Little Oscar (A Reading)

This is a reading from a book I'm working on called "Hide the Beer, the Pastor's Here"--sort of a collection of stories, many of them from my childhood. One of my heroes when I was a kid was a little fellow named Oscar Mayer--Little Oscar. Little Oscar was essentially--was basically a midget who drove around the wiener-mobile. So I wrote a recollection. This is just a part of what I wrote.

Then through the glare of the sun bouncing off the giant Plexiglas wiener chassis, I thought I could just make out the hatch on top of the big red wiener as it began to move slowly upward. My brother and I were running now, and just as we reached the edge of the crowd, pop! There he was in all his lilliputian glory. It was Little Oscar, the world's smallest chef.

Of course, he was wearing his trademark little chef outfit, brilliantly white and neatly starched, the words "Little Oscar" emblazoned in crimson red over the shirt pocket and on the rim of his pint-sized chef's hat. He looked like some tiny moon-faced cherub, and that beautiful smile, which spread from one diminutive ear to the other, never left his pixie face the whole of our time together.

This didn't appear to be an act; Little Oscar seemed genuinely overjoyed to see us. He waved both pudgy little hands at the crowd, and cried out, in a voice that sounded like he'd taken a hit of helium, "Hiya, kids! Good to see you! Hey, thanks for comin'!"--all to the applause, the screams, the squeals, the pure, unadulterated delight of the sizable crowd gathered below him. I swear, there was a twinkle in his tiny blue eyes--honestly, a twinkle.

Eventually, the little man climbed down from his lofty perch and joined us mortals on the ground, and that's when I think there was the tiniest moment of uncomfortable silence from the otherwise exuberant crowd of kids. There was just this passing little hush, almost imperceptible, though I'm certain Little Oscar must have been aware of it. He'd sensed it a hundred times, I suppose, and probably never once batted an eye.

Here's the thing: I mean, I knew that Little Oscar was--well, little. But this little? Hop on my thumb little? Vest pocket little? Well, of course, I exaggerate. He wasn't exactly microscopic, but he was small, at least as small, if not tinier, than a lot of us kids. And the fact that he was a man--a miniature man, but a man nonetheless--was just a little disconcerting. He had wrinkles and the beginning of a five o'clock shadow. He wasn't a cartoon, or even that little guy in the black and white television commercials. He was here, in color, flesh and blood. He was the really, truly, Little Oscar, and we were right there with him. And man, he was little.

Then just as quickly as that fleeting moment of uneasiness had passed, Little Oscar seemed to immediately begin to grow in stature--not physically, of course, although as time spent with him went on, I could have sworn he did grow a little taller.

And then much too soon, Little Oscar, his small hands with those Vienna sausage-like fingers twiddling in the air, the world's smallest chef, waved goodbye from the top of the glorious wiener-mobile, bid us a great Oscar Mayer day, and drove off into the glorious sunlight of our fondest memories.