Category Archives: Fiction

“Excuse Me?”

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Louis Sachar, Holes, 1998

Louis Sachar, Holes, 1998

America celebrates the contributions of its famous inventors and thinkers. The great artists and scientist of the past are much revered and well-recognized for their deeds. Looking at history, one would think that creativity would be amply rewarded now. You would be wrong. We do not appreciate our creative class the ones that think outside the box, the ones with new ideas. We love the results of invention, but hate the process of inventing and by reference, any practitioner of that process. The reason is simple, creativity engenders change and change spawns uncertainty and uncertainty causes disruption. We are all afraid of that.

The truth is that we value conformity over creativity. Conformity ruffles no feathers. Conformists get along with everyone. They get along to go along. Conformists always offer the safe solution, the sound solution. Creative people are always coming out of left-field or going off the deep end. It is always easier for authority and for the collective to choose from what it knows than to try something new and different.

Where does this leave the creative class? Spurned, alienated they can become loners. It can be a sad lifestyle, sad enough to hack off one’s ear. Some fail, some miserably, but not all. Some creative people channel this rejection by redoubling their efforts. They strike out on their own. They become greater risk takers. Eventually, given some thought, enough time and a little bit of luck, they can also become successful, sometimes wildly so.

The above pictured quote is from Louis Sachar’s young-adult novel Holes. It is part of a collection of literature quotes that were inlaid in the ceiling of the newly renovated Saint Louis Public Library’s main branch. The public library is where for a dollar fifty in late charges, you can get the same education as a person who drops 150 grand in college tuition, to paraphrase the movie, Good Will Hunting. You just have to be able to think for yourself, instead of having someone else tell you how to think.

Puffer Fish

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Dew Dripped Spider Web

Dew Dripped Spider Web

I don’t usually go out for lunch to eat, at least not at work. There is a cafeteria in the building. It is convenient and the food is OK and sometime quite good. On those few occasions that I do go out to eat, it is usually with a group of co-workers. Like, when we go out to celebrate something. I can’t remember the last time that I went out for lunch by myself. The weather today was especially inauspicious, rainy and grey, turning colder and windy as the day wore on. There aren’t any good restaurants near work, mostly just fast food places, like McDonalds or Burger King. As I was pulling out of the parking lot a hankering for a Whopper was on my mind. As I was about to pull into the Burger King, I spied a hole-in-the-wall Asian place next door in a run down strip mall. So, I went there instead.

As it turns out this place was neither Chinese nor South Asian. They were Japanese, or more specifically from Okinawa. The place was called Puffer Fish and they specialized in seafood. It is located just east of Brown on Natural Bridge. Now, seafood in Saint Louis can be problematic. We are miles and miles from the nearest ocean, but the husband and wife team running the place were effusive in their welcome, the moment that I opened the door. I was still only one foot through the front door and was already having second thoughts and was about ready to go across the street for that Whopper, but I was the only customer there. So, I couldn’t very well sneak out.

They were so friendly that they both came out from behind the front counter and each shook my hand. In their actually quite good English they explained that today was the first day that they were open. Furthermore, I was their very first customer. They went on and on. They are immigrants, but are already enrolled in citizenship classes. Yesterday was an election day in some places, but not here in Saint Louis. They expressed their extreme pleasure with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie decisive reelection.

The connection you see is this. Last year, during Romney’s presidential campaign, Mitt toyed with Christie as a running mate. I guess that he was never all that serious about choosing Christie, because he nicknamed him Puffer Fish. Do you see the connection now? This Japanese couple loved this auspicious connection, because as it turns out their restaurant is named after their specialty, the puffer fish. Since I was their very first customer, they offered to prepare for me their best meal for only a dollar. I fished my crispest bill out of wallet and the deal was cemented.

I didn’t learn this until later, but the puffer fish is the second-most poisonous vertebrate in the world, second only after the golden poison frog. Preparation of fugu as it is called in Japan requires the skills of a very adept chef; otherwise the customer is easily poisoned. It tasted great, more rich and savory than any other seafood that I have had. They stood grinning over me for most of the meal.

I did feel a little woozy on the way back to work. I was winding my way back to work, rounding the airport and passed under the final approach path when a large black jet passed overhead. It felt like the jet wash had spun me and my car up into the air, like some fall leaf in the wind. The moment passed and the car landed and I made it back to work safely.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

Neither snow nor rain nor …

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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. – US Post Office Creed

On November 10-th, Anne mailed a package containing hand-knitted mittens and a headband for her niece, Ashlan, who is attending college in Vancouver, British Columbia.  When she mailed the package, she was told that it would take five-to-ten days for delivery.  On December 4-th the package finally arrived.  In the intervening twenty-four days, Anne had all but given up hope that the package would ever be delivered.  She was already contemplating what this setback would mean to her already crowded holiday knitting schedule.  On the morning of the 4-th she had walked up to the post office to inquire about the package.

