Dec. 23, 1988: Magazines don’t tell you what day it is

One of the things gets most people who don’t do magazines is the way the calendar gets all bollixed up for the guys doing the monthlies. O’Strowsky, for instance, might be doing three monthlies all at the same time, one with an April cover date, one with a February and one with a March. All three of them are going to be on the newsstand in February and off it in March, and only one of them is right with the calendar when it’s actually on sale. Readers can’t keep it straight, and the publishers aren’t too clear on it, and there’s no telling what it could do to a fellow like O’Strowsky.

What I mean by that is O’Strowsky might start deciding what he’s going to put in the issue with a February date in October, the one with a March date in September, and the one with an April date in July. Or it might be totally reversed, with the February magazine being decided in July, the April one in September and the March one in October. If that’s not enough to throw your calendar right in the millpond, O’Strowsky will be lining up a cover for the February one the same time he’s editing copy for the April one and writing his columns for the March one, and designing pages for all three, and helping out on the music or comics or coins magazines when one of their editors is off at a show or on vacation. It’s sort of a miracle that a page from the March issue doesn’t show up in the April magazine, but O’Strowsky makes them look different enough that all the articles wind up in the right place. Ads are another story, but O’Strowsky’s never been one to worry about the ads.

One thing’s for certain, and that is that O’Strowsky will be working on all three of his magazines right up to the second he walks out the door for Christmas. If you can pin him down a spare second between magazines, O’Strowsky says he kind of likes it that way. “It’s got a bustle to it that’s right for Christmas,” he says. “It’s the right speed. It’s like that line from The Great Gatsby” -- you should know that The Great Gatsby is O’Strowsky’s favorite book, that and Ball Four, and he quotes from it every chance he gets – “about the returning trains of my youth, with the frosty breath and fur coats and blowing snow and everything. It’s like that. It’s got a tempo -- Christmas tempo. Move them along, get them out the door like you’re sending presents, stamp ‘em and mail ‘em, throw your own pack over your shoulder, walk out the door yourself, take a deep breath of the fresh winter air, it’s Christmas. I like it. It’s nuts for a while, three big deadlines always, but I like it.”

I ask him if all the different months that he has to juggle don’t get him sort of discombobulated with the calendar, and he almost shouts, “No way!” Then he calms down some and says, “I mean, you know when it is when you go outside. Dark when you leave work and cold, it’s winter. Darker it is closer to January you are. Dark when you leave work and warmish, it’s spring. Light when you leave work and smells like cow manure, later spring. Warm when you wake up, ride your bike from five to six in the morning, peas by the side of the road, it’s summer. Warm and beans and corn by the side of the road, late summer. Not quite so light, not quite so warm, burning leaves, and potatoes by the side of the road, fall. Christmas the wreaths are lit and the lights are on. You know. Magazines don’t tell you what day it is. One of the things I like about here is you know without the magazines having to tell you. Something’s always here to remind you.”

After he said that I looked around O’Strowsky’s desk – just took a glance, you know. Nothing wrong with that. You know what? No calendar anywhere. I guess if you’re always working four months ahead and three months behind calendar doesn’t really stand for much. Knows when it’s Christmas, though. Gotta hand it to him. Knows when it’s Christmas.



Dec. 26, 1988: How can you talk to a guy reads Baby Huey comics?

You can always tell who’s been working here the shortest by who works day after Christmas. Even guys who like working here and haven’t got anyplace better to be, like O’Strowsky, don’t work day after Christmas. Usually they’ve been somewhere away from Iola for the holiday, and nothing’s really that close to Iola that you’d want to end Christmas at 7 o’clock just to get back, what with two-lane winter roads and everything. Exceptions are Don and Maggie, who do the comic-book magazines and wouldn’t dream, wouldn’t ever dream, about doing anything else but comic-book magazines. Bought a house two blocks from the company to be close to the comic-book magazines on nights and Saturdays and Sundays when no one else works, that’s what Don and Maggie did. They spend their vacations at comic-book shows so they can come back and write about them in comic-book magazines. They buy comic books out of their own money to give to the company so company can have a library of comic books. Don and Maggie, you envy them the way their life is so complete, just them and the comic books, and what could be better than spending your entire life writing about comic books? Envy them but wouldn’t want to be like them. That’s the paradox right there.

