Aloha Shirt Man Visits His Hometown at the Height of the Orgasmic Blueberry Season

All summer the families in Aloha Shirt Man’s hometown nourish themselves on orgasmic blueberries. On the dusky fruit that flourishes in the fields behind churches haunted by extinct bees. This is where Milton Friedman cherry-picked Adam Smith for the fairy tale about the Invisible Hand, while his wife plied him with the desserts she baked with fruits harvested under a waxing moon. Aloha Shirt Man roots for the hometown Blueberries with their minor league roster of players nicknamed “Suitcase” and “Fumblefoot.” He takes comfort in knowing the Berries will lose a hundred games again this year while planting Little League All-Stars in the wombs of the county fair queens during off days and rain outs. Nobody minds. Every boy and girl can toss a knee-buckler for a strike on a 3-2 count, hit in the clutch, and launch fastballs beyond the city borders with an Adirondack Ash. After pick-up games, Mrs. Friedman and the town mothers fix their loved ones Dagwood sandwiches piled with Spam patties, peanut butter, tomato slices and the ecstatic fruit. In late July, the pharmacies close after selling out their stock of condoms and diaphragms, and the Berries forfeit the remaining games on their schedule. Aloha Shirt Man walks the deserted August streets of his hometown in summer’s final celebration of the Oh, My God chorus. He wears the jersey of his favorite player with his imaginary number on the back.

The Speed Dating Blues

Women with hoop earrings & demure watches perch on folding chairs facing away from the setting sun in a conference center great hall. They wear teal & burgundy dresses from Nordstrom’s. Hose & heels. Long tables decorated in a cupid & valentine motif separate the women from the men who squirm in a row of chairs with a view of strip mall stoplights. These men are neither stockbrokers nor surgeons. Number 17 owns a Pizza King. Fifty-one says he is a nurse. They mute their conversations in the presence of rivals. No one wears cologne. Or perfume. When the hostess rings a school bell, the men greet the women with an awkwardness born from canned tuna & potato chip suppers. Each offers a condensed life to the woman seated across from him. A hope. Everyone keeps notes on scorecards, placing a check mark beside the number assigned to the woman who preferred Pierce Brosnan as James Bond or to the man who played tight end on a high school football team. The women doodle flowers on the margins of their scorecards. Faint stars by the numbers of the men they prefer. But this batch of men are retired record store clerks with a closet full of aloha shirts and detectives stymied by too many small town mysteries. One talks about dinosaurs & shares pictures of his Kawasaki Ninja. Another has memorized a poem flush with blue highways & rock-&-roll anthems. The cards are dark with et ceteras and asterisks. The spaces where risks become futures remain blank.

Ode to Hostess Fruit Pies

You were a pimpled and crew-cut kid reluctant to spend loose change. You started making your own money passing the Connersville News-Examiner, walking the hills on the west side of town, laying papers on sofas inside screen doors. The first paper to a mute couple atop 8th Street Hill who counted pennies and nickels to pay the 40 cents. And finished with the woman who asked you to call her Pandora. Costen Shockley picked country songs on his steel guitar when the afternoons were humid and his dogs slept. Never Had the One I Wanted. Lonelyville. In the summer, you’d eat Hostess Fried Pies on a bench in front of Harrison’s Grocery while nursing a Dr. Pepper or a Mountain Dew. Pie washed down with ice frozen in the bottle. Blueberry. Peach. On a rare day, cherry. At the base of 12th Street Hill, you once watched the foals at the horse farm stagger to their feet until they could stand splay-legged beside their mares. You would spit the rare peach or cherry pit into the thickets on the side of the road where wild sunflowers grew. A kid in Wrangler jeans and a maroon paisley shirt, halfway between I Walk the Line and (Ain’t Got No) Satisfaction. Summer evenings you ate fried blueberry pie on your way home. A Payday or a Zero candy bar when the pie case was empty. Already, you wanted a life where you didn’t want so much.