Fame and Fortune Await
If I were thirty or forty years younger (which thankfully I am not), I would have jumped up and down and shouted, "They're here, they're here!"
However, being a mature senior citizen with a dignified sense of self-discipline, I merely turned to my wife and calmly announced, "The books have arrived."
She looked at me, smiled, and then jumped up and down and shouted, "They're here, they're here!"
After that, we each celebrated with a small glass of prune juice. Ah, the joys of approaching age seventy. As the poet (can't recall which one) said, "They are not long, the days of wine and roses...."
They may not be long, but they sure are fun while they last.
Anyway, back to the present.
In a couple of hours I will be going to JJ's Donut Shop in Monterey Park, California, to hold my first book signing and to give copies of
Coffee at JJ's to the guys whose stories I chronicle in that book.
The "boys" consist primarily of a group of men I can now proudly call my friends:
Angelo, a man who was born in Sicily shortly after World War II ended;
Albert, a slightly overweight but boisterous, happy fellow who is part of The Early Shift;
Bob, a droll individual with such a strong poker face that you can never tell when he's joking (although he usually is);
Bobby, the photographer who kindly agreed to snap a few professional images of me for publicity purposes;
Mako, a Japanese-American widower who used to be a grocer;
Mark, friendly, outgoing, always with a smile or a joke for the rest of us;
Mel, an Army Reservist who seems to usually have some kind of injury to take care of (twisted wrist, dislocated shoulder -- something);
Mickey, a fierce but funny man of Japanese-American descent;
Motorcycle Mike, who only has one mode of transportation;
Two-Legged Mike, a policeman who is spoken of in hushed whispers;
Four-Legged Mike, Mark's miniature Doberman with the heart of a lion in the body of a Chihuahua;
Nick the butcher, who doesn't come around as often as he should;
Octavio, a man with a slightly (all right, heavily) skewed vision of the reality;
Oscar, who looks strange without his mustache since he shaved it off;
Paul, a man with a seemingly endless supply of stories and the good sense to rarely repeat any of them;
Richard, as unexpectedly and genuinely funny a man as you are ever likely to meet;
Backup Richard, another man who sees things differently than the rest of us;
Robert -- gentle, quiet Robert -- who speaks softly and says "Up yours!" to any car that honks its horn as it passes by;
Rudy, serious and observant, he is a no-nonsense man with a lot of empathy for others and is part of The Early Shift;
Sandy, the only woman in the group who is a regular at JJ's, she is part of The Early Shift;
Steve, who worked for twenty years in an insane asylum, has quickly become one of my two best friends at JJ's;
Ted, known as Theodore, likes to bring his shoeshine box to the donut shop;
Teresa, whom we call "Tweezers" for no known reason, is a lovely woman who graces us with her presence far too rarely; and, lastly,
Terry, a large man who recently underwent some surgery but came through it with good grace and his sense of humor intact;
Val, a man with a great smile who because he is still working does not stay very long when he comes in for donuts and a cup of... Coffee at JJ's.
These are the men and women who come in on a more or less regular basis, and who have contributed something to the writing of Coffee at JJ's.
Now I'm going to meet them at JJ's for my first book signing. ...They'd better all show up!