So day after Christmas you got newcomers like Homer and the Potato Phantom working along with Don and Maggie, no one else, like you could roll a bowling ball down the hall and not hit anyone till you get to the coin-catalogers, and naturally the three of them start talking.

“You know, I used to read comics,” Homer says all earnestly. No one can sound more earnest than Homer, you can’t not believe him, you just can’t.

“Used to?” Don says, saying it like the very thought that someone could read comics once and decide to not ever read comics again would be like a man deciding to have an operation that’d make him a squirrel. Worse than that, maybe.

“Yeah, used to. In fact, I learned to read from my mom reading me comics.”

“That’s very good, isn’t it, Don?” Maggie says. Maggie is the junior partner here. “Learned to read from his mom reading him comics. Isn’t that a great way to learn? From comic books. Learned to read from comic books.” She’s talking to Homer now. “Look where it got you. Isn’t it a wonderful thing?”

“It’s not amazing that he learned to read from comic books, Maggie,” Don says, and Don is the senior partner here. “It’s amazing that his mother read him the comic books so he learned to read. It’s not enough to be amazed. You have to be amazed in the right places, Maggie.”

“So what were the comic books?” Don asks. He’s curious, but can’t tell whether he’s curious because he wants to know the comic books responsible for molding Homer into the editorial assistant for a weekly baseball-card newspaper or because he smells a stash of vintage collectibles hiding out in a mom’s attic. With Don, could be either.

“Great comic books – Baby Huey, Sad Sack – great comics,” Homer says, earnest as he was when he said he used to read comics to start with. “My mom did the greatest Papa Duck ever. I can still read ya some of the lines – like they go to Florida and the sun is out and Mama Duck says, ‘Just look at that moon.’ Isn’t that something, how I still remember that?.”

Don and Maggie hear “Sad Sack” and “Baby Huey” and it’s like someone rolls their sucker in the dirt. “Great comics?” Don asks, and he’s got half the Santa Claus equation right. He’s shaking like a bowlful of jelly, but he’s no jolly old elf. “Those comics, those great comics of yours you learned to read on, are wretched –“ and he draws out the word and says it again, in case Homer didn’t get it straight the first time. “Wretched! The art is horrible, plots are juvenile, the jokes are lame – what you just said, that’s as good as it ever gets, isn’t it? -- dialog is worse than inane, characters are cardboard.” Now he’s sputtering. “There’s – there’s not a complete sentence – not a complete sentence – in a carload of issues. The ads don’t even save the comics. ‘Sell seeds – win prizes!’ – they’re hideous. It would be a complement – a complement -- to call them the worst comics ever created.”

Thing about Homer is that Don sputtering all over the place doesn’t change a thing for him. Baby Huey comic books and his mom taught him to read, and been reading nearly 20 years; nothing Don says is ever gonna move that around. It’s day after Christmas and he’s getting paid regardless, no one’s paying attention to whether he’s working, and the baseball cards will be waiting for him any time he chooses to go back to them. “Oh, well. I liked them,” he says, and walks back to his cubicle.

Don’s still muttering, not muttering under his breath but muttering so’s Homer can hear. “Sad Sack. Baby Huey. Can you believe it? Honestly, can you believe it?”

“Takes all kinds to make a world,” Maggie says, even though she says it like she doesn’t believe herself overmuch.

“Oh, shut up,” Don says, and attacks the latest Superman more serious than usual.





Dec. 31, 1988: Nothing worse happens to you the whole year

Donnie B got caught working New Year’s Eve, like you couldn’t convince anyone it’s a holiday, and to make things worse he got roped in to going to the Crystal Café with a JT and a couple of coin guys who must really have been lonely, asking JT and Donnie to go to lunch at the Crystal with them.

