Brownie is Beautiful.

Some years ago when Joe Frank, the brilliant writer and monologist died, a radio station I was listening to aired an hours'-long tribute to him. It featured long clips from some of his pieces

Most times when I hear, see or think something you consider extraordinary, I say to myself, "This is great. I'll definitely remember this." 

Then in about the time it takes a leaf to fall or a dog to bark, what I thought was a seminal thought is as out of my head as smoke from a diesel engine or a lie from a politician.

While I've trained myself to write things down, sometimes my octopus hands and my wide-field-of-vision can't keep up with my pencil. Like the legendary bass on some cornpone show like Andy Griffith, I'm afraid the big one often gets away.

During the tribute to Frank, I heard him tell the tale of his journeys across amerikkka, coming home from college or something, in his old Chevy Vega. When all this was happening it was, really, pre-ubiquitous fast-food, and Frank made a habit of stopping at Howard Johnson's restaurants.

You've probably never heard of Howard Johnson's. But in the 1960s, they served more meals outside the home than any organization outside of the US Army and it was the largest restaurant chain in the US.

These were generally clean, well-lighted places, with decent food, clean bathrooms and good-enough coffee. They were welcoming and human in a way that even high-end restaurants aren't today.

Frank talked about how he'd sit at the counter, often next to an elevated pastry display with various bear-claws, danish and brownies in it. When the waitress was nowhere to be found, Frank would pilfer a saran-wrap wrapped brownie. It was not something to eat. It was a way of saying I was there, like a male dog peeing on every hydrangea.

Frank would walk out to his Vega, open the trunk with his key and toss in the brownie. 

On an Iowa to Long Island, NY trip, Frank might have stopped at eight or six Howard Johnson's. So he might have pilfered as many cellophaned brownies. 

Multiply those eight or six brownies by four trips a year times five years or so, and before too long, Frank's Vega had hundreds of brownies in its trunk. He told friends about it, too. Over the years, they added hundreds of more brownies.

Next, Frank hatched a plan. On his way out west from his parents' east coast home he would stop at every Howard Johnson's he stopped at on his way east. 

However, rather than surreptitiously making off with a brownie, Frank would replace all the brownies he stole, and then some. As you might imagine, replacing was a harder task than Frank's original swiping. What's more, if you got caught stealing, your crime was easily understood. Returning a year's old, rock-hard brownie would be difficult to talk your way around.

Nevertheless, humans quest.

Like Ahab and his White Whale, like Coronado and the Seven Cities of Gold, most people--no matter how prosaic their lives--have somewhere inside them a lofty goal. Returning brownies was Frank's.

This is all I have today.

Somewhere in this meander I think there might be well-hidden, like a Viet Kong guerrilla on the Ho Chi Mihn trail, a metaphor for amerikkka or at least the advertising industry.

So many years of petty, dispiriting lies.

So many soul-sapping behaviors over time.

So many little cuts.

So many nasty pecks from a feral goose.

No matter how you try, the damage is done. You can't come back from decades or years of malfeasance.

https://www.joefrank.com/

Years later now, Frank is gone. Howard Johnson's is gone. That Chevy Vega is gone.

But somewhere I bet there exists an adamantine brownie wrapped back when the world was some degrees cooler and lightyears more innocent. It might take one of the giant drills New York sandhogs use to dig new subway tunnels, and maybe I'm weird, but I'd like to have a piece of one.

Maybe as a souvenir of amerikkka. Maybe to taste. Maybe just as a keepsake of bygone-ness.

Somehow that also seems like it might be a metaphor for something.

And if you want 19-minutes of Frank.

BTW.

$1000 is more than I'm willing to spend on a gag.
But I'd love a Simple Simon and the Pieman Howard Johnson's weathervane.