CONTINUED: Poor

When I entered the eight grade, my mother found a job.  Most mothers in our neighborhood didn’t work in the 1950s.  For the generation before my parents, married women were practically not allowed to work.      In the 1920's my spinster aunt was told by her employer at age 25 the company wanted to provide jobs for married men so they could support their families.  She should get married, she was told, or quit her job to make room for a man with dependents.  Without an income she would have been destitute.  She couldn’t depend upon her family because in fact they really were poor.  She was the only breadwinner at the time and took care of the needs of her younger brothers and sisters.  Her employer magnanimously offered her an alternative to unemployment … less pay for the same work as an office clerk.  Less pay  than the already diminished wages normally paid to a woman of that era solely because of her  sex.  Her boss explained that reducing her pay would make more money available to pay a married man.  She had no choice but to take less.  Her five brothers and one sister went without what was already a meager lunch, nothing but an apple.

At age 16 my father found a job at the local newspaper, eventually became a pressman and was paid trade wages, which were considered an adequate living in that day. He had a steady income from it after the union gained some footing at the newspaper in the 1930's.  Before workers organized Dad was compensated fair wages one week and less the next for the same work.  It varied by as much as 50%. The company paid their non-management employees based on how much profit the business made each week.  Workers had no idea if they were told the truth about the newspaper's finances and anyway had no control over profits, since the balance sheet was mostly influenced by advertising sales and newsprint costs. The company's owners, whether stockholders or management, smoothed out their own incomes and made up for their corporate mistakes by short changing the employees.

My father had seen money troubles at a young age, but  through no fault of his own.  In my case, a very short bout of being broke was clearly my fault.

            When I went to live in New York City at age 20, I had little experience managing my money.  I was living away from home for the first time, not watching my cash and spending too much on beer and items I did not need.  At one point I ran out of funds and realized there was nothing left in my checking account.  A paycheck was a couple of days away and I remember that evening as I sat around watching a snowy picture on TV while hunger gnawed at my insides.  I’d had nothing to eat since lunch.  

The next day I asked a fellow worker if he would buy me lunch at the cafeteria.  Embarrassed, I chose an older man in his forties because he was rather fatherly and always free with advice to us young guys.  I got advice rather than a meal.  He derisively told me I should grow up and become responsible. My starvation continued until the next morning and was probably the best lesson I ever received.

On that morning he came up to me and asked if I'd found any money or food.  Annoyed, I told him to mind his own business and began to walk away.  He grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me around, the only time in my entire career when someone put a hand on me.  He shoved a ten dollar bill in my hand and said, "Don't be a shithead.  Go eat.  I'll cover for you."  I won't mention it, but I still remember his name fifty years later.  And that's the only time in my life I remember being hungry.

There were times when a simple greed for a richer life drove us to get educated, keep up an income to feed self and family, play the game of life. It seems ... I don't know how true it is, but it SEEMS ... we did a lot more for ourselves than some in the current generation of young people. My young wife  and I lived in a house trailer while I attended college and she worked in a shopping center. The trailer measured 10 by 32 feet and had no interior doors. When the west wind whipped up across the hill today known as Fairmont, NY, the rear wall of the trailer popped like the top of a tin can. Water seeped into the closet during the winter and froze our shoes to the floor. I had two part- time jobs, one with my former employer and the other nights and weekends at a drug store. I learned to fix my car because I couldn't afford to take it to a garage. I remember going to a dentist with a toothache two weeks after our son was born while I was still a student and trying to pay him, but he fixed my tooth for free. And when we had to move, our 15 pounds of hamburger got misplaced and spoiled and we had to go without meat until I told the story to a fellow employee as a joke on myself. He informed  our manager and the boss insisted I borrow $20 from him to buy food for my family.

