Avenue of the Americas

I remember my fathers desk at RCA
Avenue of the Americas
"Avenue of the What?!", i used to think
"What kind of name for an avenue is that?!"
Little kid, big city; following dad to work
Egg and cheese on a roll or maybe I got just eggs back then
crunchy brown paper bag; coffee for dad
Yoo-hoo for me I'm sure
I loved Yoo-hoo when i was a kid
Super cold
I can vividly remember drinking it from a freezing cold can watching the Marx Brothers on my parents brown sofa bed at like 5am; parents still asleep
Dad always got a small coffee
always so simple
My dad would say if he ever won the lottery he'd buy a magazine
so my dads office
my dads desk
I remember ketchup packets, change, salt and pepper packets
Some mustard packets perhaps
paper clips
loose change
stuff all over his desk
He was a salesman and hardly ever at his office
the smell of paper
lots and lots of paper
some of it glossy
some of it regular
yellow legal pads
pens, pencils, red pens to underline important shit
I can still conjure up that exact smell
the office: clean but sort of stuffy and dank
lots of paper
long hallway
corporate carpeting
cardboard
the days before compact discs
the days before recycling and email