John Oliver Smith

Cash on the Kitchen Counter

“Shopping list!” he celebrated. No sooner had my grandfather dropped his pen beside the book when a dozen eggs and a container of milk appeared on the kitchen counter. I was five years old at the time so I hadn’t yet experienced anything in my life that would dissuade me from the presumed normality of this event. Indeed, grandpa’s behavior seemed to attract weirdness wherever he went. I made no connection between his oftentimes strange life and the little black book he kept in his denim smock pocket. After he died, however, and I discovered the book on a shelf in his workshop, I got a clearer picture of his magical life.