He’s the kind of man who goes through life pushing doors marked “Pull.”

I always thought my neighbor Crandall collected junk for no good reason. Most of us are guilty of doing that. There is always some worthless thing that we say this about, “Don’t throw that away. I’m going to fix it one day.”

Crandall’s yard is littered with scads of heaps and gobs of oodles. If you don’t dig a mess, you have the wrong address.

It turns out that he isn’t a junkyard-in-training. My neighbor Crandall is a picker. No, that has nothing to do with a guitar or his nose. He picks up junk from folks who are too lazy to recycle the stuff and then attempts to sell the junk to people who have more money than sense. He is a scrounger. He finds worthless items and puts large price tags on them. He believes that a rich discovery of something like the saddle computer Custer used at the Little Bighorn is like spinach stuck between front teeth. It hardly shows unless someone notices it.

There is a knack to picking. Most people never catch onto it. I’m beginning to think that Crandall might be one of them. He makes money collecting junk about as often as the weatherman is right. To Crandall, every coin is a rare one.

He tramps through a wilderness of weeds, stumps, and rust in search of money disguised as scrap. He frequents slumping barns in quest of life’s potluck. He likes muddy boots better than polished wingtips. He is more than willing to settle for good enough. He wants to prosper but he no longer dreams of being rich enough to have his own reality TV show for no apparent reason. Nowadays, he wants just enough money to buy two incomplete passes from Brett Favre and to be able to afford a roundtrip to Grundy Center, Iowa.

His haunting of junkyards and hoarder’s havens is better than listening to dust settle on a TV screen.

Picking gives Crandall something to think about without having to put a “THINK” sign on the wall. Crandall believes that a fellow ought to think each day just in case he ends up on a TV quiz show.

I helped Crandall at one of those flea markets that he tries to sell things at. I had assisted him at a couple of others. Doing so was like eating three pieces of cherry pie covered in whipped cream. The first one is great, the second one is good, and the third not so good. This flea market was the third piece of pie. Setting up for a flea market is work. Crandall claims that I’m not very good with my hands but I’m much better with my hands than I am with my head.

He likes to have me carry the items to his table at these shows where people come looking for junk that might be an antique in disguise. Crandall is not one who likes to sweat. He calls it “workmen’s condensation.” There is an element of laziness involved in all that Crandall does.

I tried to arrange the objects in a pleasing manner that would interest the most customers. It wasn’t easy. The only difference between Crandall’s offerings and the trash was the distance from the curb.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” asked Crandall.

“No,” I guessed.

Crandall moved items around the table so that they appeared to be thoughtfully situated by a blender lacking a lid. Then, smiling as if he were on paid vacation, he went off to eat hotdogs. He claims that hotdogs are brain food. He enjoys copious amounts of onions on his hotdogs. He returned just behind his breath.

People move around flea markets like unaddressed envelopes. They peek and they pass by.

A man, wearing an “I’m bitter but I’m OK with that” T-shirt, stopped to look at some pristine G.I. Joes at a neighboring table that was momentarily unmanned.

“How much for one of these G.I. Joe figures?” asked the shopper.

“$100,” answered Crandall.

The man looked at the broken G.I. Joes with missing pieces flung haphazardly on and around Crandall’s table. They were G.I. Joes who had lived a hard life.

“How much for one of these inferior G.I. Joes?”

“$200,” replied Crandall without pause. He hoped for a sale but there were no flying monkeys.

The guy backed up and took another run at it.

“$200? How can one of these in such terrible shape cost $200 while one of those in like-new condition and still in the box is only $100?”

“It’s simple,” said Crandall. “The crummy ones are mine. I have no idea who owns the other G.I. Joes.”

Hartland resident Al Batt’s column appears every Sunday and Wednesday.