Growing as a writer

I thought I'd do something a little different today and print a little piece I wrote several years ago. I've done a little polishing to it, but not a lot. I think it's interesting because the style seems so different from my style today. It's more descriptive, more passive. I remember writing it (and remember feeling like it was good), but I hardly recognize it as mine. Perhaps I'll re-write it and post that, too, just to show you the evolution of a writer.

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The Hitchhiker


First of all, I'd just like to say for the record that the guy was too far out in the road…

It was mid-November in Decatur, Illinois. November is mostly a gloomy, depressing month in the Midwest. The sky is grey and the temperature is cold, but not grey and cold enough to snow. Just grey and cold enough to dig out your winter coat and gloves and convince yourself that it's not quite cold enough to try to find your boots and wool pants, even though walking from your car to the front door causes you to brace against the icy gusts wrapping around your legs and up your skirt.

I was nineteen years old and driving down 22nd Street in my navy blue '67 Mustang. This street branched off of Pershing Road, where all of the new car dealerships were located and then curved softly south. There was a drive-in and a bowling alley on the west side of the street, and the Firestone, Caterpillar and General Electric factories on the east side. It dipped underneath a train trestle, then rose again to some small businesses, a gas station and a used car lot, before ascending over the middle of the A.E. Staley Manufacturing Company. Staley's was a corn and soybean processing company. It was a large concrete lot covered in tall buildings, drying vats and smoke stacks. The smoke stacks hacked up brownish grey clouds of industrial gunk pretty much constantly. On a good day, it smelled like French fries. On a bad day, it smelled like old socks.

The speed limit over most of 22nd Street was 45 mph. I'm not certain how fast I was going on that particular November day, but I'll guess that it was at least 45 mph, since I never went under the speed limit. As I was coming out of the curve onto the straight stretch in front of the G.E. plant, I saw a hitchhiker standing on my side of the road. He was a young guy of medium height, medium weight, medium everything. He looked like every other young guy in Decatur, from his pale Germanic features to his uniform of jeans, tee-shirt and lined flannel shirt. I remember thinking he looked pretty cold out there on the side of the road, with no hat or gloves.

As I got closer to him, I also remember thinking there's really no shoulder on this road. The side of the pavement dropped off in a kind of cliff, and I always worried that my tires would fall off the edge and I would spin helplessly out of control until I hit something solid and wrecked the car. Of course, I never worried enough to slow down; I just continued to drive at the speed limit and let the fear and risk run through me like an electrical current. That day was no different. I maintained my speed and stayed on the road, whipping by the hitchhiking boy.

The first thing I heard when I drove past was a strange, THWACKING noise. Looking over at my radio antenna, it was vibrating quite out of time with the forward motion of the car, and making a little "wubba-wubba-wubba" sound. Puzzled, I did what you're supposed to do every ten seconds; I looked in my rear-view mirror. The hitchhiking boy was behind me at the side of the road, holding his hand and jumping up and down. I had hit the hitchhiker with my antenna.

The guilt was immediate and severe. A little white-robed teenager sat on my shoulder and scolded me for my physical attack on this poor stranger. "You should have been going slower," she told me. "You know there's no shoulder there. I'll bet you were exceeding the speed limit!" Then her evil twin showed up, in a red suede mini-dress that was much too short for her. "He's not lying in the street. There's no blood. He'll be fine. It serves him right for being too far out in the road!"

I drove another block, then turned on a side street and circled back around to the dancing young man. Guilty or innocent, I felt the least I could do now was offer him a ride.

Okay, before everyone howls about how dangerous that was, may I remind you that I was a nineteen year old Pollyanna who let teen angels and demons duke it out on her shoulder?

So I pulled over and asked where he was going. It turned out that he was trying to get to the intersection of Route 36 and Nelson Park, which was about halfway to my house, so I told him I'd give him a lift and he got in. It was mostly a quiet, slightly awkward ride. Every once in awhile, somebody said something about how cold it was, or made a remark about the scenery. I noticed that the guy kept rubbing his hand, and I couldn't decide whether to open my mouth and confess… or not.

