because it tells me so many things about life, about paying attention…

JUST ANOTHER ROADSIDE PULITZER

Why did I ever go into retail?

Well, you know the answer to that—if you, too, are in retail.

I did it because I couldn’t think of any other way to be my own boss and actually provide food and shelter for the family, outside the corporate world. I couldn’t think of any other way to have the freedom to write what I needed to write, free of the Dilbert shackles of the corporate world.

So, a couple of decades later, here I am, the Christmas season upon me, at 4:50pm on a Friday, just ten minutes till closing time, digging through computer-numbered boxes for a 1962 Esquire Magazine featuring Hemingway, a 1956 BBC Listener magazine containing a Salinger review, a first printing of Asimov’s The Martian Way, and a first edition copy of Salinger’s Raise High the Roofbeams…got to get these things overnighted for an anxious customer and then make it to a bookshop across town to conduct a reading, all by 6pm.

The front door chimes go off, so that means somebody has entered the store, 150 feet up the hall and up a steep flight of red stairs. As a retailer, you know the mixed feelings you get: Damn! Now I’ve got to wait on somebody and still get my tasks done…if it weren’t for these pesky customers, I could make a living (!).

I head up the hall to see who’s there, passing the glowing lava lamps and glistening Santas that line the path, giving a fairyland glow to the gathering dusk. When I get to the front, I see a small, pointy-haired big-rimmed eyeglass man, standing and staring at me as if I’m about to hit him. I do my usual “Hello, how can I help you today?” customer-friendly voice thing, since I have never seen this guy before.

“Well, do you buy stuff?” he asks. I’m in a hurry, so this means my thoughts are going to be negative—I’m thinking he’s got the usual dog-eared Reader’s Digest Condensed books and Stephen King paperbacks that we see a lot of around here.

“Well, it depends on what it is,” I say, thinking this does not look like a millionaire about to donate his Gutenberg Bible to me. “We have just about everything, but we’re always looking for what we don’t have,” I say, motioning down the hallway.

“What about this?” he says, pulling a rusty three-inch-tall miniature replica of a Sprite cola bottle from his pocket. It’s cute, just the thing I have all over the store for decoration, along with the life-sized Leg Lamp from Jean Shepherd, the seven-foot-tall Piggly Wiggly statue and the Pee-Wee Herman Playhouse suitcase, interspersed with books galore.

The next negative thought is that he will, like most people, have watched the Antiques Roadshow and determined that this is worth $32,000, of which I should pay him half for re-sale. I brace myself and say, “That’s neat. How much do you want for it?” He says in a small and meek voice, “What about a dollar?”

I am relieved and brighten up instantly, I pull a dollar from the cash tray, give it to him and he walks happily toward the stairs.

He bends to pick up two large and obviously heavy satchels he’s lugged up the stairs—I’m just now noticing them. Then, he turns and asks, “Can you tell me how to get to Jimmie Hale?”

The Jimmie Hale mission is for homeless people, and it’s a long walking distance away. I give him instructions, he thanks me, then begins his painful descent. I wait in the foyer, hoping he doesn’t stumble, and hoping I can get the door locked behind him so I can head to the post office on my way to being an unknown author reading my stuff aloud.

I can tell he’s about halfway down the stairs when I hear his meek voice, “I read everything you write.” I freeze in place to hear more. “And I see your columns in the paper. You are a natural-born writer.”

I can only yell thanks! as he closes the door behind him and disappears from hearing. I rush down the stairs to lock up, look up and down the street, and see nothing. No trace of this fellow and his heavy luggage and his mild temperament.

I lock the door, take down the OPEN sign, and start up the stair, turning out lights as I go.

Back at my counter, I reach into my pocket for keys and find the tiny Sprite bottle.

I hold it up to the lava lights and note its special green glow. And I wonder what a Pulitzer Prize looks like. This may be as close to one as I’ll ever get, so I’m going to adopt it and keep it around to remind me that now and then—just every once in a while—a writer can get a good review, a good award, at an unexpected time from an unlikely source…and then wonder later whether it was all imagination.

Later, at the reading, I tell the story of the little man and his Sprite bottle to Joey Kennedy, who is a genuine Pulitzer Prize winner. He grins ear to ear, because he knows all about fate and how things come to you only if you don’t look at them straight on

© Jim Reed 2019 A.D.