A Time Remembered

When I worked at a McDonald's in high school, there was this one customer that always got in my line when I was cashiering. I remember that customer over ten years later because for the three years that I worked there at McDonald's he would come in everyday around the same time, just before ten a.m. He would order the same thing, a small coffee and a breakfast platter; scrambled eggs, a sausage patty and three hotcakes. He would pay with the little money that he would earn from pan-handling out in front of the federal and state buildings in downtown Oakland, California. When his order was ready I would place the items on to a tray, with four packs of sugar and two creamers for his coffee. I would look around the seating area of the restaurant to see where he was waiting and walk his food over to him, I'd place it on the table and ask Brian if he needed any thing else.

Brian would reply in a slightly slurred voice, 'nafins'.

I understood what he said; my grandmother spoke in the same way after her first stroke. I kind of felt bad because I had forgot that since Brian was in a wheel chair and had only one foot, probably lost to diabetes, that he could not reach the napkin dispenser, but, I remembered the sugar and cream. Brian would always come to my line, so many years later the only explanation as to why that I can think of is that I treated him not like a disabled person, but as a person.

A few years ago I was driving through downtown Oakland with my wife I thought I saw Brian at a bus stop. I slowed down and as we passed by I realized that it was not him. I told my wife this same story I have written; that McDonald's I used to work at had closed a six months after I moved on. Once in a while something will jog a memory from the time that I worked there, I often wonder what happened to my old coworkers and customers.

Creation

By Frederick Kazar Evans

I have had this idea for what seems like forever. I have developed it over the past fifteen years while laying in bed at night. Working out the problems for this idea while laying in bed at night has always helped me to fall asleep, it always put my mind at ease and allowed me to forget about the problems of that day. The first sparks of this idea that I have been working on began when I was a child, around the age of six or five years old. My older brother and I would play this game where we would draw a battle scene on a piece of paper and use our pencils as weapons fire by standing them up on the sharpened points steadying them at the erasers end with our finger tips. Trying to aim them in the direction of the opposing force, pushing down on the eraser sending the pencil tip, drawing a line of fire at the enemy. We would do this for hours at time entertaining ourselves before and after dinner, we did this for years changing and elaborating the ship designs that first started off as simple triangle fighter with windows and stick figure men piloting them to massive Star Ships and destroyers in varying space scenes. I would design these new ships in bed at night and trying to figure out new tactics to destroyer my brothers fleet.

Time went by, we both got older and did not play this game as often, then soon not at all. In nineteen-eighty-nine my brother graduated high school and joined the Army. At night I would lull myself to sleep by continuing the game in my head but after a few years it began to become much more than a just a game. It grew into an entire parallel universe that I had devised, a path that humanity would follow in this world be it exploration, colonization, resource management and the continuation of the human species.

A Venture Up North

By Frederick Kazar Evans

The sun shinning bright between the clouds for a moment. Still the cold breeze in the air whips the few remaining particles of water racing to the ground from the passing clouds. An hour and forty minutes from home by flight to the emerald city. The ground sparkles, reflecting the few rays of light that stream through the break in the clouds off of the freshly fallen hail on the drive way to the in-laws house.

We unpacked the rental car and muscle the luggage up to the front door and ring the bell. A whirlwind of arms encompasses the wife and I. We get wrapped in hugs, kisses and firm hand shakes. The smell of Indonesian food attacks my senses and warms the heart of my wife as we take off our shoes. After taking the luggage up stairs the father in-law of only nine months enlists my abilities to solve minor problems yet again just like the fist time I ventured up north with my fiancee. Luckily this time it's not mid February with a ton of snow blocking the drive way. That day I had earned the soon to be father in-laws respect by offering to shovel the drive way for the man who was in his sixties and who also had a bum knee.