FISHTRAP HOLLOW – On a fall trip to Paris a million years ago, I was strolling down the Rue du Bac, trying to look nonchalant, as if I were back home going for milk at the Piggly Wiggly. I was searching for one of my favorite places, Deyrolle, a taxidermy shop that’s been in business since 1831.

At Deyrolle, bears lie down with lambs, and everything is for sale, antelopes to zebras. If you have plenty of change in your pocket, you can take home a resin elephant that would fool your guests.

I almost walked right past – the building from the outside is not particularly distinguished, not in a city with so much iconic architecture that you can’t swing a Lonely Planet without hitting one – when out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed an old school desk with a map and a stuffed badger and duckling on top, a whimsical window display for the fall season. Deyrolle.

The French do the best window decorations in the world, at least the part of the world I’ve seen. They make it look easy, telling short stories in time with the season in shop windows. That’s an art.

I’ve always thought that if I had another talent besides stringing together words, it might be dressing windows. My thoughts were baseless, but I fantasized about it.

So maybe that’s why I recently spent my small family inheritance on an old building, presumably to rent out and supplement my Social Security. I don’t understand the stock market and don’t want to.

But the more I looked at the two front display windows, the more I yearned to try to dress them. That led to acting out yet another fantasy: starting a small gallery, a place where people could see art – and maybe occasionally a foreign film.

I think when times are hard, most of us need such an oasis. We don’t have the Memphis museums or the Atlanta theaters or the New Orleans music scene. Whenever two or more gather here, it’s usually for a football game. That does not mean we do not have artistic yearnings.

So Faraway Places, gallery and shop, was born. I put brown paper in the two big panes facing the street to keep my inaugural window-dressing efforts under wraps. I wasn’t sure just what might happen.

Using things I already had, one window slowly became a painter’s atelier. I wanted it to look as if the artist had just left his studio, leaving an unsigned work on the easel, brushes and paints scattered about, blank canvases to the wall. Van Gogh gone out for a smoke.

I suspended empty frames from the ceiling, which later would cause confusion. Some thought I’d opened a framing business.

The second window was my pride, my first Christmas window ever, perhaps my last. The faraway place I love the most is France, and I wanted my inspiration front and center.

The white Christmas tree probably was made in another faraway place – China – but I decorated it with Eiffel Towers and French flags. Next to it, a bright-green bistro table sat, ready for lovers to inhabit, a lit Eiffel Tower swinging perilously close to two wine glasses. I hung a red beret on one chair.

Only trouble is, Christmas is over now, and the window needs dressing again. It’s like climbing a glass hill, window-dressing. Would that I had a stable of stuffed animals to work with, a humble badger or two to create interest.

Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s most recent book is “Hank Hung the Moon … And Warmed Our Cold, Cold Hearts.” Comments are welcomed at rhetagrimsley@aol.com.