And absolutely none of that seemed like the end of the world. Not when we were young. Except for the time the main drain in the trailer stopped up and I had no idea how to fix it/  After trying various plumbing snakes, I finally gave up. I had no money  I would need a small loan to hire Roto Rooter. When I called them to ask how much they would charge, they told me they did not work on trailers because the T's in the drains often ruined their equipment. I remember sitting there in the kitchen, my pregnant wife at work that evening, feeling the full weight of facing a problem I could not solve. Tears of frustration may have begun to wet my eyes as I kept trying to think of a solution. The phone rang and it happened to be my brother in law in Atlanta calling to say hello. He had a solution.  A longer, thinner snake I didn't know about existed, and he knew where I could rent one cheap.

We knew we'd get through it, that someday I'd have a good job and we'd have two cars, a dog, two kids, a house and all that stuff. We just needed to keep ourselves from going into debt.

That's what saved us. Never taking on any debt. Driving a car with the fenders falling off, suffering the looks of people we parked next to in parking lots, stretching our clothes till they were threadbare and finding our furniture at garage sales. So that when the money began to come in we could apply it to items we needed rather than use it to pay off loans taken out on things we didn't need. That was called basic money sense by our parents and those before them.

Things could have turned out differently for me.  Life is a game of chance and I was lucky enough to win some of its prizes.  Yes, of course, I worked hard, took advice, made what turned out to be smart choices and struggled on when the going got rough.  But I've known others who did the same and wound up broke.

I never knew the awful feeling of realizing there was not enough money to buy food for my children, or clothes or school supplies.  Or had to tell a landlord or a bank that I could not make a rent or mortgage payment this month. Or be forced to start selling household items or the furniture or keepsakes  out the back door to get enough for groceries. Or to stand on a corner waiting for a bus because my car was re-possessed or my insurance cancelled.

But I've known men and women  who suffered those consequences.  I've tried to help them in my volunteer work.  It bothers me when the luckier members of our society paint poverty with a broad brush and demean anyone who is down on his or her luck.  Some of the downtrodden in America are there through no fault of their own.  Many are probably complicit to some degree ... poor work habits, a worse attitude, no clue how to manage money, graduated from a school that cared more for itself than the students, or caught in a deceptive race baiting dance orchestrated by their politicians. 

I would rather encourage someone than scold them.  There will always be those who game the system and will sneer up their sleeve at your fine words of encouragement.  Let them. I suppose they have some cause when they view what I have and what they don't.  And I can't know all the circumstances that sunk their boat and left them stranded on the shore.  I really don't know why the worse-off are in their predicaments.  I only know I've been very lucky.

When an old yellow school bus pulls up in front of me  filled with needy people from south of the border,  it’s time to put away my opinions on national immigration policy, shaped for the most part by the news media,  and to  simply help a brother and sister and child in distress.  We can quibble over federal programs later.

Late one afternoon not long ago I drove through the neighborhood where I grew up in the upstate New York city of Utica.  The section of town is called Cornhill and I keep the car doors locked when I visit and never come to a full stop at the stop signs. The streets have decayed and the homes are dilapidated.  Many of the burned out shells were once the homes of friends whose parents spent their money and weekends keeping the properties looking nice.  Today many are crack houses  It’s not unusual to hear shots in the distance, which is better than nearby.   The same sidewalks that once were filled with kids at that time of day and fathers returning home from work were dark and empty. 

I drove by street corners on James Street, the main thoroughfare, where I had waited as a teenager for the bus to take me downtown to meet friends for a movie and French fries and a Coke.  Today young men menace each other on these same corners and fights are frequent. I think the buses no longer run to this part of town.  I passed the remains of a school and playground where a kind hearted janitor repairing a window put a Band-Aid on my elbow when I fell off my bike almost sixty five years ago. Graffiti covers the walls of the building now and almost all of the windows have been bashed in.  Down the street the church my family attended was closed up, having spent its declining days as a neighborhood drop-in center where no one dropped in because they were too busy dropping out. 

An anger rose in me toward the people who had turned a living neighborhood into a diseased and dying quarter of the city where the inhabitants mostly depended upon the government to survive.

            I am from a Cornhill working family, none of whom were educated.  With grants, part time work, multiple jobs, and while starting a family, I was able to progress through undergraduate and graduate school. I am an accomplished professional and I am proud of myself, in case you can't tell. My parents did not value education very much, but they had strong beliefs and a strong ethic. Mostly, they loved each other and their children very much.

