It was a screen door summer day in a sleepy Midwestern town. July came on like a blowtorch, augmented by enough humidity to form a small lake. And on this one day, nothing would have been more refreshing than a root beer float from the local drive-in.

And that’s where Steve and his Schwinn were headed. However, not for the float. Steve needed a summer job and needed it badly. His allowance didn’t get him through the week and he was getting intense pressure from his folks to get a job.

Walking into the drive-in, the smell of freshly baked doughnuts enveloped him in a sugary haze. That’s when he remembered that doughnuts were the other claim to fame of this establishment. They made the kind of doughnuts that doughy dreams were made of. Local legend held that the owner had some incredible machine in the basement and this machine produced the perfect doughnut.

Before he knew it, Steve’s ship had come in. The owner needed a doughnut maker and needed one now. Within minutes, Steve was donning an apron and following the owner downstairs to become an official doughnut maker.

Orders were being yelled. “I need 6 maple glazed!” Seconds later, “Gimme’ a dozen chocolate and two strawberry!” The place was way behind in doughnut orders and the frazzled owner soon had to run off to a meeting. So Steve’s learning curve on this giant, bubbling, burbling stainless steel doughnut birthplace was scary short.

“Kid, you get your batter into this big vat. Then just pour it in, like now!”

“While it’s pouring, press these three buttons in this exact order, Green. Blue. Red.

Do ‘em out of order and you got problems.”

“Make sure the fat stays above this line.”

“Get the frostings outta’ that fridge before ‘dem donuts come floatin’ to you like an armada.”

“Go back to the buttons and hold…I mean HOLD the blue button for 5 seconds. Miss that step and…well, you don’t wanna’ know what could happen.”

“I gotta’ go.”

With that, the owner scampered up the stairs and was gone. Meanwhile, the vat with the batter continued pouring a prodigious batch of batter into the boiling fat and one immense doughnut was forming. It was never Steve’s intention to create the world’s largest doughnut. That one weighed 1.7 tons and measured 16 feet wide. But this one was quickly becoming a strong contender for second place.

In full panic mode, Steve looked around for something, anything, he could use to rescue this fast-growing doughnut. He spotted a shovel and somehow hoisted a doughnut the size of an airplane tire out of the fat. Rolling it across the floor, he spotted a canvas drop cloth and covered it.

As the orders continued to be shouted down from above, Steve spotted an exit door, hopped on his Schwinn and spent the rest of the summer at his grandma’s house in a nearby town.

Once she heard his story, she raised his allowance.

With his years of working as an advertising agency creative director in his rear view mirror, James now enjoys the freedom of a freelance writing career. He also enjoys the relaxed dress code.

On a recent trip to Florida, I was having breakfast at a local coffee shop. It was a beastly warm summer morning and the last person I expected to bump into was Santa Claus. But there he was at the next table, scarfing down a serious pile of pancakes while Mrs. Claus daintily dabbled with her eggs. I immediately feared the chef put the wrong kind of mushrooms into my omelet, but that thought quickly passed. 

This guy had the jolly old St. Nick look down cold. His familiar red suit must have been out for dry cleaning, because Santa was dressed in a red T-shirt, Santa pants with red suspenders and a red ball cap. Of course, he sported a fluffy white Santa beard, through which the pancakes somehow magically disappeared. Why he wasn’t cooling off at the North Pole instead of visiting blowtorch-hot Florida remains a mystery. 

When he caught me staring at him, Santa arose with such a clatter and arrived at my table with a business card that had his picture on it. As he approached, I could read what was written on his red cap: “Yes, I am.” And so he was.

As I left the coffee shop, I looked for a sleigh or team of reindeer atop the building. Not seeing either, I figured the sleigh must be in the shop for new runners. Then I saw a red trailer parked off to the side of the parking lot and thought perhaps the reindeer were scrunched together inside it. Moving closer, I listened for noises and heard none. That’s a good thing, as I have no idea what kind of noise a reindeer makes.

Driving down Highway 41 the next day, I spotted a funeral home immediately adjacent to a mobile home park for seniors. “How very convenient,” I thought. When old Howard’s time is up, just leave him in that wheeled patio chair, roll him next door, sign a few papers and get back to your doublewide before the noodles boil over.

Visiting with my nephew one evening, he asked if I’d like to accompany him to the mailbox. He and his wife live in a new subdivision and the mailboxes are in a clump two blocks away. As I stood to go join him, he said he needed to get his pistol.

