The Michigan News Agency is a place like no other in Kalamazoo. From its neon sign to the uber-friendly staff (who will hold your newspaper if you’re on vacation) to the wealth of print materials available even as the digital revolution threatens to gobble-up all things paper, it’s a small business straight out of The Baldwins.
But it wasn’t today.
I entered through the front door and, being in a cheery mood from the warm weather and plentiful sunshine, I smiled for some reason as the little bell attached to the door handle did a cute “ding, ding” as I took my first few steps inside.
The store’s owner, Dean Hauck, crept out from behind a tower of dusty boxes and saw me. Our daily back-and-forth – as scripted and predictable as the bad paperbacks that line the center aisle – began.
“So it’s 10:10 p.m. tonight,” she said. “I hope anyway. It’s drizzling in Seattle.”
“I think there’s a dome, or a semi-dome there,” I said. “Anyway, we need a good outing from Verlander. I mean, he’s the ace. He’s gotta step-up. And what’s the deal with Zumaya? When is he coming back?”
“I heard he threw well at Triple-A, but who knows,” she said.
And so it went for a few more moments, a quick, Cliffs Notes breakdown of Detroit Tigers developments and happenings over the past 24 hours.
My eyes moved from Dean’s thinning brown hair and whirling hand gestures to the table behind me, a buffet of different newspapers. I thumbed through a Kalamazoo Gazette, some story about high-speed rail. I went to the jump page for five seconds and then put the paper down. I can’t buy this product anymore, not since I had become the victim of the Gazette’s Secret Service, but that’s another story for another time.
I reached for a Free Press and noticed a black hand with thick, wrinkled fingers enter my field of vision. A watch was attached to the wrist; gold face, small diamonds in place of numbers, black, faux-alligator skin strap.
The hand picked up a Gazette and the man attached to it stood in line. He and I were the only patrons in the store, which I remember at that moment smelling musty and sweet, the kind of scent that can only ooze from a place of significant age.
The man stepped to the counter.
“Do you have “Hometown Housewives?” he asked Dean nonchalantly. Shit, he was so calm he could have been asking if they had “Yes, There Really is a Kalamazoo” coffee mugs (they do).
“Oh, let’s see,” she said, taking him back to the plexiglass-covered Display Case of Porn, or D-COP. There, between the Rolling Stones and Homemaker’s Journal, an salacious smorgasbord of pornographic materials both innocent and depraved are arranged, staring out at the browsing public. Each one has a plastic cover them, which allows potential patrons to view the title of each magazine (Club, Stuff, Stacked and Oui – doesn’t mean “yes” in French? Weird) but not the “goods” underneath.
It seemed the stars were not aligned for my line buddy this afternoon. “Housewives” was out of stock.
“Well, lemme have a “40 Something’s,” he said. “Oh, and this paper, too.”
Apparently, he likes to inform while viewing his porn. Killing two birds with one stone – or killing two stones with one hand, in this case.
I felt a bit awkward, so I brought up the Tigers again and Dean and I talked while she slipped the porno into a thin paper bag.
“What we need to do is get dem Lions back own track,” the man said.
“Really?” I thought to myself. Then I realized that his sports commentary was not meant to divert my attention from the porno purchase that had just taken place. He just really wanted the Lions to get better. The porn could wait – for at least a bit.
“Well, we’ll see ya,” he said.
The man left and I asked Dean how porno sales were lately. She mentioned that since the economy started tanking, sales of “teen” magazines were “exploding.”
“There used to be only one or two of them, you know, Barely Legal, stuff like that. But now there are like 30 of them. Hot sellers.”
I got an image of a middle aged man, laid off from his job, sitting at the dinner table with his family – wife, teenage daughter and 10-year-old son – counting down the seconds before he could get back in the bathroom and meet-up with Candi, Brooke or Riley.
I shivered for a second. But then I felt, well, I don’t know, honored that I was in the presence of an uninhibited porno purchase. For such transactions are fast becoming things of the past as the digital revolution sucks all this filth online.
