Got a Dinette Set?

We were on the south side of Cedar City the other day, returning Tiger's ladder. Down near his house I noticed a big box under construction in a sea of parking lots. "Boulevard Home Furnishings," the sign said. (Or something like that. Maybe it was "Freeway Mattresses." Who knows?) "My Gosh," I shouted at VSO, sitting next to me. "Is Cedar City big enough to keep a Costco-sized mattress store in business?" "And sofas, . . . and dinette sets," she replied.

As my reader knows, our sofa was on the way to the dump in the back of Don Evan's pick-up truck when he decided to stop at our house. So we don't have any experience buying sofas from big boxes. Our mattress was, likewise, acquired from Deseret Industries. Each of these furnishings has lasted for more than ten years. Which brings me back to the question: Can a small town like Cedar City consume that much furniture?

I was still pondering this question when I pulled into an old gravel pit on the north side of Cedar City. It is a common dump site now, and people use the area to jettison everything from auto parts to yard waste. I go there once a week to pick chunks of broken concrete that I use for pavers at The Homestead. When I got there this time, I found a sofa. A nice, white sofa; nicer than ours. The only problem with it was its styling. It was horribly unattractive.

Well, I thought. That is how you do it: Sell furniture so ugly that we will want to throw it in the gravel pit. Then, sell us more.