“What? Wait!” I managed to garble. “Why do you need firepower?”

He told me alligators and wild pigs often frequent the mailboxes and one needs to protect oneself. I told him a better idea would be to drive to the mailbox in the daytime when you could actually see what was going to eat you. He agreed and put his pistol away. 

I think the next time we get together, it’ll be at my Santa Claus coffee shop. You never hear about reindeer attacks there.

For over two decades, Jim was creative director at two top U.S. advertising agencies. During these years, he created marketing/communications for a number of familiar products and brands. He’s now enjoying life as a freelance writer and frequent pickleball player.

There’s a story behind those boxes of birdseed at your local pet store. Someone with a deft hand mixed different seeds into a curated blend designed to satisfy a bird’s deepest culinary desires.

That someone was me.

Looking for a summer job during high school, I spotted a “Help Wanted” sign on a pet shop window. After a short interview with the owner, we had an even shorter conversation about my duties.

I was to stay away from tropical fish, puppies, guppies, cats, rats and customers. After that, I could scarcely wait to hear what my duties might be. The answer came quickly.

I was to make birdseed for parakeets, canaries and finches. Kind of like a celebrity chef,

I thought, only without the toque.

This process began by opening a bunch of flattened boxes, rubber cementing the bottoms, waiting for them to dry and then filling them. Then I was to empty large sacks of seeds into a huge galvanized garbage can, mix them with an industrial-size scoop and fill the boxes. How simple was that?

All this was to be done in the dark recesses at the back of the store. What I wasn’t told, however, was that the owners’ son, David, would be constantly watching me from different corners of this gloomy area. David was a young man of limited capabilities and wore his Cubs cap sideways. He wasn’t especially social, so we settled into a nodding relationship. That was fine with me as I was there to make birdseed, not friends. But I did keep an eye peeled for him, as he had a penchant for suddenly appearing out of nowhere and making my hair stand on end.

Birdseed making turned out to be an unfortunate career choice, however, as I’m allergic to anything with fur, feathers and probably fins. Grasses are another big no-no. Hay fever comes on me like a South Seas tsunami. Once, an allergy doctor’s injections of allergens transformed my skin into a Himalayan topographical map, complete with surrounding foothills, a nearby village and a lagoon.

On my very first day, I knew I was doomed when I poured large sacks of millet, cracked corn, milo and sesame seed into the garbage can. Then, with scoop in hand, began mixing. A cloud of dust rose from the can and enveloped me in a vortex of wheezes and sneezes. And the more I scooped, the more the dust arose.

Once that task was completed, I scooped the seed into the empty boxes. That activity created dust clouds of a smaller magnitude, but there were dozens of them, each hovering above a box. When the boxes were filled, they needed to be sealed. During that process, the rubber cement brush quickly gathered enough birdseed to feed a family of finches and possibly a dozen canaries.

I didn’t last more than a week. And though I’ve had plenty of other jobs since then, this one was not for me.

It was for the birds.

James began his writing career as a copywriter for the Montgomery Ward Farm and Garden Catalog. This gig taught him how to distill all the pertinent features and benefits of a tractor, tiller or mower into 12 lines of 36 characters, including “Easy to Assemble.”

Everyone says you never know until it happens to you. As if once it happens to you, a lightbulb goes off, shedding light on all the dark corners, on all the unanswered questions you had before. 

As if until you lose a leg, you never know how life will go on from that moment onwards. But for those who do, you see them somehow still alive and so it becomes a secret only they have. Like a secret treasure-of-a-consolation prize they get to keep to themselves while others just wonder “how do they do it?”

I thought that whenever I heard about a tragic death. Let me be clear; anyone’s death is saddening. But some are more tragic than others. You see someone’s forty year old father suddenly never wake up from his sleep, and you wonder how they’ll ever move on. Someone’s sister gets hit my drunk driver. Someone’s mother gets cancer. Someone’s brother, someone’s best friend. And yet you see them living their life, somehow having figured it out. They have a secret they don’t let the rest of us in on.

When my brother passed away two months ago, I thought I would be finally be let in. I thought something transforms you on the inside, you go through a radical journey, and you come out a new person on the other end, somehow still alive and breathing and smiling. From the moment I heard of my brother’s hanging, I thought about this. I waited for the lightbulb, for a signal or for some divine intervention that would guide me and tell me what to do next. But nothing came.

Nobody told me there’s no secret.