Suddenly, he said, "Man, before you picked me up, some black car drove past and hit my thumb with the antenna."

Black car? My car was blue, not black. He didn't recognize me. This was where I could tell him. I could confess and make my peace and remain a good girl.

"That's too bad. Were you hurt?"

He shook his head. "No, no. It just stings a little."

"Oh, that's good." I believe I heard the slightest thump as my Teen Angel fell over in shock.

I pulled up at the stoplight, and he said, "I'll just get out here. Thanks a lot for the ride."

"No problem." I sped off, down Route 36. I may have been a Pollyanna, but I wasn't stupid.

You'll be relieved to know that I've never picked up another hitchhiker since that gloomy November day. Of course, I haven't hit any, either.

THE END

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So... recognize me? How about your own writing? Ever go back to things you've written a while ago and wonder whose mind created that?

Three Cheers for the Library!

Know what day it is? It's the day I start bugging everyone about the library event this Saturday. Yes, this Saturday, August 15th, I will be part of the Summer Reading Celebration at the Placentia Library, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Of course, I will be there with plenty of copies of Freezer Burn to sell, but mostly I'll be there to support my local library.

According to the flyer, there will be fun! There will be games! There will be pony rides!

No, not like this. Pony rides that the kids will enjoy.





See? Kids LOVE pony rides!







I love libraries! That rich smell of paper and glue and, I don't know, book dust, the je ne sais quoi quality of eau de bibliotheque. And the extra special sounds of quiet. The soft padding of feet, the swish of books being pulled from shelves, opened, put back. Whispers, no cell phones. Peace. Ahhh.

I remember my first library trip. Actually, it was a two-step trip. I was in 1st grade and had just learned to print my name (I knew how to write my signature, but the teacher insisted I put on the brakes and learn to print first). My dad took me to the library to get a library card. I don't know if my dad wanted to take me, but my mom didn't drive, so he was stuck with the task. This is what the Decatur Public Library looked like in 1960:

Except it was called the Carnegie Library. I still remember climbing all the steps and walking through the columns and thinking it was the most gi-normous building I'd ever seen.

The room had floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books, and there were more rooms on more floors; the possibilities of the worlds I was going to see made me want to dance with joy. I walked up to the desk and the lady gave me a card to print my name, and I was nearly vibrating across the floor. And then the worst thing happened - I printed my name too big for the card.

Now that I think about it, it didn't seem like that big of a deal. All the lady had to do was give me another card and let me try it again. But she didn't. She told me to go home and practice until I could fit my name onto the card and come back.

Witch.

I did as she asked and talked my dad into taking me back that afternoon. It took all my concentration, but I printed small and made it all fit and went home with a library card and several books. I wish I could remember how many, or the names. I just remember the victorious feeling of having a library card of my very own.

Later, I discovered the joys of the Bookmobile. It was a condensed version of the library, and had completely different books every week. Yummmmmmy.

Today's Decatur Public Library looks like this:

Call me nostalgic, but I prefer the old one. It was torn down, in the 70's I think, to build a metal-and-glass branch of the Soy Capital Bank and a parking lot. Yeah, that's better.

So, tell me a library memoir - what do you remember about your library experiences?

And - if you're anywhere near Placentia, California on Saturday, come celebrate a library with me!

The best blurb in the world

Hola, Peeps!

I'm less than one day back from my quick trip to Decatur, Illinois - I'm exhausted and have almost a bazillion things to do today, but I wanted to write a quick post to share some good things that happened while I was in the Soybean Capital of the World.

First, even though I didn't think my book, set in Placentia, would be of interest in my hometown, I contacted two of the area libraries, Decatur and Mt. Zion, to see how to get Freezer Burn on their shelves. Both head librarians, Amy in Decatur and Maria in Mt. Zion, were very pleasant to talk to, and both took all the information to order Freezer Burn. In addition, they both want me to do an author's event for them, so I'll probably be returning to Illinois in October to give a talk and sell some books. Woo hoo!