            After my main career, I worked with crack addicts and some of the people in this world who are "underprivileged."

            As angry as I get when I drive through Cornhill, I cannot fix the blame on any particular group..  There are too many villains to indict.  From the businessmen whose capitalism turned from enterprise to opportunism to pure greed at the expense of the people, to the politicians who survive on the misery of those they swore to help, to today’s Cornhill residents themselves,  there is plenty of blame to go around. 

            You can give the impoverished all the grants in the world, but you cannot give them the caring that was often missing in their families. Nor can you give them the positive experiences many of us benefited from. You cannot take away a child's crippling sense of misplaced guilt because he could not find all of his mother's teeth as he crawled around the floor looking for them, hoping they could be put back in after her boyfriend’s fist blasted them fromher mouth.

            You cannot quiet the seething anger when a young out-of-work black man turns on the TV and sees smiling, happy families on their way to Sears to buy a $1500 color TV. And you cannot convince him, as he walks the streets of a Cornhill he didn't create, that James Street could be a home, a cherished place to take care of and to build upon.

            Neither he nor I was born to wealth.  But I am lucky beyond imagining to have come from a loving family and supportive environment.  In that more important sense I was never poor.

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David Griffin      Copyright 2013

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com.

CONTINUED: YL

The Thundering Brass Busters Amateur Radio Club met down in the village, upstairs over a bar.  Through the evening members huffed up and down the stairs for re-fueling.  To get a quorum for a vote, the secretary often had to run down and grab a few Thunder Busters.  

Expecting only geriatric old men, Gloria hoped none would croak during her visit. She didn’t plan to utilize her mouth-to-mouth training on anyone over twenty-five.  Death was still a stranger to her, except for times when she thought of killing the old man.  Like the day he saw a ham license plate on the car in front of them.  He tapped out CQ on his horn a few times until the man ahead of them pulled over and walked back to their car and swore at them.  Dad said the rude fellow was surely an AM phone man.

At the meeting she met 4 or 5 young college men who had recently joined the club.  They were very taken with her.  She signed up immediately, after hurriedly borrowing the dues from her father.  She made a firm resolution to learn HamSpeak when the boys stood nearby and began to use the Q code while staring at her.

“Hey, Robert,,” said the taller young fellow, “why don’t you QSY over to my QTH tomorrow and we can QSO about this FB YL here.”

On the way home she told her father there was no reason why the club couldn’t have dances and maybe a formal dinner with decorations and a band at the end of the year.  It was possible  many young wives might want to join, she said, and all the old men with nothing to do could provide baby sitting for the toddlers, but not downstairs near the beer coolers.

He sighed.  “QSL,” was all he said.

That was a year ago.  Now Gloria has her Extra license, sends and receives at 40 words per minute.  She has dated most of the Novices.  She’s cancelled her dream to become a Broadway understudy and next year will instead head off to Carnegie Mellon to pursue a degree in Applied Physics and Engineering.  During her summers off she’ll sleep late in the morning and stay up half the night DXing for countries far and wide.  She can spell each one of their names.  Dad is still trying to get the DX-20 to work.

Left to Right, Top to Bottom: Central Electronics 20A Multiphase Exciter (or expensive QRP transmitter,)  the tiny McMurdo Silver 701 Atom X Transmitter with an 807 final;

the famous Drake 2B receiver, the Heathkit DX-20 50 watt transmitter.  Beneath the Drake 2b is an MFJ 941 antenna tuner.

Copyright David Griffin, Windswept Press, 2016 

Stories and Essays page is at   http://windsweptpress.com/essays.htm

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I normally put a story up each week on Facebook.

CONTINUED: Riddance

I grew up to become a book-loving adult with a voracious reading habit that has now reached and passed its apogee.  Age has left my eyes with less acuity, and my mind tends to fall asleep when I get too settled and comfortable in a favorite chair. 

