Little Johnny, we hardly knew ye

My first staff luncheon started, I guess, with Valerie Penton’s simple question shortly after I began working for Astronomy: “Chris, when is your birthday?”

My response – September – produced an immediate crestfallen look on Val’s usually smiling visage before she stated: “Too bad, we needed an early-summer birthday.”

Unfortunately, she explained, staff birthdays are bunched up toward the beginning of the year or the beginning of fall, creating a long dry spell and depriving this hard-working, ever-hungry staff of regular pretexts to throw a party. Despite my apparently ill-timed entrance into this world, however, the magazine staff resourcefully borrowed a page from Adam Savage by rejecting reality and substituting their own.

Thus, about 2 weeks ago, as Val chatted with Michael Bakich and Dave Eicher just outside my office concerning the dearth of early-summer birthdays, the trio simply invented a Harvey-like co-worker whose birthday happened to fill the void. Needing a name for this new staffer, history-nut Eicher suggested “Johnny Ringo” – the outlaw of O.K. Corral fame and immortalized in song by, of all people, Lorne Greene. (I suspect exploring Dave’s iPod would prove revealing.)

On Friday, June 4, after great anticipation and licking of chops, we held our pseudo-celebratory luncheon for our pseudo co-worker on the long, narrow filing cabinets we fittingly refer to as the “buffet table.” Michael grilled brats and weenies; I brought buns and chips; Val provided the perfect cowboy-themed tablecloth and so much more. Every staff member, including Senior Graphic Designer Alison Mackey and the staff of American Snowmobiler, who work just down the hall, contributed something to this lunch and, more important, showed up hungry at this fête in honor of “Little Johnny Ringo.”

Surely the highlight of the luncheon proved the awesome cheesecake provided by Senior Editor Rich Talcott. Rich reminds me of Churchill’s famous “riddle in a mystery in an enigma” statement in 1939. He only speaks when he has something pertinent to express, and he’s always soft-spoken, but you just know there’s so much going on beneath the surface. Thus, he didn’t just provide a cheesecake but one bedecked with a combination of raspberries and colored sprinkles befitting Astronomy magazine. Can you figure out what his decor depicts from the photo? Add your guess in the comments section below.

As usual, our collective stomach was bigger than our eyes, and too much food remained after we’d snarfed our fill – but I’ve no doubt it will steadily disappear this week. Grill master Bakich, who felt it necessary to sample his tasty output throughout the morning before Little Johnny’s luncheon, bid us farewell at day’s end rubbing his anaconda-like tummy, doubting he’d ever eat again.

I doubt it. Just as I doubt that my co-workers will fail to concoct another excuse to commune over food again, and probably before the next real staff birthday. 

I look forward to it.