Since Anne had only mailed the package parcel post, there was little or no tracking records available on it.  The postal worker that she spoke with could only tell her that on November 10-th, the day that she mailed it, the package had left the local post office and traveled across town to Saint Louis’ postal distribution center.  After that there were no more records about it.  It had fallen into the black-hole that is the US Postal Service and only miraculously reappeared twenty-four days later on Ashlan’s Vancouver doorstep.

One is left only to wonder what this package had been doing during the intervening weeks.  Checking the USPS website, a parcel post package is expected to be delivered anywhere in the continental United States in no more than nine days and usually in less than five.  The Canadian postal service says that it takes about a week to transit to the US, so the converse should also be true.  So, if I am doing the math correctly, nine days (Saint Louis to Seattle) plus seven days (Seattle to Vancouver) equals sixteen days and that is the worst case.  Even so, that still leaves eight days of travel time unaccounted for.  What was the package doing during that extra week?  Thinking a bit fancifully, I have come up with the following alternative itinerary:

  • St. Louis to St. Joseph, MO by riverboat (5 days)
  • St. Joseph to Sacramento by Pony Express (10 days)
  • Sacramento to San Francisco by stagecoach (2 days)
  • San Francisco to Vancouver by clipper ship (7 days)

This itinerary’s math seems to add up better than that derived from the two postal services’ websites.  I would also remind the reader that this package’s travels all occurred before the holiday season’s mailing crunch was upon us.  It is only going to take longer from now to the end of the year.

I am reusing my picture of Frederic Remington’s painting, The Right of the Road.  I saw this painting and photographed it a year ago at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, TX.  I love museums that permit photography.  I especially love the painting’s juxtaposition of the new West and the old West, the bicyclist passing and spooking the stagecoach.  Remington was not so enamored of this transition from old to new.  He thought that the West was becoming too civilized.  He once told a friend, “never come west again – It is all brick buildings – derby hats and blue overalls – it spoils my early illusions – and they are my capital.”  It is good to see the USPS rolling back the clock.

The Old Doelles’ Place

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NPR’s fifth edition of their Three-Minute-Fiction contest comes to a close this coming Sunday. In each of these contests, contestants are given a hook to write to. In this edition we were given the first and last sentences. Each entry must be short enough to be read in three minutes and no longer than 600 words. I participated in the first contest, made a lackluster attempt in one of the intervening contests and the following story is my draft entry in this latest round. Thanks already to Anne and Don, for their editorial help. I won’t be officially submitting it for another day or so, so any further suggestions would be welcomed, otherwise just wish me luck.

The Old Doelles’ Place

Some people swore that the house was haunted. They were right and I should know, because I am the ghost that haunted it. You can call me Fred, or is it George? I really can’t remember. I’ll answer to either one or maybe not at all. I can’t recall how I got here, but I do recall where I come from. I come from the beach. The beach is all sandy and there is water there too. Sometimes I went out into the water. I swam. The sun was high up and it was warm. The sky was blue. I remember the blue sky. Now it is cold and dark and I don’t remember anything. I’m not happy now, but I do remember that I was happy once.

I remember bonfires on the beach. That’s where I come from, the beach. To make a bonfire you had to dig a hole, a deep hole. That took a long time. Then you needed firewood. My cousins and I would scour the beach for driftwood. We always got a lot. Come nightfall we would light the fire using gasoline and it would blaze. We always had enough firewood so that after smores, when the little kids and the old bags went back up to the cabin, we would still have wood to burn. Then it was the best of times. We were alone and we were free. The best bonfires happened on windy nights. It couldn’t be too windy and the wind couldn’t be blowing into the forest. Oh yeah, the forest, I remember the forest now. The sparks from the fire would dance in the air before it. The tall trees substituted for the departed old bags, looming over us, our fire and our beach.

Before the firewood was depleted, some of us would flee down the beach, out into the darkness. We would flee from the trees, but they in their numbers would keep pace along the shoreline, at least until we came to the old Doelles’ place. There we found respite. We tucked ourselves into a hollow in the sand and huddled together, boy-girl-boy-girl. The wind whirled and the forest rustled, but we were secure in our company. My buddies George and Fred and I would start to tell the girls ghost stories, just to get them to huddle closer for warmth and safety and our male lust. We would start with old saws like the man with the hook and then begin riffing from there, but our true inspiration lay just behind us, Doelles’. I seem to recall that it was once a lighthouse keeper’s place. It seemed all but abandoned back then and we would dare each other to peek into its windows. Our best ghost stories always involved Doelles’, either Fred or George or I would go up to the house and then come back with the most blood curdling story we could imagine. The girls would hold us so tightly then. I remember that night so well. It is the intervening years that I can’t remember. Somewhere along the way I became the ghost that we used to make up. I wonder what ever happened to Fred and George or are they me? That night was something special. Nothing was ever the same again after that.