Donnie’s not usually a Crystal kind of guy. Something about hamburger casserole followed by pecan pie and then an afternoon spent amidst the baseball cards doesn’t make his heart skip a beat. But what the heck, it’s the end of the year and who knows what the evening’s gonna bring, probably nothing but you never can tell, so Donnie goes over to the Crystal with JT and the coin guys.

Coin guys start to talking once they’ve ordered their specials about New Year’s Eve and what they’re going to do to celebrate it, them being coin guys and yesterday’s football games being of marginal interest to them. Fred Waldvogel, he comes from over near Oshkosh from a real German family, probably no more than 40 years removed from the boat. Morty Bornsen comes right from town, Norwegian as all get out, just a real old goat right down to his folks buried on the hill in the shadow of the steeple of the Northland Lutheran Church. Guy who runs the company hired Morty out of high-school years and years ago and he’s still here, putting together catalogs and turning himself into an expert by inches. It just seeps into his brain, he figures, like nitrates in the groundwater. Call themselves Fred and Borney, too, like the Flintstones, like it's a big joke on everybody.

“So what you do for New Year’s Eve, Fred?” says Bornsen, like maybe he’s had this discussion with the German more than a couple of times but feels like he needs to stage it for the benefit of Donnie and JT.

“Aw, you know,” Fred says back, and Donnie can’t tell whether or not he’s catching on – “go to the folks’ house, have some cheese and crackers, watch TV, play schafskopf until midnight, then have more crackers and herring and wine, toast the new year with the wine, then head off to bed so’s we can get up and watch the parades in the morning. Just New Year’s. Nothing exciting –” which is not a lie for a fellow like Fred who could make going over Niagara Falls in a barrel seem as exciting as wash day. “And Borney, s'pose I know how you like to spend your New Year’s.”

“Not too different from yours, not too different at all,” Bornsen says right back to him. “You know what it’s like around here – not too many places you’d care to be found on New Year’s Eve, none at all really, ‘less you’ve got a snowmobile or a death wish, one of the two. Stay home, y’know, parents’ big old house down there on Main Street, eat cheese and crackers, last of the rosettes, then midnight comes eat lutefisk and lefse, drink wine, beer, toast the new year, go to bed so we can watch the parades in the morning.”

“So Borney,” JT asks with a trace of mischief in his eyes, not that Bornsen and the German are going to catch on to an expression foreign to them as mischief, “why ya eat lutefisk on New Year’s?”

Before Bornsen can get out with “tradition” the German steps in. “I’ll tell you why: Eat lutefisk on New Year’s, ya know nothing worse gonna happen to you rest of the year.”

“Aw, c’mon now, Fred,” Borney says, upset for him, which isn’t much upset to the rest of us. “That lutefisk goes down like butter. Just like butter.”

“That’s the butter going down like butter, Borney,” Fred says back. “Lutefisk goes down like lutefisk. Tell ya, you’re better off with a flagon of melted butter, drink that down, throw the lutefisk away.”

“Ja, well then, what about you, with the herring? Eat herring on New Year’s and nothing worse happens to you the whole year. And there’s no butter involved here, don’t go tellin’ me there’s butter involved. It’s a pure desire for pain and agony makes a man eat herring on New Year’s. Fish done up to taste like a pickle. Ugh. Try explaining that so it makes sense. Pure desire for pain and agony, I tell you.”

JT sees these guys might need some calming, can’t have coin guys making a scene in the Crystal, so he says, “Well, maybe it’s like this: Maybe you” – and he’s looking at Fred – “eat herring so nothing worse happens to him –“ and he’s nodding in Borney’s direction – “all year long, and maybe you –“ he’s looking at Borney now – “eat lutefisk so nothing worse happens to him all year long. How’s that sound?”

Fred or Borney couldn’t figure out what JT was getting at, and the ham and scalloped potatoes were showing up right at that moment, so the coin guys shut up and ate. As for Donnie, he figures nothing worse is gonna happen to him after the ham and scalloped potatoes, and leaves it at that.