The wind was whipping sand through the rows, and tables were being emptied of items. It was last week at the flea market in Pickens and a beautiful day. We thought we came prepared, but unfortunately, we hadn’t anticipated the wind.

The storage building on Fowler Farm has everything under the sun stuffed into it. And stuffed is the operative word. There are shelves, but their contents are inaccessible because of the stacks of stuff blocking them. Who knows what’s underneath the pile?

We had to take action. What’s the point of having a storage building if you can’t get in the door?

So we loaded up the truck with a bunch of miscellaneous items and went to the flea market to sell them. The truck was fully loaded, but we’d barely made a dent. That will be a project for another day. Once there, everything was unloaded and put out on a table. I’d backed the truck up to the table and was ready to get started when a tremendous burst of wind came through. That’s when all the plastic bags brought for customers went to the four corners of the earth. I don’t know where they ended up, but they were gone.

Then out of nowhere a young man came running up.

“Did you see my chicken?,” he asked.

“Did you lose a chicken?,” I asked.

“It’s a baby chick, and it went under your truck.”

He got down on one side of the truck and I went to the other side and looked under the truck, but neither of us saw a thing. He was about to leave when we both heard the cheep. We could hear the biddy. He, or she, was definitely under the truck, but neither of us could see where.

The young man lay down and scooted under the truck. He said the biddy was on top of the tire on my side but he couldn’t reach him. I knelt down and tried to capture him, but he cheeped madly and disappeared into one of the openings beneath the truck bed.

I couldn’t get him, and neither could his owner. Then the owner crawled out from under the truck and left to find something to dislodge the biddy from his hiding place.

He quickly returned with the plastic tube from maybe a beach umbrella. That’s just a guess, and I don’t know where he got it.

First he lay down and tried to poke the biddy out of his hidey-hole. The biddy moved, but didn’t descend to earth.

So then the young man crawled under the truck again with the plastic pole and worked at moving the biddy toward the opening he’d entered by.

Suddenly a series of cheeps and flutters announced the biddy was dislodged. He made a run for it, but his owner scooped him up. The biddy squeaked and cheeped, but it was all over. Then his owner crawled out on his belly, and they both disappeared.

I thought it was a happy ending, because I had a picture of driving away with a lone biddy lodged beneath the truck and being splatted somewhere on the road home. Not a pretty picture.

Soon after, some real customers came by and started bargaining for the valuable junk on the table. I learned toward the end to price up because everybody will make an offer of half of what you want. It doesn’t matter if something is priced at 10 cents — they’ll offer you a nickel. This was a great lesson in fair market value. They’ll only go so high, and the seller can only go so low. You meet in the middle, and everybody’s happy.

I left with lots of $1 bills and windburn. It was an interesting experience. I hope the biddy is safe somewhere growing into a productive laying hen. If it hadn’t been for his persistent owner, he could have been blown all the way to Kansas. Who knows what might have happened then.