Less
More
Archive for June, 2007
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
Loading …Soft gong tones rang out and all nine took their seats around the large table. One seat remained empty. There were no windows, the mood of the room much like a library. Everyone sipped water, and smiled too much.
Gabe, spokesman of the three on his side of the rectangular table, moved to the podium. He stumbled on the way, knocking pens from his pocket-protector. He picked them up and began “Maxxwell Enterprises is looking to expand into the hotel business. The three, well, two teams will now make your presentations. Would the representatives of Union Properties, please begin, then we will hear from Matrix Matters.”
Continue reading ‘Confessions Of An Intergalactic Real Estate Agent’
(8 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5) Loading …The day is getting on and we are lost. I am driving. My wife, Jane, is navigator. She has been mugging at the mirror on the back of the sun visor, applying lipstick. “Are we on the right road,” I ask. “I think so.” “Don’t you know?” Maps are a mystery to Jane. “All those squiggly little blue and red lines. They don’t make sense.” We are in Hammond, Indiana, that much I know. It’s a grimy industrial town across the state line from Chicago. We are on our way home to Michigan after a weekend of fun in the Big Town.
“Well it’s not an interstate. It’s not U.S. 12 or the Indiana Toll Road. Maybe we had better stop and ask somebody,” I say. Jane gives me that are-you-out-of-your-mind look; “Didn’t you notice the neighborhood?” She’s right. It’s one small step from skid row. We haven’t seen a car or even a person along the road for miles now, just a vacant rundown house here and there. I pull onto a patch of gravel and check the map. No help. We have to find a main road, either one, right away. Michigan is still a long way off and nightfall is near.
(6 votes, average: 4.83 out of 5) Loading …My full name is Sandra Fay Lipton, but my friends and customers call me Sandy. I’ve been a waitress at the Mexi Casa cafe in Franklin, Tennessee for 52 years. I don’t know if that’s some sort of world record, but people tend to be impressed by that. What surprises people the most though is that, at 70 years old, I still look forward to coming to work here nearly every day. Fact is, before my hip surgery last Spring, I hadn’t missed a single shift in more than thirty years. A lot of that has to do with the people I see here everyday – the regulars who come here for the best cup of coffee in town. They are family to me; and just as most people look forward to coming home to see their families, I look forward to coming to the café to see mine. But there’s another reason I’m still here, and that has to do with a conversation I had with someone, right here at the counter, nearly 50 years ago.
In late March of 1958 I was 21 years old, and had been waitressing at the Mexi Casa for almost three years. I didn’t go to college right out of high school. It wasn’t the normal thing for a young woman to do back then. Girls growing up in rural Tennessee in the 1950’s were burdened with many expectations, but the pursuit of quality education wasn’t one of them. I was expected to get married, raise a family, and provide grandchildren for my parents to dote over. At the time it seemed like my parents’ only concern was that I met these expectations. I’m sure that’s why my passions and plans were closely audited. They had to be in case I somehow became self-aware at any point in my life and decided to actually act in my own best interest. Heresy!
(7 votes, average: 4.43 out of 5) Loading …The morning was cool and agreeable as a small lizard poked his head from behind the chalkboard menu. “SERVING HOMEMADE MENUDO DAILY,” stood in blocky script at the top, but everything else had been wiped away the night before. The lizard, scanning with jerky eyeballs, was more interested in the crickets to be found underneath the prep table than the special of the day. It stopped and eyed the large man eating at the counter before scuttling behind a translucent jar of pickled vegetables in search of its own breakfast.
The cafe was otherwise deserted. Joe hunched over his huevos rancheros and shoveled mechanically, stopping occasionally for brief gulps of black coffee. He sat with elbows bracing his solid frame, his stubbled countenance reflecting dully in the brown Formica countertop. The stool beneath him looked overmatched.
Subscribe to 52stories by e-mail
Recent Comments