“Lucky Duck at the mall. in the 80s. with a dog.” is a novel written by Salina resident and retired teacher Mike Garretson. Garretson’s launch for the novel will take place at Red Fern Booksellers in Salina on Wednesday, March 26, at 5:30 p.m.
By Emmie Boese
“Lucky Duck: At the mall, in the 80s, with a dog” is a crime-fiction novel by Mike Garretson. Garretson, a Salina resident and retired middle school Language Arts and Social Studies teacher, put the idea of a classic 80s and 90s mall in the novel.
Specifically, he included the Central Mall in Salina and the Hutchinson Mall. Garretson said the novel never states “the Hutchinson Mall,” but it does mention some former stores. The novel’s setting takes place in Salina, Hutchinson, and Kingman.
“In the 80s and the 90s, the mall was the thing, you know,” Garretson said. “This is a walk back through the malls, and the book takes place in the Salina Mall and the Hutchinson Mall because the main character works at the Salina Mall at the shoe store. Then he has friends in the Hutch Mall, and he also gets an assignment in the Hutch Mall for a while. So he goes back and forth between Salina and Hutchinson, and that’s how those two places come into play.”
Garretson said the mall is essentially like one of the characters in the novel.
“You know, all the employees,” Garretson said. “You know, kind of the friendships that they had, and you know, just seeing each other daily. You know, now people go to cool coffee shops, or they just do everything online. Back then, the mall was the town meeting place. That’s where you go and see your friends and catch up on the gossip, buy some records or some cassette tapes, depending on the year, and then get some snacks and do some shopping. Everybody hung out there because they weren’t connecting on social media. They were connecting at the mall because that’s where you’d see people.”
Garretson said the novel’s main event is about a man named Joel Howard who decides to rob the mall on Black Friday in 1987. He said the lucky duck theme from the title comes into play with the main event. The theme of “lucky duck” also comes from Howard’s conversation with his father in the novel.
“He’s going to need a lot of luck because he’s made a decision now that’s very, very uncharacteristic of anything you would expect of this young guy to do because he was just a joe-average guy,” Garretson said. “And he was a guy who pretty much just sat on the bench for his college basketball team up here in Salina at Kansas Wesleyan. He just kind of sat on the bench and got to play a little bit, and then he graduated, and he got a job at the mall, and kind of some things happened to him in his life, and then you just follow him and find out where it goes.”
Garretson said “Lucky Duck” is his first novel published by a publishing company. Before writing Lucky Duck, he self-published a few children’s novellas while teaching. He said he has always loved telling stories, which is why he enjoyed teaching Language Arts and Social Studies.
“It was a great mix for me,” Garretson said. “I was always very happy to teach those topics with the kids and just explore stories together. I grew up in a big family, and with six kids, there was a lot of storytelling. We would sit around the dinner table every night, and we were always connected through storytelling, and that’s just sort of what I enjoyed.”
Garretson said his passion for writing started in high school and college when he covered high school games for the Salina Journal. He said the love for older forms of communication and media also come to fruition in his novel.
“When he gets off work every day, he runs home, and he gets his message machine because that’s what we did in the 80s,” Garretson said. “He checks his message machine because he really wants to get a message from his girlfriend. For kids nowadays, that’s not a thing. It’s instantaneous.”
Garretson said that, overall, he hopes others find his novel interesting.
“I hope for people who experienced the 80s and 90s, they’ll read it, and it’ll be a light, quirky, fun adventure,” Garretson said. “If you didn’t experience that, I think it’ll be fun to read and think about your parents and grandparents and think, oh yeah, I’ve heard them tell these stories about, you know, you had to call the operator to make a collect call. Whatever the heck a collect call is.”
“Lucky Duck: At the mall, in the 80s, with a dog” can be purchased on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble and at Red Fern Booksellers.
Red Fern Booksellers will host a launch party for Garretson’s novel on Wednesday, March 26, at 5:30 p.m. at its store located at 106 South Santa Fe Avenue in Salina.