My second good thing happened when my sister-in-law, Mindy, bought a copy of my book to share with her mom, Marilyn. Mindy's folks are on a fixed income, so Marilyn took the book home with her to read first. Mindy told me several times that she and her mom like historical fiction and that mysteries aren't really in their genre, so I was expecting them to be polite and eventually tell me my book was "real nice." And I didn't expect Marilyn to read it while I was there.

The night after Marilyn took the book home, Mindy called her to ask about something else. She came into the family room and said, "I just called my mom to ask her about breakfast tomorrow and she told me, 'I can't talk right now. I'm in the middle of Gayle's book and I can't put it down.'"

She was up until 2 a.m. reading it.

I sat with her the next day at the East End Grill, where we had breakfast. It was fun to hear her tell me how much she enjoyed the book, even though she never reads anything like this. She really liked the humor that ran through it. But this is the best thing she said to me:

"I went to bed about two after reading it, but it kept running through my head, so I had to get up and find something boring to read, just so I could go to sleep."

Okay, how cool is that?

Well, I now have to run around gathering "stuff" for the launch party, most of which I'll display here and describe. Later, Peeps.

Clapton is OMG!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I will be on a vacation, if you can call visiting relatives "vacationing" all next week, so if I'm not Johnny-on-the-spot with comments and emails and general e-communicating, it's because I can't find any WiFi in Decatur, Illinois.

And now, on to our topic of the day.


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I have a list of men who make me giggle like a school girl. I suspect I'm not the only woman with such a list. Men have their lists, too - although they probably don't feel the urge to giggle.

At the top of my list is Eric Clapton. He's been there since 1972, when I went to the movies with a date and saw Concert for Bangladesh. My date was bored (and boring), but I was enrapt. The camera did a slow pan from the stage to this:



It's not a very clear picture, but it's from the album, History of Eric Clapton, which I immediately went out and bought after seeing him. He was so beautiful, standing there, playing with a quiet command of the guitar. I was in love, and his music, I soon learned, was brilliant - a twofer!

Little did I know that Clapton, at the time of the concert, was so deeply in the grip of drug abuse, his friends doubted he would live much longer. Thankfully, he overcame his addiction and went on to write and play more great music.



Last year, I went to see him in concert for the first time. I tried to get my guitarist son, Marcus, to join me, but he resisted, so I took a girlfriend. Eric was just as quiet and unassuming as ever, but his music spoke volumes. I came home from the concert babbling about how great it was, for about two weeks, until Marcus finally sighed and told me, "Man, now I wish I'd have gone."

So when Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood brought their tour to the Hollywood Bowl, I asked Marcus if he wanted to go. This time, he said yes. The trip was mostly uneventful, if you don't count the fact that the shuttle parking lot was full and I had to find street parking (did I mention parallel parking is not in my DNA?), and the trip home took almost two hours because the freakin' freeway was closed for construction.

But the concert itself was heaven. Steve Winwood has the same musical authority over keyboards that Clapton has over the guitar - phenomenal. And whoever is in charge of translating the stage action into what's shown on the Jumbotron screens should be given a medal, and a whole lotta money. The camera work focused on Clapton's (and Winwood's) hands, to showcase their skills.

Here's what they looked like:



Marcus loved it so much he requested a souvenir t-shirt, something I usually have to ask if he wants. We fought our way into the booth, then fought our way out of the booth and joined the herd of people looking for the shuttle back to the parking lot. My minivan, parked on the street, awaited us, unharmed. It was a good evening.

The only blemish on the event was when a man (probably my age but looking older) asked Marcus if the seat next to him was taken. It was, technically, since I had bought an extra ticket. I'm pretty anal about this at events: did you pay for this seat? Then no, it's not available, off you go, etc. But Marcus said no, so the man sat down… and proceeded to light up a joint. I'm proud to report my inner Peri rose to the occasion.

