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WELCOME TO MY AUTHOR PORTFOLIO
This month, we turn our attention to the lowly toothpick. Toothpicks of one sort or another go back a long way. Romans used sharpened bird quills. Native Americans whittled deer bones into toothpicks, and Eskimos used walrus whiskers.
Strong, Maine was once the toothpick capital of the world and Charles Forster was the father of the American toothpick industry. The Forster Manufacturing Company there produced up to twenty million toothpicks a day. But they went out of business in 2002, victims of cheaper Asian products.
Although Chinese factories produce the bulk of toothpicks today, you can still buy American made toothpicks. The Diamond Company, based in Minnesota, still makes at least some in this country. A box of 750 costs ten dollars on Etsy. That’s a little more than a penny apiece. They’re made of white birch as were the ones in Maine.
There is at least one toothpick factory in Africa, the AKEE pencil and toothpick factory in Nigeria. The toothpicks there are made from bamboo, and the pencils are made from newspaper.
In case you wondered if there is a music connection, there is a musician named Toothpick (a.k.a. Doug Ray) who is known for singing Super Size Me, the cover song for the 2004 movie of the same name:
Super size, super size
The American way
Throw it down, throw it down
All day, every day
Super size, super size
The American way
Getting fat, getting broke
Either way you're gonna pay
Super size me
Super size me
Super size me
Super size me
If you’re ever near Rochester, New York, check out Toothpick World soon to open in Tampa as well.
If you find yourself with lots of time on your hands and thousands of toothpicks at hand, you may want to try your own hand at tiny wooden sculptures. https://www.pinterest.com/marvint/toothpick-sculpture/ Stay up too late working, though, and you may need some to prop your eyes open.
Be careful with that olive in your martini. The American writer Sherwood Anderson accidentally swallowed the toothpick with his olive and died four days later of peritonitis.
OTHER PUBLISHED STORIES... AND ESSAYS
How To Eat Right
How To Manage Your Money
How To Stay Healthy
The Fall Of Squirrel
Cake Walk
Do-gooders Gotta Eat Too
Of Peas and Queues
Three O'clock in the Garden of Good and Evil
News Item
The Visitor
Mr. Blinkie To The Rescue
The Point System
Elements Of Success
She Spits to Conquer
The Tree Remembers
Christmas Time Is Here
The Sodfather
What MLK Day Means To Me
Thanks, Mussolini
The Cure
Tarzan In Decline
Side Effects
Greatest Of All Time
The Last Hundred Days
Plight Of the Humble Bee
AWARDS AND HONORS
2017 Pushcart Prize nomination from Hawaii Pacific Review for The Last Hundred Days
2018 First Honorable Mention Short Story Division AWC contest
2018 Second Place Chattahoochee Valley Contest Short Story category
2019 First Place Flash Fiction Division AWC contest
2020 First Place Essay Streetlight Magazine
2020 Top ten finalist for The Opossum Prize
2020 Honorable Mention Stories That Need To Be Told Anthology
2020 First place Flash Fiction category in Seven Hills contest
2021 Second place Streetlight Magazine's Flash fiction contest
2021 Second place Seven Hills contest for flash fiction
2021 Second place Seven Hills contest for essay/memoir
2021 Third place Seven Hills contest for non-fiction
2022 First Place Seven Hills contest for flash fiction
"Life is a moderately good play with a poorly written third act."
Truman Capote
"Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
CURRENTLY READING
...or just finished
Absalom Absalom by William Faulkner
Where The Past Begins by Amy Tan
The Order Of Time by Carlo Rovelli
Acknowledgments: Photos of Stonehenge courtesy of Trevor S. Key from our trip to England in 2015. Photos of ball pit courtesy of Amelia C. Key from our trip to NYC in 2019.
