The farmer extended his right arm in a “come this way” gesture to his office, the one I visited without permission.  His other arm went on my shoulder, a very personal and gentlemanly move by a man looking to make the next few moments of his life as comfortable as possible.   As we approached the baseball card room/office, the farmer gently pushed the room’s door open with his open right hand so both he and I could enter without any delay.  “Have a seat, would you like a drink?” he asked with a subtle southern accent.  “No thank you, but I do need to text my wife where I am.”  The farmer nodded and I proceeded to text Rachel my whereabouts.  “Take your time, I’m loving this farm stand, I may be a while,” she replied.  “Same here,” I texted back.  Before sitting down on the leather couch in the office, I extended my hand to the farmer.  “Noel Roby,” to which the farmer accepted, then replied, “nice to meet you Noel.  Have a seat.”

I started the conversation but soon became the primary listener.  “Sir, I want to apologize again for intruding and coming into a place that I was not invited to.”  The Farmer, now pacing in front of the window, pretty much ignored my apology and started with this, “I need to hear your assurance that no names or places will come of what I am about to tell you.”  So, there I was sitting on a couch in a stranger’s house with no pen, no notebook, nothing to record what I was about to hear.  I placed my phone, which was switched to vibrate mode, on the coffee table in front of me, raised my hands in a sign of innocence, and said what I thought was the best answer the farmer could expect in this very uncomfortable moment.  “You have my word, no names, no locations, and I’ll have that drink right about now.”  The Farmer left me in the baseball card room to stare at the posters again for about 5 minutes and then returned with a tall glass of water with a few fresh squeezed lemons floating helplessly against several cubes of ice.  “Thank you,” I said without getting up.  “Noel,” started the nervous Farmer, “let me tell you what you see on these walls.”

As the farmer turned towards the window, the sun shining in on him like an interrogator’s spotlight, I focused on the posters in the room filled with baseball cards.  “What you see on these walls is a cowardly move by a lousy employee.”  The Farmer walked towards the posters and looked at them with disdain.  “These walls represent my greatest regret in life, that I quit and left town without the dignity my parents instilled in me, and took something that didn’t belong to me.”  I looked at the Farmer and asked “did you steal these pieces, is that what you are admitting to me?”  The Farmer turned to me and said very sternly, “Let me tell you what happened and then you can judge me, okay?”  I stood up, “Sir, if you are asking me to condone you stealing someone else’s work, I cannot continue this conversation.  I don’t think you should go any further.  I think I should see myself out.”  The Farmer approached me and said with conviction, “I didn’t steal these cards, I made them all, I made them all messed up, and I need to tell you what I did.  Will you listen to my story, will you give me a chance to tell my story, and then judge me?”  Still standing, I said, with the full confidence of what I was seeing with my own eyes “these aren’t posters, they are baseball cards.  They are baseball sheets, uncut baseball sheets, aren’t they?  Did you work for Topps? Did you take these from Topps Baseball?”  I looked a little closer at the Hall of Fame names on the cards on the uncut sheets and did a bit of math in my head of how much these uncut sheets of baseball cards were worth. Short math – millions.

Now, it was the Farmer who took a seat and I assumed his position in the room, standing by the sun soaked window.  “Yes, yes, yes, and yes,” answered the Farmer, speaking through his wrinkled hands which were now covering his face, tears coming down each cheek.