Twenty years ago on the desolate frontier of eastern Wyoming a man labors to hang a sign alongside US route 287. He is doing what men everywhere have done and will continue to do for thousands of years. Thousands of men hang signs alongside America's well-traveled roads, and yet for all these cases they are all strikingly similar. They are always nouns, and in this particular case the nouns that we are dealing with here are two very good ones- "espresso" and "internet."

Now just how do those words strike you? Do you see them in a positive light? Did you immediately understand the nature of the relationship between those two words? Why were these particualr nouns chosen over thousands (if not millions) of other perfectly single and available nouns in the English language? Why not "espresso" and "coffee" or "internet" and "computers?" I'm asking a lot of questions. This is where our character Jamie comes in.

Jamie is a human being in black and white ink. He exists for our purposes. Actually he exists for my purposes. I created him just now. And right now I have but one purpose- I am trying to write a good short story. He allows me to accomplish my goals by becoming the metaphorical embodyment of my philosophical ideas. He is my puppet, and he does my bidding. God allowed me to create him, just like God is allowing me to write this short story right now. But he stands on his own too, you know, only its in black and white.

But you and I were given a good set of crayons for our birthday, and we really owned them, and we stored them all the way up there in our heads, and we called them up whenever there was black ink on a white page. But when we were children, we did not know how to just color on the page. We colored the doors and the walls also. And so color was everywhere, and color was indistinguishable.

And so it is with Jamie. We can't really tell whether he's contained to the page or whether he sprawls out to cover the door and the walls too. But he's there somewhere, and when he looks at this sign as he is driving by that says only two words, "espresso" and "internet," he is confused.

"What would cause a man to act in such a way as to labor himself with the process of constructing a sign with such odd nouns printed on it?" thought Jamie. And what's more- the nouns were printed directly adjacent to each other with no other contextual information given. Jamie thought to himself, "How is it that I am supposed to understand the meaning of these two words printed right next to each other?"

Apparently what they were was the representation of particular services rendered at a specific location. So, for instance, if somebody wanted espresso, they would stop at this particular concrete building underneath the sign. Likewise, if somebody wanted to use the internet, they would also stop at this building. And if it so happened that a particular somebody happened to want both "espresso" and "internet," well then, today was their day. But, as Jamie found out, this place offered many more services than simply "espresso" and/or "internet."

For it was winter in Wyoming, and when Jamie went inside he found himself immediately surrounded by warm air. So the place could have put a sign next to "espresso" and "internet" that said "warm air." He also found bathrooms in which he could relieve himself. Thus they could have added another sign saying "service of going to the bathroom." There were tables to sit at. Jamie wondered why they did not put up a sign saying "service of comforting yourself by sitting."

What other wonders this place could have put on their sign! They could even have had a rotating sign that would switch in the summer to say "cool air," for nobody wants warm air in the summer! And besides, this fabulous establishment had a large air conditioner bolted to the side of the building. Jamie was impressed.

And yet he wondered- for all of these spectacular services, why did they choose "espresso" and "internet" to be the ones that would be displayed on their sign next to US route 287? Was it perhaps because they wanted more people to stop there? Why would they want more people to stop there? Perhaps they would make more money. Why would they want to make more money?

Jamie couldn't answer this question himself, but he was fearfully timid of asking the generously occupied employees working in the concrete building. "What am I to do when I do not know?" Jamie wondered. The question was simple enough, and honest. In his brain, he began to weigh all of the possible options for the sign on this magical old gold-plated scale. In the center of the scale was a perfectly round ball. The ball remained in the center as long as the scale was balanced. But whenever Jamie would consider one of the reasons why the builder of this sign chose to put "espresso" and "internet" upon his sign instead of something else, the scale would start to lean one way or the other. As a consequence of this, the little ball would roll in perfectly incremented degrees in the opposite direction, creating a sort of diagonal pendulum in which things were both equally balanced and yet unbalanced at the same time. As soon as Jamie became convinced that he had found one word which was, for some reason, more worthy to be placed on the sign than the words "espresso" and "internet," the little blue ball would direct his attention to an equally plausible word or phrase on the other side of the scale. And the scale had a lot of trays- there was one for each of the possible words or phrases that could have been written on the sign: the service of satisfying thirst, the service of reading (the building had some books and newspapers), the service of meeting new friends, and on and on and on. Jamie had this crazy inclination that one of these words or phrases must be more worthy than the others, yet the little ball never seemed to remain in the center. Ultimately he decided that their either must be something wrong with the scale, or else he was not using it correctly.

Jamie spent so much time weighing all of these options that his car soon skidded off the road. He awoke from this dream state and realized that he was now well 50 miles past the sign above the concrete building next to US Route 287 in eastern Wyoming.

His eyes suddenly fell upon an older gentleman walking towards him on the shoulder of the road. He was gaunt and unshaven and his backpack was well worn. He knocked on the driver side window, and when Jamie rolled it down, he said "Can you believe me if I tell you that all I want you to do is drive?"

II

Jamie Loghorn was the son of Michael Loghorn, an actuary in the town of Pinedale, Wyoming. Michael was a shrewd man who, by a vigorous process of self-education, sought to escape the poor, agrarian lifestyle of the frontier for a more lucrative, town-centered life. His Loghorn ancestry had farmed the Pinedale valley for over three generations. In his youth, Michael had criticized what he saw to be his family's opposition to change; they were slow to adopt new agricultural methods, choosing instead to farm the old fashioned way. In time, Michael became fearfully ashamed that some townspeople viewed his family as "backward." This gave him an unquenchable desire for the knowledge of his day, and he put his mind to the task of study for hours at a time inside their lonely whitewashed house.

The irony was that, perhaps because of his attachment to the land, Michael merely exchanged a highly rural lifestyle for a moderately rural one. And in terms of his occupation, he had merely exchanged one marginally reputable trade for another. For three generations the Loghorn family had depended upon the local farmers who conducted much of their business in the town square.

Pinedale was a town of about 500 at the base of the White Ridge mountains in Western Wyoming.