Winter Brrr Edition: What I Once Did for a Klondike Bar

How I nearly won wads of cash for almost catching an ice cream bar dropped from a crane, two new novels to recommend, and some exciting winter events for the Colorado literary community

As I write this, the temperature is a balmy -6 degrees Fahrenheit in Boulder, Colorado, most of the country is plunged in a chill so Arctic that meteorologists are reaching deep into their palette of purples to convey the frigid temperatures on maps, and An Extremely Important American Football Game has been delayed by weather. (“What is this, baseball?” a former Bronco who does not have to venture outside himself complained on Twitter.) So, naturally, my thoughts have turned to frozen desserts.

When I was a kid, I was a radio fan. Every Sunday night, I turned on the radio to listen to a show of novelty songs called Doctor Demento. I loaded cassettes into my lavender boombox and sat next to it for hours, poised to press the record button when one of my favorite songs started. Then I would use the second tape deck to compose a mix tape of songs with their first 15 seconds either missing or being talked over by a DJ.

So one summer when I was about eleven or twelve, I was keeping vigil by my boombox, hoping Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” would come on, when I learned that Y108 would be sponsoring a “Klondike Catch for Cash.” For some reason, this challenge appealed to me. I was a catcher on the softball team, plus I loved Klondike bars. I begged my mom to take me to downtown Denver for the event. Mom could tell this ridiculous radio promotion was important to me, so we went.

When we arrived at the May D&F Plaza on the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver on a lovely day with a clear blue sky, an enormous cherrypicker crane loomed above the square. The DJ, Dave Otto, would drop a Klondike ice cream bar from the crane, and if you could catch it in a plastic cup far below, you’d win some money. I badgered my mom to get there early, and we went to the table to sign up for a slot. After some debate about me being too young to participate, after my mom signed a waiver, I was allowed to try.

I was issued an orange plastic poncho and a white plastic cup. I waited my turn for what felt like a long time, reviewing everything I’d learned from softball about how to catch a small object that was traveling a great distance. Finally, I was given my chance. I took my position in the plaza, keeping my stance balanced and flexible, my knees slightly bent. I was the youngest competitor, and the organizers spoke to me as if I were a much smaller child. Dave Otto, a tiny speck of a man far above me in the crane, a DJ whose program I listened to religiously every day, held the chocolate-coated ice cream out in the air and pretended to pitch it twice before he actually released it on the third go.

The ice cream bar was tiny, flying free in the vast sky, and I didn’t pick it up at first, but finally as it approached terminal velocity I got a read on it and positioned my cup where I thought it would land. And I was right! Or almost right. Half of the bar went in my cup, and part went in my hair. I thought that meant I’d won—most of the ice cream landed in my cup.

But no, the organizers, who up until then had been speaking to me as you would to a small baby seal, grew tough with me and insisted that you could only win cash if you caught the entire Klondike bar in the cup. No fair, I thought. But then they gave me stuffed polar bear, a blue Klondike t-shirt and a coupon for free ice cream and I thought, okay, yes, my affections can be bought, especially since my favorite things in the world besides managing to record an elusive Paula Abdul song off the radio were stuffed animals and ice cream.

Denver’s Channel 4 news covered the whole event. As the youngest participant, I was featured. My mom recorded the news segment on a VHS tape, and years later she went to one of those services that capture screenshots from VHS tapes, and presented me with this montage.

I want to highlight a few details. First, upper left corner, check out the amazing yellow ‘80s hair on this news anchor. Next, top row, middle panel—that’s my mom on the far right, with dark hair and glasses. (Has any mom ever been so game to pursue her child’s odd whims?) Next, top row, right corner, and the panel immediately below it: that’s me, with ice cream in my hair, smiling because I thought I’d won.

When my kids ask me what life was like before the internet, this is the story I tell them. I think it explains pretty much everything.

The Assorted Whimsy Portion of The Tumbleweed

These days, the only experience that gives me almost the same thrill as recording my favorite song off the radio on a cassette tape is capturing an amusing typo in the wild.

I was extremely pleased to have caught this weather alert about “poo visibility.” So pleased that I texted it to my brother who replied, “Sounds like a real shitstorm.”

The Book Recommendation Portion of The Tumbleweed

I reviewed Melissa Rivero’s delightful new novel Flores and Miss Paula for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The story is told in the alternating perspectives of a widowed mother and her adult daughter living together in New York City, mourning what they’ve lost, and yearning for what comes next. I wrote:

Both women are at a crossroads. Flores overworks herself as she tries to grow out of the constraints of her first adult decisions — about school, work and love — and ease her way into a more comfortable fit. Paula is from a generation and culture in which those first decisions often defined a lifetime, but with the loss of the husband she based her future on, she too has to evolve toward a plan B.

In a novel that is by turns dishy and soulful, Rivero braids depictions of the frivolity and self-seriousness of start-up life with the authentic and connected culture of Peruvian immigrants in New York City.

The Happenings & Links Portion of The Tumbleweed

• I also reviewed Vanessa Chan’s debut novel, The Storm We Made, for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

• During my post-MFA-residency-teaching hibernation period, I don’t have any upcoming events for the next month, but I do have some exciting winter events involving other people in the Colorado literary community to report:

  

• A new reading series is coming to Denver, called Reading Den. Adam Vitcavage, host of the podcast Debutiful and former Tattered Cover events manager, and Sarah Ann Noel, a writer and editor, plan to put on about two Reading Den events a month at Fort Greene, a Denver watering hole. The first event, on February 28, will feature three illustrious Colorado-based writers: Vauhini Vara, Andrew Altschul, and Anna Qu. The event starts at 7 p.m., and you can register for a free ticket here.

• Steven Dunn, my colleague at the Mile High MFA, has a new book coming out this spring, a collaborative novel he wrote with his friend Katie Jean Shinkle called Tannery Bay. You can catch them for a craft class and discussion at Lighthouse Writers Workshop on March 8, or a reading at the Boulder Book Store on March 9.

  

  As always, The Tumbleweed welcomes your questions and comments about writing, reading, taco eating, the Denver Nuggets, rabbit wrangling, Deion Sanders, and baby seals.