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Alvin’s Swap Shop

posted by Chris Fairfield at 2:19 pm.

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One of the coolest things about the interwebs is that it really rewards ingenuity. I’ve touched on this slightly in a previous post. Being that it is almost two years old by this point, I’m sure most of you have heard about the One Red Paperclip Project. Essentially, somebody traded up from one red paperclip to a house. An honest to goodness, mortgage-free house. He had the idea and proceeded to act on it and the internet rewarded him for it. The internet is cool like that. He did have a few things going for him, in a sort of right person/place sort of way. He had the freedom to and was willing to relocate to wherever his new house might be; his job ended up paying for the traveling he did to various places; and the house he got was given to him by a city. That’s not to deny his feat, he did an awesome thing.

The whole situation reminds me of a book I used to read a lot when I was younger. It was called “Alvin’s Swap Shop”, apparently one of a series of books by Clifford Hicks based around a character named Alvin Fernald. (I just found out now, after doing some digging, that there is a website based on this character: http://www.alvinfernald.com/.)
The book was written in 1976 and retains a sort of “Everything is A-OK!” mentality that was really prevalent in the 50’s. In the book, Alvin has just started his summer vacation and is bored. Seeing an Ant on the ground, he convinces a gullible classmate of his that it is a special, trained Ant that can do tricks. He then trades the Ant for the gullible classmate’s prized bug collection. He takes the bug collection to someone else who’s really into bugs and keeps trading his way up. Eventually he trades a bunch of old records and a record player for the use of an old gas station to use as a Swap Shop (hence the title). Through creative swapping, he fills the shop full of interesting knick-knacks. There’s also a mystery plot thrown in for good measure, involving Jamaicans, scarred bad-guys, and postage stamps. He ended up getting all of this through something worthless (an Ant). At the end of the book, it’s the end of summer, Alvin sees the guy he traded the Ant to. The guy is incredibly happy with his Ant, and has spent all summer training it. Maybe the Ant wasn’t so worthless after all.

Chris Fairfield: is an avid gamer and web surfer who happens to be hellbent on World Domination. But who isn't these days?