beauty in numbers

I love this site for their choice of numbers: Plan 59/ The Museum of Midcentury Illustration

The nine is so relaxed and curvy, the five still getting there. She needs a little drink and a few soothing words.

I grew up behind 59 in the era of this ad. Our house number – as you see it, it is – was house specific. Our house. The number(s) are beautiful and clean. Gorgeous as the Hunt’s labels. Simply “Hunts”. You can read it without taxing your eyes or your brain. It is all you need. This house goes up in smoke I’m gonna grab my kid, my dog and 59.

The “Refrigeraider” doesn’t know that midnight snacks have been outlawed in these times. Not good for you, they say. Just another nail in the coffin of pleasure. In that I am an outlaw. Food tastes so good surrounded by the cloak of darkness, when time is still and each tick of the clock is followed by a pause. A pause to chew and ponder. I do my best thinking midnight snack in hand.

If my memory serves, there was a man, a small-town, midwestern man, a husband and family man, whose wife – he was a neighbor and I heard this when I was a kid – found him sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the night, stick of butter in one hand, quart of whipping cream in the other. Taking a bite and a swig, a bite and a swig. Always thought this would be the way I would go off the deep end in the dairy state too, had I stayed. She had him committed.

Stream of consciousness flows free around midnight in the light of a 25 watt bulb. Plans come to mind. Wild plans.