Here’s the new assignment from Mitchell:

"A rummage sale you barely find"

Last month, you were walking past the First Methodist up the street and noticed that they were having a rummage sale. You figured, 'Why not?' and went about sifting through old baby clothes and stacks of VHS tapes - comprised mostly of random episodes of Murder She Wrote and Sports Blooper compilations. You were not looking for anything in particular, nor expecting to find much of anything that you'd even want, but there underneath the card table piled high with yellowed, oddball lamp shades and various bric-a-brac, you spy a water stained cardboard box, Sharpie marked, "BOOKS!"
You think to yourself, 'Maybe there's a Jim Thompson first edition in there," and you hunker down and start flipping through them: some old phone books, a couple rat-chewed V.C. Andrews novels from the Dollanganger series, nothing, nothing, and more nothing. 'This is a waste of time,' you think and besides, all this old junk is beginning to make your skin itch. You're getting ready to close the box, get out of there, and go grab a bite (a hotdog sounds nice) when a little red book that you hadn't noticed before, as it had been sandwiched between a moldy 4th edition of Clavell's Shogun and a Future Shock paperback (the one with a Pink cover), catches your eye.
You peel the red book from off the back cover of Future Shock (ripping off half of Alvin Toffler's face in the process). There's nothing of note on the spine nor the cover, but it looks old - like, really old. You flip it open and see page after page of handwritten musings in thick, black ink with nonsensical doodles in the margins. 'Interesting,' you think.
"How much is this book?" you ask.
"Twenty-five cents," she says.
You toss her a quarter and head to lunch. While you're eating your hot dog, you read the red book. You're being really careful not to drop a dollop of chilli on it or tear its brittle pages as you turn them. It appears to be a journal of a recluse. The pages are all dated from the year 1918. It's clear that whoever wrote it was the sensitive, creative sort, but also cripplingly shy, seemingly without any friends or family, and quite likely, agoraphobic. You turn another page and there, right in the middle of the red book is a song - music, lyrics, the whole thing, written out neatly in that same black ink. You're excited now. You rush home and work the song out and it's amazing. You love this song.
So, there you are, keeper of this fantastic, 100 year old song that you can safely assume no one has ever heard except for you and the mysterious person who wrote it. You can't wait to share it with the world.
Play me the song.

M. Snow”