For the first week, every morning when I would open my eyes, I would remember my brother’s body lying cold in the funeral home. And I would wet my pillow enough for it to be the first wash of the day every day. I thought that maybe I don’t know what to do yet, how to move on from here yet, because I am still in shock. So I waited some more.

I waited till after his funeral. Till after his burial. Till after his memorial. Till a whole month somehow passed, and yet I was still peeking into his room on my way downstairs every single day, waiting for him to pop into my visual, smoking a joint, asking me to join him. But the room just sighed back as I walked past it.

A few days later I met an old school friend who had also lost his sister in an untimely accident a few years ago. That was another tragedy. We were in middle school, and even then my prepubescent-self had looked up at my friend that day in awe and thought, “Look at him. How is he standing up right? How is he so stoic? Surely he must know something we don’t.”

And now here we are, years and tragedies later, looking at each other as if we both are a part of a pathetic club, and we both pity each other’s inadvertent membership. I looked past his sincere smile and saw the hollowness that weighed him down. He knew nothing. Nobody had told him either. He was just here, figuring it out. So was I. There we stood together in silence, hollow, but alive and breathing and smiling at each other.

An Ode to the Galaxy of Smoke is a collection of (unpublished) poems I wrote in honour of my late brother who died of suicide last year. Although I have been expressing myself via writing for over 17 years, my style and connection to it has only strengthened over the past year. Poetry and prose have both been my aids in every journey I have ever been on, and this submission reflects the roles they play in my life, through three different pieces.

Editor’s note: Two poems from ‘Ode to the Galaxy of Smoke’ were published on December 13.

James is a freelance writer and survivor of two long stints at two renowned advertising agencies. His conversation is sprinkled with features and benefits and always ends with a call to action.

Forget Zombies.

Odor-Causing Germs Are Out to Get You.

The world’s gone zany with zombies. They’re popping up in movies, music, on TV and staggering all over social media. Without question, those frisky folks are lurching into our lives almost everywhere. Of course, no one has ever really seen one. And the last time I checked, no one has fallen off their earthly perch due to “Zombie Bite, Zombie Nibble, Zombie Death Hug” or even “Asphyxiation Due to Close Proximity to Zombie Breath.” So let’s continue to keep a wary eye out for these nasty ragamuffins, but turn our attention to a far more ominous threat: odor-causing germs.

These relentless microscopic troublemakers are everywhere and they’re not going down easily. Unlike zombies, you can actually see odor-causing germs if you happen to have a medical grade electron microscope somewhere in your home.

I know about these germs because I once was an ad agency copywriter tasked with creating nationwide angst about them. My client had created a new product aimed at killing them while claiming they were lurking all over your kitchen floors and in your toilets. The telltale sign that you had them? You could actually smell their presence.

My task was to create TV commercials that made your hair stand on end because you learned your home was Club Med for these invasive little critters. Then, we wanted you to leap out of your Barcalounger and dash down to your grocery store to buy the product.

My client was unsure of the efficacy of their new creation, however, so they opted for a test market in Milwaukee. This would allow them to test the appeal of their new product in a scaled-back, less expensive setting before launching an ad campaign on national TV.

From the very beginning, I had two concerns about the product. The fragrance was a blend of an impossibly pine-scented forest with the earthy, pungent aroma of an earthworm farm. Strong enough to curl nose hairs, it got you thinking one of the yams in the potato basket had gone bad.

My other concern was that the product wasn’t just stinky. It was also sticky. Shortly after the advertising began, complaints began pouring in about how the product nearly peeled soles from shoes. Several people said their young children actually got stuck on the kitchen floor and couldn’t move until their shoes were removed. A recent Milwaukee census showed a population drop, but I beg to differ. I think the missing people are still there, but can’t open the door to the census taker because they’re stuck to their floors.

Maybe this is a perfect time for a hair-raising zombie scare. Cue the vampires, too. If they really do exist, let’s turn ‘em all loose and get those folks moving again.

With or without their shoes.

For decades, Jim wrote TV commercials for many well known products and brands while working as a creative director at two national ad agencies. But in his early days, he had to come up with features and benefits for chicken goggles. Yes, chicken goggles.

The Chicken Goggle Solution

I can’t think of a better conversation starter than this: “I used to write copy about chicken goggles.”

