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Beginning about a dozen years ago, four framed items of “vintage” artwork, three of which featured attractive ladies, adorned two walls of a tiny special-purpose room in the basement of a Lannon stone house in the village of Fjord, Wisconsin. The man residing in that house, in most respects a not particularly stupid man, has, by agreement with his wife, enjoyed almost exclusive use of the tiny room. In those twelve years he entered the room and glanced at the four items of art an estimated total of nearly twenty-six thousand times. Some persons may be skeptical of this number. That’s fine. Surely, though, no one will doubt that a great deal of glancing has taken place over the stated period of time.
One afternoon six weeks ago, the man, weary from shoveling snow, carelessly caused one of the items of art to come loose from the small nail on which it had hung uneventfully for a dozen years. It fell to the floor, and the glass in the picture frame shattered. A similar accident is not likely ever to happen to you, so I will not describe the exact sequence of events that resulted in the breaking of the glass.
What I would like you to know, though, is that the man took a closer look at the artwork than he had ever looked before and noticed, for the very first time, the artist’s signature: Earl Moran. So far as the man could recall, he had never heard of Earl Moran. But now he has, and so have you.
The End. And you are welcome.
♦
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