"Excuse me," I reached across my son to get the moron's attention. "Could ya NOT do that in front of my SIXTEEN-year old?"

It was said in a combination of sarcasm and "I'm a mom and I know how to use it," and startled the guy so much, he stubbed out the joint and said, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Five seconds later he left to find a friendlier corner to light up.

One of the bright points of the evening, besides sharing music I love with my teenager, was to discuss the technique of each musician, and the differences between playing jazz, rock and blues. We noted that, while Winwood is a very capable guitarist, his hands look more at ease at the keyboard. Clapton's fingers are completely relaxed when he plays, even when the music is blisteringly fast.

They were both prime examples of the best of any talent, whether it's in the arts, or sports or even the mundane everyday jobs - the best make it look easy. Clapton's fingers slide up and down the frets like he's merely breathing in and out. Winwood's hands ripple across the keys like someone running along a path. It took them years to get to this point, but their combination of hard work and talent produced results.

For the writers here, do you think this translates to what we do? At what point have you written enough words that you can call yourself a vocabulary virtuoso? Stephen King says, in On Writing, there are four categories of writers: bad, competent, good and brilliant, and that you can't turn a bad writer into a good writer or a good writer into a brilliant writer, but you can turn a competent writer into a good one.

What do you think separates the good from the brilliant, in any endeavor?

I will leave you with a clip of one of my favorite Clapton/Winwood numbers, Presence of the Lord. Marcus had never listened to the whole song, and was amazed by the shift into blazing hot guitar territory from the unassuming blues intro. Enjoy.

Ho-ome-ward bound.

In addition to my novel, Freezer Burn, being released in August and my launch party for said book in July, I've got other things to do this summer, one of which is to return to my hometown for a familial visit.

I often tease that my husband makes me visit my family every other year, but I'm not teasing by that much. I left Decatur, Illinois (the Soybean Capital of the World) because there were not enough opportunities for a young, smart chick to become anything other than a young wife who lived in a trailer park with her kids and husband, who worked at one of the local factories, third shift because that's what paid the most... I think you get the gist of my opinion.

Although, Decatur does have Millikin University, a really nice, if small, private college with a wonderful school of music and school of art.

And let's leave the discussion of my family for another time, or possibly dimension. I love my brother and sis-in-law; they and their brood make our visits fun. My mom passed away years ago, but we had a rather thorny relationship, and my dad and I aren't much better. Dad is now frail as a newborn spider and I will spend most of this trip sucking it up, biting my tongue and being the Good Daughter. (Insert sound of cat hacking up a hairball here.)

I was reading the online Decatur newspaper recently and found a couple of disturbing news items. One is that lightning struck the North Fork Church and annihilated it. This is the church next to the cemetary where my mom and my uncle are buried. It's the property where we used to have the heritage festival. It wasn't a church that I had any true connection with, but I'm still sad, thinking it's damaged beyond all repair.

The second disagreeable news item is that they've closed the Nelson Park Golf Course.

This course lies beside Route 36, which was the main road to get from my house on Cantrell Street into the main guts of the city. I used to watch the golfers on Sunday morning as we drove to Riverside Baptist Church. They golfed in almost all weather; I remember seeing them out there after the first snowfall, following the track of their ball in the white dust.

I thought they were insane, which colored my view of all golfers for all time.

Rumor has it that some developer wants to build homes on the golf course. Not only do I not understand this (Decatur doesn't seem to be growing in population), but I'm doubly upset because as a kid, once there was enough snow on the ground, the golf course made a bitchin' place to sled.

I guess, sooner or later, you really can't go home again. Progress happens, as well as catastrophe. As long as I see a chicken car, everything will be okay.

To all the cars I've loved before

I'm posting early again, kiddos, 'cause I've been up since 5 ayem, and I'm hoping to sleep in tomorrow, if God is kind and the dog doesn't wake me.

