Olives

This morning Hallie told me the story about being bit in the crotch by a crazy Mongolian guard dog that was living with a band of traveling gypsies that once stopped by the farm. Today she and I lived through a market that was almost as surreal as the story she had so recently recounted...

Having forgotten it was Friday Hallie, Alex and I all scrambled to put together our weekly marketita for the local neighbors. With the vegetables just freshly laid out on the table, we sat down to take a few breaths of air before being bombarded by a very unexpected crowd of visitors. First a few of the usuals came by but they were soon forgotten when a mysterious market truck pulled up the driveway followed by a big cloud of dust.

All eyes turned as the truck lumbered in and then parked itself right in the middle of our yard. We watched as three unlikely characters stepped out of the cab and were surprised when they immediately set off yakking away about the motherlode of olives they had stowed away in their large truck. The most talkative of the three was an eccentric old french lady who rambled on and on about her husband's wonderful olives and their small goat herd. Next in eccentricity, her son (who closely resembled Aldous Snow, http://wedofunny.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/russell-brand.jpg), a strange parisian with lots of tattoos and eye make-up chimed in by rattling off all the nutritional qualities that the raw olives provided to the digestive system. His girlfriend (I assume) was a shy but edgy young girl with a short blond bob who simply stood and nodded the whole time.

While all this was going on, Hallie and I pretty much stood there dumbfounded while they stuffed olives in our mouths and talked to us about enzymes and the olive curing process. When they finally left we looked at each other and screamed "traveling olive gypsies!"