This time of year, in this place, birds lay low. But in a nearby prairie, when afternoon sun is also low, there are American Goldfinches.

I see six from where I’m standing.

They remind me of my days as a guy who wrote beer commercials. More about that in a moment.

Meanwhile, the late-day sun is strong. It’s shining on the goldfinches, which are not rare, but reliable.

There’s also a Red-bellied Woodpecker in a tree. And a Marsh Wren, but mainly there are goldfinches, impossible to miss.

Like I said, they’re not rare, just reliable. I’ll take reliable over rare any time.

They remind me of an ad slogan I wrote for a beer commercial: “Gold at the end of the day.”

It was a reference to “gold at the end of the rainbow.” But updated to be about beer at the end of a workday.

Did the client buy it? He was a surly bruiser, usually under the influence of his product.

He once told me he liked to pop guys in bars. I made him define “pop.” He said, “You know, punch out their lights.” He looked like he wanted to do that to me, his longhaired ad writer from a different world.

But the guy was all beer gut, and had to be slow. I stared back like he was nuts, and said nothing. A comment by author Raymond Chandler came to mind, about life in an advertising agency being “…an elaborate waste of human intelligence.”

My TV script about gold at the end of the day got jammed into a file with a hundred others. I left that job for a better one.

Now I’ve got a six pack at the end of this day: bright goldfinches in late afternoon sun. Unlike clients, they’re reliable. I’ll drink to that.

And when I get home, there’s another six pack waiting.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 at 3:44 pm and is filed under "Daily Sightings" A Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.