I used to have one of these:

It's a 1972 MG Midget. It looked just like this, except, mine was British Racing Green. And it needed some body work, so there were large patches of grey Bondo, making it look like a pinto. And the top was faded. And the muffler was held together with sheet metal and baling wire.

Okay, it was only like the picture in that it was the same year and model. It was still a sporty little convertible and I looked damn good in it. Well, maybe not damn good. When the top was down, I had to tuck my curly hair into a hat or scarf to keep it from swirling about in the open air, which made it tangle and swell to enormous proportions.

Eek!

When the top was up, well, you couldn't see me at all.



I suspect everyone was really looking at my sidekick:

Cute, huh? His name was Tyler, and I promise to blog-riff on the many dogs I've loved.

The MG was fun when it ran, which is the operative phrase. I never knew when something would break or fall off, and it always cost $300 to repair. I was earning $500 a month, so $300 meant something to me.

One evening, as I drove to my boyfriend's house for dinner, I heard something pop and felt my car pull to the left. I knew it was a flat tire – a flat tire at the wrong place and the wrong time. It had popped in a very seedy section of Decatur; there are lots of bars and warehouses and everything is coated with permanent grime. The dusk had just turned to darkness, and there I was, a petite 20-something, at the mercy of her broken car, in the Official Bad End of Town.

No, children, this was in the Jurassic Era, before cell phones.

What else was there to do? I got out of the car and tried to change the tire.

The MG had two tire options: one of these was the centre-locking wire wheel. Basically, the wheels sat on the hub, held on by a small, hexagonal cap called a knockoff. Remove the knockoff and the wheel just pulled off. My MG may have been held together by glue and wire, but it had the coolest wheels on the planet.

So, I got out my specific, practical, British tools and began to work. The MG had a hole in either side for the very special jack. I had just gotten the jack into the hole and was tightening the base against the pavement when Orville and Dean arrived.

Orville and Dean were two good ole boys who looked like their pictures belonged in the post office. One was tall and skinny and one was short and skinny. They wore jeans, dirty t-shirts, dirtier flannel shirts, and they wanted to help me.

It was all I could do to keep from running away at full scream.

"Nah," Orville said, taking the jack out of the hole. "Ya gotcher jack too fer back."

"No-no-no," I replied. "The jack goes there. It won't work if it's not in that hole. See the hole? See it?"

Did I mention that when I get nervous, my voice rises two octaves, speeds up, and I repeat myself?

I managed to talk Orville into replacing the jack. Next, he picked up the special tool to unscrew the knockoff. In the meantime, I calmed Tyler down, who was in the car and lunging at the window, trying to eat the evil twins who were helping me.

"Ah don' know which way this turns, so I'll jes tries both ways."

I pictured him stripping the threads and leaving me REALLY stranded. "Nononononono," I gulped before catching my breath. "See the arrow, there, with the word 'Undo'? That means turn this way."

Orville was agreeable to that. As he unscrewed the cap, he said, "Where's yer lug wrench?"

"My what?"

"Yer lu-u-u-g wre-n-n-n-ch." His enunciation was really good, considering he didn't have many teeth.

"Oh, you don't need one."

He laughed. "Ya gotta have a lug wrench ta git yer lug nuts off."

"This doesn't have any. Once you unscrew the cap, the whole tire will come off."

He stopped laughing when he removed the knockoff.

His buddy, Dean, was waiting on the sidewalk. He had been silent so far; it's possible he was the relief tire changer. At last, he spoke.

"Well, hell, Orville, she's smarter 'n' you are."

It was not a compliment to bask in, and it seemed to make Orville a little testy, so I thanked him, profusely, in my high-pitched squeak. He completed the tire changing, and I thanked him even more. They invited me to have a drink with them at the corner bar, but I explained that I couldn't leave my dog alone and my boyfriend was expecting me.

And then, I got the hell outa there!

