and “what the hell?” moments of daily life. She currently lives in the South with her family, six cats and a dog.

Book preview

In the Quiet Trouble Stirs

HOW DOES OUR WHOLE dumpster fire dipped narrative begin?

It was sparked on a dark and stormy morning not that long ago. No, seriously. I know all stories begin this way, but that’s how it happened. The world may’ve been on the tipping edge of shutting down, but my ol’ man, Red, still had to work. No government handouts here for us folks who worked for a living.

All these misadventures happened on a morning when he was fed up with his job. There were supply chain nightmares, and his boss could be a jerk sometimes. Red got up with his God awful 4 a.m. phone alarm, stomped around in the dark because the power was out, and stubbed his toe with a loud enough curse to wake our youngest daughter who at the time was not even a year old.

I was barely awake when I rolled over and picked her up out of her playpen beside our bed to nurse her back to sleep.

As was our morning custom, he slapped my ass as soon as I got her settled back down. Then he sat beside me and started talking this cockamamie investment idea. His buddy had made a piss-pot’s worth of change digging around in a fraternity’s trash at the end of the previous semester and selling what he found online. That early in the morning, I wasn’t exactly obliged to tell him to go on ahead and dive into those dumpsters.

That’s how it’s always been between us. Most of our serious conversations happened in the dead of night right before the Devil’s hour.

It’s the only time we had for any kind of serious talk without one of our little oopsies interrupting. Guess they don’t interrupt too much. We got four of those crotch goblins, uh, blessings? Any ways, moving on.

Back to how this all began. He was tired of his job. Blah, blah. He wanted to try what his buddy was doing.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for changing your job if you’re not happy. But not when we were knee deep in our house falling down around our ears and poopy diapers. We were barely able to rub two cents together to make sense after the bills were paid. What little money left from Red’s paycheck at the end of the day was put away for trying to fix our house. God bless my man’s soul, but with our four little swamp creatures, it was hard for both of us work.

At that moment on that particular morning was not a good time to talk about investing what little savings we had into diving for treasure and investing in old storage units. Especially when I knew we needed money to patch the roof again. I think Red took my tired silence as permission, because he sure smiled like a fool when he left for work that morning. It wasn’t for anything I did for him. I was too tired.

How did I get myself into this mess?

The Dumpster Fire Starts

I STILL BLAME THE OL’ man. We were in the midst of the world being shut down because of a cold. I’d lost the little weekend bartender job I had, because Bear couldn’t keep his doors open. I guess rundown, honky tonks weren’t essential.

Our little hellions were distance learning. Well, the oldest two, Junior and Junie, were, and I was starting to show signs of cabin fever working with Lolly on her kindergarten work. Oh, and keeping Lulu from being the little she-devil she was showing herself to be.

At the end of the disaster of 2020, Red forgot we needed to fix our roof and took our meager savings and bought out a bunch of old storage units.

His excuse?

We could make money selling other people’s junk, and I needed a hobby.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I did need a hobby, but I wanted to choose it. It took some pretty sweet promises (a new house was one of them) from him to convince me to dig around in those first few dusty units, which he’d only paid a few hundred dollars for.

There was some good stuff in some of them, but it wasn’t enough to fill the hole