Open an Egg Carton and Read

It's 1:00 am.  I'm wide awake with jet lag, having returned to Moscow a couple of days ago.  I sit in our living room looking out at the panoramic view of night lights.  Sipping a cup of (decaffeinated) tea, I open my laptop and begin mulling over ideas for my next blog.  Since I'm back in Russia, it's time to write something. . . Russian.   But, not quite yet.  In the transition between there and here, I have one more story to tell.  It's a story of another Connecticut writer, not as widely known as Mark Twain (April 13 post); in fact, you can't find a single piece of his writing in Amazon's extensive listings or a bookstore anywhere.  There was a time, though, when all you had to do was open an egg carton. . .

Bud Doyle owned Doyle's Eggs in Prospect, Connecticut, as did his father before him, as does his son after him.  His daughter, Marian, has been my friend for 25 years, but I only met Bud once, briefly, about 8 years ago.  At the time, I vaguely knew of his egg business, and nothing of his writing.  At the time, I knew nothing about my own writing.  The need to write had not yet squirmed to the level of my consciousness, but was waiting for me to begin searching for Her, to ask, "What is it that I truly love to do?"  The more I learn of Bud, I wonder, "When did he know that he needed to write?"  Sadly, he died last year, so it's not a question I will be able to ask him.

Two weeks ago, I spent a few days with Marian and husband, Jim, at their home in Middlebury, Connecticut.  On a  chilly, misty morning,  Marian suggested that we visit her mother a 20-minute drive away. I asked if I could have a tour of Doyle's Eggs, housed in a long, white building on a sloping hill behind Rosie's house, where she and Bud lived for 62 years, raising their 5 children.

 In a story book kind of way, I was hoping to see actual chickens, lots and lots of clucking, contented chickens, proudly laying eggs that would be enjoyed far and wide by an adoring public.  The place is quiet now, though, without a single cluck within earshot.  Bud made the change from a chicken-laying farm to a wholesale egg distribution business a few years back.  The eggs arrive early in the morning on trucks from Esbenshade Farms in Pennsylvania, then Doyle's Eggs distributes them locally.  

But Farmer Doyle's colorful egg cartons still appear on grocery store shelves, displaying the picture of a  cracked egg with feathered quill, smiling "Good Morning Sunshine" face, and slogan stretched across the side, "Our eggs are fresher than your neighbors' kids."

Imagine opening the lid one morning, ready to fry your favorite over-easy egg and finding a quote, a poem, a paragraph, tucked in the carton, perhaps writing or sentiments that Bud particularly liked, or words of his very own.  Would you read it right away or savor it over a cup of coffee, toast and your Grade A, Fresh, All Natural Egg?

In the upstairs office at Doyle's, Marian and her brother Pete, who now runs the company, pull out Doyle's Eggs memorabilia, spanning the years back to when Marian was the "face" of the business.

Then, there they are, in a cardboard box at my feet, left-over copies of Bud's egg carton inserts.  I reach in, select a few and sit reading, sit marveling at another writer's passion. . . the love of language, the joy of words, the longing to create, share thoughts, compose what is uniquely one's own.  I  linger over a poem, wondering if it is one of Bud's originals.  Rosie thinks it is, but stops short of certainty.  The lovely handwriting and illustration are hers.

As a writer searching for ways to get my work published, Bud is an inspiration to me.  He used what he had at hand, his egg cartons, to send writing out to others.  He was creative, not only as a writer of words, but a marketer of them, as well.  Today he might be a blogger, but anyone with a computer can do that.  Who would have thought of combining an egg business with writing, symbolized by the cracked egg and quill on his carton?  Had I been one of Bud's customers, I would have surely bought more eggs than I needed just to read his inserts.  Maybe that's "eggs-actly" what he had in mind.  (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)