As much as I loved my little MG, when I began to put in more oil than gas at the gas station, I traded it for the car I would drive 2,006 miles, to my current home in southern California.

Kind of a let-down, huh?

Now it's your turn. What cars have you driven? What was your first car? If money, convenience and the threat of global warming were not obstacles, what kind of vehicle would you own?

P.S. Just to make certain no one forgets about my book, Freezer Burn, my protagonist, Peri is 5'7" and would have a hard time fitting into either the MG or the Civic easily!

What are we supposed to do with history?

Today was an important day for Americans. Not only did a new President take the oath of office, but the first ever African-American President took that oath. One hundred fifty years ago, African-Americans were objects to be owned, not human beings to be respected. Now they are doctors, teachers, presidents, and Presidents. This is all very inspirational, but a little too generic. Let me tell you about my own history with race, not because it's all about me, but because maybe you can recognize yourself in my words.

I was born into racism. My dad has always been blatant about it; he never shied from his feelings about blacks and could let the N-word roll from his tongue without a thought. My mom was the insidious racist. She never used that word and shushed my dad when he started on about color, but - this is important - she thought she wasn't a racist because "it's not their fault they're colored." As in, it's not their fault that they are inferior, that they are not as smart or as energetic or as motivated or as GOOD as white folks.

My external environment was no better. I lived in Decatur, Illinois, which is in the middle of the Midwest, and went to school where there was only one diverse child in all of Eldorado Elementary. He was Catholic. So I lived in a sea of Caucasians, and should have married a survival nut and become a card-carrying white supremacist.

Except that I didn't. One of my vivid memories is when I was 3 years old. We had a teeny little black-and-white TV in the corner and Harry Belafonte was performing on some variety show. He had an open, puffy-sleeved shirt, and was singing "The Banana Boat Song" (you know, DAY-O, DAY-AY-O), and I was glued to the image on the tube. He was the most beautiful being I'd ever seen, and I said so, in whatever language a 3-year old uses. My mother informed me, in the language that moms use, "Not only no, but hell, no." But she was too late; TV had opened the door to Oz for me - a wonderful world of color.

In the meantime, a young black child was growing up in the Crenshaw district of south central Los Angeles. He lived in a two-bedroom apartment with his parents and three brothers. His world was dark-skinned, with black neighbors and black teachers and black playmates. His parents were not racists, though. They were people who, although proud of their heritage, did not expect the world to either help or hinder them due to their race. As the young man, Dale, grew up, somehow just knew he'd marry outside his race. You see, he'd been watching TV, too.

Fast forward a few hundred years, to my thirties. Dale and I meet at work, fall in love, marry and have a son. Dale's family has been wonderful. My family has been... two thousand miles away, which is just as well.

Now that our son, Marcus, is a teenager and Obama is president, I'm looking at my colorful family and wondering if it means anything to him. After all, Dale and I don't bring race into our conversations. We don't act like being black and white is a big deal. Neither do our friends. Nor does Marcus' school or classmates or friends. Our musical tastes, our meals, our lives are eclectic. We're not ethnic-free, we're ethnic-inclusive.

Last night, I asked Marcus about the election, and about himself. He told me he was excited to see a black man elected president, but it wasn't as pivotal for him as it was for Dale. I asked him what I'd never dared ask before - had he ever been the subject of racial taunts or discrimination? (Before you go all open-mouthed on me, if Marcus had ever come home from school acting weird, it would be the first question on my list.)

"No," he said. "Nobody talks about being black or white or whatever. It's not important."

So the good news is that there may be a generation out there who doesn't care what's in your DNA. They're happy about Obama, but they knew it was possible, this event my generation listed as a dream. But what does that mean about taking pride in your ethnicity? If no one cares if you're black, do you still celebrate your African-American heritage? If no one treats you differently because you're Jewish, do you still warn of the dangers of the Holocaust? Once the world is truly a better place, where everyone respects one another's race, religion and politics, do we dare forget what might happen if we don't? How do we fit bad history into a better day?