When we lived up north in the Big House, books just seemed to accumulate in various rooms and my wife often complained about the piles.  She wondered why I couldn’t keep them all in the bookcases I had built in every room of our home.  But I didn’t like to shelve a book before I finished it.  I wanted my reading out where I wouldn’t forget it, no matter how many books I’d begun.   I usually had as many as ten books started, jumping from one to another.  It’s quirky way to read, but that’s how my mind works.

I was running out of book shelf space, too. I had books on shelves in the every room including the kitchen and was in dire need of another solution when an astounding thought occurred to me:  I didn’t need to keep every book I had ever bought.  Now that I think of it, I’m not entirely certain the thought sprung  first to my mind or my wife’s.   But in any event, there certainly had to be a few books I could give away and not feel the loss.  It was a revelation, and I figured my largess would also open up space for new books.

Finding a place to donate them was easy. I volunteered at a drop-in center where I could easily  place them on a table in the Free Store.  But first I had to go through the agony of selecting which to give away. I had to be in the right mood to let go of any of my books.  Unlike the new moon, the urge didn’t occur on a regular basis.  Frankly, it didn’t happen often. 

Eventually, the desire to rid myself of at least a few books struck me as I rose from my bed one morning.  I ate a hearty breakfast and planned how to go about the process. I had arranged all the books according to my unique system of categorizing subject matter… History went High on the wall, Religion to the Right, Middle Ages in the Middle and Technology Anywhere.  Dewey’s anal scheme never impressed this bibliophile.  I still carry a resentment toward a cleaning woman who one day decided the shelves in my office looked messy and rearranged half of them by book height ... tall to the left, short to the right ... before I came home and stopped her.  I’ve had trouble finding what I want ever since.

But now, fortified by a wholesome breakfast, I finally decided to begin sorting out the books to give away by choosing a color.  Orange seemed appropriate, for no particular reason.   And so,  in the same spirit as the fireman in  Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451,  with my finger I began to ruthlessly hook any of the orange books I found, roughly pulling them out of line like teeth from their sockets and slamming them to the floor.  After  a few minutes of such activity,  I returned to the kitchen to  treat myself to a donut.  It is nonsensical to become famished in the middle of a big book elimination project.  Later, I sat down on the floor and mulled over less than a dozen orange books.  How to decide which would go or stay?  Was the book a gift from a dear friend? Would I ever read or refer to it again?  If yes, had I done so in the past 25 years?   If not, was it only because I couldn't find it?

Finally, I had two or three books I was willing to part with.  And so, with the morning's work out of the way,  I figured that was enough self-sacrifice to keep me feeling righteous for the next five years.  And it must be time for lunch.

You may think I did nothing but read and busy myself with books, but that would be far from the truth.  For one thing, I married a redhead ... the girl from the college library … and they have a tendency to keep one busy guessing what they’ll do next.  Another hobby was eating, but recently I’ve had to cut back and it’s left a lot of time in my schedule.  Of course, I had many other pursuits, although none come to mind except woodworking.  I built shelves.  I can’t remember ever building anything but bookshelves.  I’ve finished them all with the beautiful wood stain.  It has sort of an orange color to it.

copyright 2012  David Griffin

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The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

CONTINUED: A Short Explanation of Novice Rig Round-Up

Some of us were Novices in another era, where the crystal was no longer requisite, and plate input power climbed to two hundred watts.  That was my era, 1977.  Nonetheless,  novices like me, with chronically limited budgets, continued to build our rigs from what we could find, swap, or get at the Milsurp store. Our receivers may have been a fifty-dollar SP-600, practically given away at the local hamfest as our upper classmen were doing everything they could to dump their "Boat Anchors" (a term that was originally a pejorative),  in favour of the new transceivers coming from out of Japan, the Yaesus and the Trio Kenwoods.  Or this upstart company out of Tennessee, Tennessee Technical, or "Ten Tec".  Despite the cast-off ancient 1950s tonnage considered "junk" by most, he Magic was no less amazing. 

