Windsor Life
Page 24
Windsor Writers
Theme: Fortune Cookie
The cookie said, “You shouldn’t overspend at the moment. Frugality
is important.” So I recalculated the tip from 20% to 15% and left
three bucks instead of four on the table for Mr. Wong’s server. I felt
bad about it, of course, but he’s the one who brought me the cookie.
I suggest in the future Mr. Wong might raise staff morale by stocking
fortune cookies that promote generosity over parsimony.
If I had, however, opened a cookie that advised me
not to be parsimonious, I would then have started
at 10%, kicked it to a liberal 15%, and the server
would have gotten three dollars instead of two.
It comes out the same either way, but the cookie
shouldn’t have accused me of being a skinflint.
I am here today not to mock fortune cookies, but
to praise them, for they are indeed the full ride
university scholarship of life. Where else can you
get educated from texts propounded on slips of paper baked into
cookies, all for the price of chop suey? They lecture you with life
lessons like, “two can live as cheaply as one, but for only half as
long,” or “marriage lets you annoy one special person for the rest
of your life,” or you should “either look before you leap, or wear a
parachute.” The better ones teach you in eight words how to deal
with Congress or dance the mambo.
There was a time in the middle of the last century where you could
supplement your fortune cookie education downtown by patronizing
Fortune Cookie University
by Dennis Payton Knight
a coin-operated scale which complained about your weight and
expounded on the world in a window cut out of the metal face of the
dial. That was where I learned about existentialism.
There are horoscopes too, but I’ve never put much stock on them,
probably because they take more reading than the average cookie,
although there are possibilities there for folks working on their
Masters. I did read a few horoscopes this morning
to find more about them, and I learned that, on this
29th day of August, 2016, I should use finesse when
trying to get others to agree with me. And what is
this you are experiencing right now if it isn’t five
hundred original words so finessed they literally
melt from the page? If, however, I am somehow not
finessing you, just tell me, because another astrologist
has interpreted the signs as giving me permission to
stamp my feet and demand retribution.
Getting back to fortune cookies, I’m thinking there might be an
opportunity there for you and me to ply our craft as writers and
educators. We, already full of life’s wisdom, or something like that,
can finally make a few bucks for ourselves. The cookie market may
be saturated, but there are other possibilities. Why not create
Fortune Burritos? Wouldn’t a Krispy Kreme aficionado enjoy chomping
into a fresh glazed FortuneNut?
But wait! I’ve got it! Fortune McNuggets!
You shouldn’t overspend
at the moment. Frugality is
important.
During most of three seasons in Iowa, chlorophyll reigns. Green
field rows and pastures rise out of the ground and pulse for miles,
breached here and there by strawberry-colored barns, soaring corn
cribs and rambling milky white frame farm houses. I remember how
the rich black Iowa earth fed us green beans and peas, heavenly
sweet corn, carrots and plate-sized tomatoes, and how my dad
would throw our watermelon rinds into the livestock
yard and watermelons big as pails grew up before
the hogs ate them. The bounty of our crops fed our
horses and cattle and provided semi-trailer truck
loads for sale at the markets. My dad and all the
farmers around us worked sunrise to sundown most
of the year until white-out winters allowed them
hibernation from land chores.
Today on a rare visit back to the state, I see fewer
homes and farm buildings. More and more of the land is plowed,
seeded and harvested without interruption from signs that families
once lived there. On a late summer drive along Iowa country roads
I see endless miles of green crops and black soil until it all blends
together like an overlong ocean voyage. I get a headache from it
as well as a heart ache when I can’t find the boundaries of our farm
anymore, the farm we offspring eventually sold to a rich man who
was buying up all the land in northwest Iowa. All the bumpy gravel
The Greener Grass
by Nancy Martz
roads separate square-mile sections of crops without differentiation.
When I grew up there, dense groves of evergreens, walnut and
apple trees, towering elms and oaks gave protection to homes and
hog houses, chicken coops and tractor sheds from the prevailing
northern winds that also rocked the windmills above livestock tanks,
and all of these were identifiable oases marking each unique farm
as you drove down the road. But buildings, water
tanks and windbreakers bear no marketable crops,
nor do the wonderful, old wooden windmills.
I linger over my farm memories now, although I
resented being stuck out in the country as a kid. I
envied the city slickers in my class who lived in town
with sidewalks that went to the soda shop and the
bowling alley where everybody hung out. I hung out
on top of the hog house and dreamed of being a
city girl someday. Funny how some dreams reverse themselves as we
grow old. Still, I’m content living in my Denver condo surrounded by
acres of well-manicured flower beds and species of mature trees,
and I walk my dog on the sidewalk trails that lead to the golf course
and restaurant and canal. All things citified are within my reach, and
I like the opportunities and convenience. But I know a literal truth
about Iowans who never left. Their grass really is greener.
Focus on the color green
for good luck today.