I should have shook the man’s hand. Well, maybe not.
But it wasn’t today.
I entered through the front door and, being in a cheery mood from the warm weather and plentiful sunshine, I smiled for some reason as the little bell attached to the door handle did a cute “ding, ding” as I took my first few steps inside.
The store’s owner, Dean Hauck, crept out from behind a tower of dusty boxes and saw me. Our daily back-and-forth – as scripted and predictable as the bad paperbacks that line the center aisle – began.
“So it’s 10:10 p.m. tonight,” she said. “I hope anyway. It’s drizzling in Seattle.”
“I think there’s a dome, or a semi-dome there,” I said. “Anyway, we need a good outing from Verlander. I mean, he’s the ace. He’s gotta step-up. And what’s the deal with Zumaya? When is he coming back?”
“I heard he threw well at Triple-A, but who knows,” she said.
And so it went for a few more moments, a quick, Cliffs Notes breakdown of Detroit Tigers developments and happenings over the past 24 hours.
My eyes moved from Dean’s thinning brown hair and whirling hand gestures to the table behind me, a buffet of different newspapers. I thumbed through a Kalamazoo Gazette, some story about high-speed rail. I went to the jump page for five seconds and then put the paper down. I can’t buy this product anymore, not since I had become the victim of the Gazette’s Secret Service, but that’s another story for another time.
I reached for a Free Press and noticed a black hand with thick, wrinkled fingers enter my field of vision. A watch was attached to the wrist; gold face, small diamonds in place of numbers, black, faux-alligator skin strap.
The hand picked up a Gazette and the man attached to it stood in line. He and I were the only patrons in the store, which I remember at that moment smelling musty and sweet, the kind of scent that can only ooze from a place of significant age.
The man stepped to the counter.
“Do you have “Hometown Housewives?” he asked Dean nonchalantly. Shit, he was so calm he could have been asking if they had “Yes, There Really is a Kalamazoo” coffee mugs (they do).
“Oh, let’s see,” she said, taking him back to the plexiglass-covered Display Case of Porn, or D-COP. There, between the Rolling Stones and Homemaker’s Journal, an salacious smorgasbord of pornographic materials both innocent and depraved are arranged, staring out at the browsing public. Each one has a plastic cover them, which allows potential patrons to view the title of each magazine (Club, Stuff, Stacked and Oui – doesn’t mean “yes” in French? Weird) but not the “goods” underneath.
It seemed the stars were not aligned for my line buddy this afternoon. “Housewives” was out of stock.
“Well, lemme have a “40 Something’s,” he said. “Oh, and this paper, too.”
Apparently, he likes to inform while viewing his porn. Killing two birds with one stone – or killing two stones with one hand, in this case.
I felt a bit awkward, so I brought up the Tigers again and Dean and I talked while she slipped the porno into a thin paper bag.
“What we need to do is get dem Lions back own track,” the man said.
“Really?” I thought to myself. Then I realized that his sports commentary was not meant to divert my attention from the porno purchase that had just taken place. He just really wanted the Lions to get better. The porn could wait – for at least a bit.
“Well, we’ll see ya,” he said.
The man left and I asked Dean how porno sales were lately. She mentioned that since the economy started tanking, sales of “teen” magazines were “exploding.”
“There used to be only one or two of them, you know, Barely Legal, stuff like that. But now there are like 30 of them. Hot sellers.”
I got an image of a middle aged man, laid off from his job, sitting at the dinner table with his family – wife, teenage daughter and 10-year-old son – counting down the seconds before he could get back in the bathroom and meet-up with Candi, Brooke or Riley.
I shivered for a second. But then I felt, well, I don’t know, honored that I was in the presence of an uninhibited porno purchase. For such transactions are fast becoming things of the past as the digital revolution sucks all this filth online.
I should have shook the man’s hand. Well, maybe not.
My mind's telling me no, but my body, my body's telling me yes.
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