It’s Been One Year of Dick Winchester

It’s been one week…

– Barenaked Ladies

This morning, it occurred to me that we are one day away from the one-year anniversary of my latest serial character: Dick Winchester, a man who lives by his own rules, drinks to excess, and never strays far from his gun.

Not to be confused with Martin Williams, a man who lives outside the law, smokes to excess, and is always quick to shoot his way out of a problem.

Completely different characters. Why am I even stating something so obvious?

Anyhow, in a textbook example of productive procrastination, I figured I’d take a little time to celebrate my newest character and his cinematic universe set in my own backyard—full of fun easter eggs for those who hail from the DMV (D.C. Maryland Virginia) area—while simultaneously ignoring my half-written entry for the Arid Challenge.

After all, the one-year anniversary is tomorrow, November 22, 2022, while the Arid Challenge is due Sunday. Way more pressing, way higher priority, and far higher returns than a measly $700.

Man, guess I’m feeling a bit defensive today. Must be that second cup of coffee.

Right, Dick Winchester.

I’ve always wanted to create a character in the guise of Frank Drebin from the Naked Gun films or Tracer Bullet from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill Watterson. Along comes a Vocal challenge mandating that we write a story about a package arriving with no return address and delivered by drone. The rest is history.

…a history we’ll get into now.

I set out to write a loving parody of the 1940s radio serial detective surrounded by a cloud of tobacco and internal monologues. It was also partially me poking fun at my completely straight-faced character serial mentioned above.

If every Martin Williams story is tagged as “A Martin Williams Adventure,” then we now get “A Dick Winchester Adventure.”

But that’s not gratuitous enough. We need to beat the reader over the head with the character’s name like a true radio serial. Thus the title becomes: “Dick Winchester in… The Box with No Name.”

Sidebar: This gag later got taken to its logical conclusion when I wrote a screenplay for a different challenge with the title “Dick Winchester in... Dick Winchester Episode 1: ‘Gratuity Not Included’” with subtitle “Starring Dick Winchester as Dick ‘Dick’ Winchester.” I don’t think I’ll ever top this one.

Okay, we’ve established the character’s namespace and positioned it like one entry in an ongoing series of action-packed episodes. If only there were some way to really double down on the tone here…

Oh, I know! A Casablanca reference will do.

Out of all the doors in this city, it came to mine.

With the opening line cemented, Dick proceeds to postulate on what a box represents before finally clarifying that he is staring at a package on his doorstep. A package delivered by a drone.

The next parameter of this character is established. He’s not just a caricature of past character archetypes. He is a caricature from the past living in the present. How will such a man adapt to this digital age?

He starts by picking up the package, hearing a distinctive click followed by ticking sounds from the box.

Thankfully, Dick is a man of action and wise in the darker parts of this world, a fact he spends precious seconds congratulating himself on while the “box” continues to tick away. Finally, he follows in the footsteps of football kicker great Stephen Hauschka by punting the package into his front yard.

The box then proceeds to explode and send Dick flying back into his townhouse.

Coming back to consciousness moments later, Dick’s first thought is Please, God, let the windows be okay.

As he moves his feet and hears the distinctive crunch of broken glass, his next thought is that his insurance agent is going to be pissed.

As Dick recalls the last conversation with his StateArm (😉) agent, we learn three facts in short order:

1. Dick’s windows are broken so often that it’s tanking the home insurance arm of StateArm.
2. The usual cause is GrubHub drivers throwing bricks at his house with messages tied to them threatening him to stop running a rival delivery service.
3. The economic picture is so bleak for the current generation that Dick’s underground delivery service is thriving by charging no service fee or tax despite only taking orders through an anonymized number and requiring all payments in cash.

But this time, instead of pulling out the phone for another shouting match with his insurance agent Jarrod, Dick swears vengeance on the GrubHub thugs. Clearly unable to intimidate him out of the game, they have resolved to take him off the board. Permanently.

However, he quickly concludes it could get quite expensive to shoot each of the 500-strong local GrubHub union given the price of ammunition these days, so he places a call to an old contact at DoorDash and claims that he saw GrubHub drivers in DoorDash territory.

As the conversation concludes with Dick’s contact ominously promising to “make some calls,” Dick sees a new email has come in.

Subject: Oops!

Body: Hello Dick,

It has come to our attention that a package was delivered to you that was meant for a different recipient address in your neighborhood. Your area was selected as a beta test for our new delivery drones, and clearly some work is still needed before the full launch. Thank you for your patience and helping us better our delivery services.

As a token of our gratitude, please enjoy $3 off your annual Prime membership of $249.99.

Sincerely yours,

The Amazon Crew

It turns out that the mail bomb is the latest product offering from Amazon and was delivered to the wrong address. This has all been one big misunderstanding. Dick is intrigued by the potential savings versus buying his own Predator drone and files the idea in his mental “Revisit Later” list, right under “Beer Vending Machine.”

Placated, Dick starts to put his front door back on its hinges as the turf war he has initiated takes place in the distance, gunshots and squealing tires transitioning to racing police cars and choppers swooping overhead.

Proud of his handiwork repairing the door, Dick reflects on the importance of self responsibility, concluding with the indelible line:

Yep, I thought as the chorus of ambulance sirens grew louder, this city might fall apart if not for a few good men like Dick Winchester.

BOOM. Dynasty established. Or at least an amusing character set in a reality both like ours while very much not. I’ve certainly achieved much less storytelling in far more than 1,600 words.

Ironically, I had no plans to continue with Dick. I just didn’t see where the story would go from here, and I have learned that comedy can only be achieved when you, the author, are also having fun. It can’t be forced, and I worried that anything else I wrote in this universe would lose the novelty I’d achieved in “The Box with No Name.”

That turned out to be the coldest take of 2022.

Yes, it took half a year, but I came back to Dick and picked right back up where we left off.

I’ll talk more to the other stories in the Dick Winchester universe in a future pillar post. That was what I thought this post would be, actually, but I wanted to give “The Box with No Name” its due as the progenitor. Plus, it both failed to place in the challenge (a pattern repeated with every Dick Winchester story so far) and has racked up a whopping 2 reads since its debut, so clearly it has yet to get its due.

So, fuck it, if no one else will celebrate this insane story, I guess it’s up to me.

I realize I might have undercut the possibility of getting more reads by giving away half the jokes in this celebration. Whoops.

I’ll write an honest-to-God pillar post at a later date. Probably when I release the first collection of these stories in print (with a couple anthology-exclusive installments 👀👀). Working title is Dick Winchester in… The Opening Salvo: Volume 1 of the War for the Arlington, Virginia Online Food Delivery Business.

Don’t worry, Dana: I will act on your advice someday. Hopefully before the two-year anniversary. But no promises on timeline. I need to get Martin Williams out into the wild world of print first.