As a copywriter for the Montgomery Ward Farm and Garden Catalog, I really did write about chicken goggles. While the catalog was brimming with other products like tractors, tillers and hydraulic scoop claws, nothing came close to writing about those goggles. Not a frivolous fashion accessory, these beak-borne devices helped prevent bloodshed in the barnyard. You see, chickens are serious peckers and even engage in cannibalism. Two things I suggest you forget about the next time you walk into KFC.

If there’s any good news here, it’s that chickens usually only attack only the bird that’s directly in front of their faces. So if you ever come back to earth as a chicken, that’s a good thing to know. The goggles hinder the chicken’s view so it won’t go into full attack mode.

I learned all this in Chicago’s Montgomery Ward building, now an architectural landmark. Built before central air conditioning, the building had rotating fans mounted high on concrete columns. Seated before my typewriter, I learned to type with one hand while the other hand held down my papers as the fan rotated past my desk. Then as the fan began its return rotation, my other hand covered my papers while the other hand typed. And so it went for 8 hours a day during the summer. 

Working in my open office area, the writers’ desks were arranged side-by-side. Over in a corner, my boss sat in his own cubicle. He was a chain cigar smoker and I rarely saw his face. A cloud of smoke perpetually encircled his head. Only by watching the red end of the cigar could I at least aim my conversation toward his mouth.

Sitting atop one of the file cabinets, we had a bowl of peanuts in the shell. One day, I took an X-acto knife and carefully opened a peanut. I then trimmed a long, narrow strip of paper and wrote a note from “Rabu,” a worker being held prisoner on a peanut farm in Cameroon. He was clearly pleading for rescue. Rolling the note tightly, I squeezed it into the shell, carefully sealed the shell’s edges with rubber cement and placed the special goober deep down in the bowl where it sat for months.

One quiet afternoon, there was a shriek loud enough to crack crystal. A secretary had opened the peanut and became near faint. To this day, she thinks a much older Rabu is still being held hostage on the peanut farm.

So forget about using a life coach to teach you how to get your associates to “Lean in” to what you’re about to say. Forget about going to seminars teaching you how to get your voice heard. All you really need to know are two little words and you’re on your way.

“Chicken goggles” works for me every time.

Gina Marie Bernard is a heavily tattooed transgender woman, retired roller derby vixen, and full-time English teacher. She lives in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her daughters, Maddie and Parker, own her heart. Her chapbook Naked, Getting Nuder was a 2018-2019 Glass Chapbook series finalist, and is under contract with Clare Songbirds Publications. Her chapbook Taxonomies was a finalist for Thirty West Publishing House’s 2018 Chapbook Contest. Her chapbook I Am This Girl was a semifinalist for the Headmistress Press 2018 Charlotte Mew Poetry Chapbook Contest, and was published by Headmistress Press in October 2018. Her work has recently been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize.

W. Nowell Street

Rain tapers as the Burlington Northern cuts across S. Main, adding its weight to the ponderous humidity.

I pad barefoot from the bedroom at 5:00 and move the fans about strategically, a feat worthy of pool hall hustlers. Still, I’ll never get back to sleep. Water from the new fridge perspires onto the living room floor as I double knot my Asics. I swipe at the moisture with my palm, and press its coolness to my thigh.

The world is empty at this hour. From a neighbor’s backyard a dog barks, but only once, and without conviction.

It takes me several minutes to synchronize my posture, the swing of my arms, a scything motion in my legs. I hold my breath as I pass the cemetery on my right—a childhood superstition handed down from my mother.

The pavement ends. I feel the pitch of this first graveled incline—the pull in my quads. Horseflies sense my heat; they bumble into my hair, seek the sweat at the back my neck. My path now tracks west for nearly a mile, hugged closely on both sides by common milkweed, carpets of wild strawberry, and nodding ox-eye daisies. In the damp soil near the ditch I note I am not the first traveler of the morning—deer have minced cautiously from a deep brake of speckled alder. Farther along, dozens of navy blue swallows knife above my head, their fleet wings slicing the heavy air.

I swing back east at a 90-degree turn in the road. A sign proclaiming “Brush Only” guards ever-growing mountains of bramble. Racing toward dawn, I meet a pickup pulling a goose-neck trailer freighted with branches. The driver raises a finger from his steering while sipping coffee from an oversized travel mug.

Into town, up the block, down the sidewalk, and I arrive home to my cozy cottage—its mustard yellow paint peeling into the yard. I sweep mosquitoes from the screen door; they whine away to hide amid the nightshade.

Then I come inside and sit down to compose this ode to New York Mills, Minnesota, and return once more to a course I’d never run before.