Just as an aside, I had a hard time selling my friend's Hammarlund HQ-180, new, still with the box,

for seventy-five dollars because I couldn't find the manual.  This was 1980!  My 1978 Novice Stations sported an HQ-140/ Speaker, mint, a Johnson Ranger, a KW matchbox, a custom rack with fold out table.  It was sold to my by WN4TJZ who just upgraded to General.  I bought it all for fifty bucks. It was really too much for this simpleton.  I sold it all again for fifty bucks. That was the world of 1970s Ham Radio!  But I digress....

Still, some experienced their "first ten feet off the ground" with a Kenwood TS-520, now a classic in equal standing with any National or Hallicrafter.  Or a kind member of the Fox Tango club may have made an early model FT-101 available to them.  Or a Tempo One may have turned up courtesy a local CBer! All these rigs are somebody's first rig, and enabled there "first ten feet off the ground".

Novice Rig Round Up celebrates all these things.  It celebrates and focuses on the recollection of our first Novice Steps.  It seeks to conjure back what was the awe and mystery of Radio that each of us experienced in our earliest days in Radio.  It celebrates those simpler technologies and simpler approaches that made it all possible. Whether a DX-60B or an Icom 760, the commonality lies with YOU, the Novice, moreso than the rig.   

Indeed, the classic so-named "Novice Rig" is Iconic.  As such, when referring to a  "Novice Rig", it is those crystal  controlled transmitters specially built for the Novice, 1950 - 1975 that we use for event scoring purposes. Included are those rigs such as the Johnson Ranger, which had provision for Novice operation.  But there are other Novice Classics as well.  Like the Kenwood TS-520.  The Ten Tec Century 21.  The Tempo One, all legal for use by novices after 1975.

As novices, we were obviously "code-only", which we think appeals to the simple dynamic of NRR.  As  such we have many SKCC and FISTS members among us.

At this point we do not have formal membership, only participation in the one event we sponsor, from which we get our name Novice Rig Round-Up.

A Little Background:

Novice Rig Round-Up began as a conversation had between myself (WD4NKA) and Bry (AF4K).  Both of us are SKCC members, and having just participated in one of the Week End Sprints (WES), we talked about how well my DSB-100 and his Knight Kit did, and how much fun it might have been to have some sort of WES just for us back when we were Novices!  The conversation roamed far and wide, touching on Boat Anchors, vintage keys, SKCC and FIST, minimalist rigs that we used to build as Novices, and how exciting these old rigs were, how magic they seemed.  

So, where did that magic go?  What happened to all that excitement?  Why have these incredible specimens of 1940s, 50s and 60s become "Old Hat"?  Was it because the mystery had gone away as we came to learn and understand more?  Or was it because some quantum change occurred to make it go away?  No, not really.  Forty meters is pretty much still forty meters, only instead of a Russian Woodpecker or the Diathermy machines causing QRM, we have re-allocated digital signals in what used to be the Novice Sandbox.  But there is still room, there are still folks on the air, there is still propagation, even when the bands are supposedly 'dead'.

Maybe it's because we so increased the level of our personal technology that those simpler times, along with those simpler rigs, just . . . got buried in the "stuff".  Maybe it's because we just "moved on".  Or both. 

Well, maybe it's time to "move back"!  At least, for a while.

We concluded that just maybe one of the keys to that "Novice Magic" lie in the non-complication of our Radio World.  Although there are several large groups and organizations that focus on old rigs, like the AWA or dozens of Boat Anchor groups and AM groups, no one seemed to focus on the simple Novice technologies such as the HT-40 or the DX-60 or the "Novice Specials", those project rigs that populated the Handbooks of the 1950s.  Wouldn't it be great to get a bunch of these rigs on the air, kick back, and do some Novice-style slow-code with each other?  Just to relax and remember?  To recall those clear winter nights when you just knew your inverted vee would get your 50 watt signal into KL7 land on 80m via the Ether?  To recall when a regular conversation could qualify you for the Rag Chewer's Club?  

Bry and I decided to find if there might be shared interest in this concept.  Why not plan an event to celebrate our first rigs, whatever that might be?  We knew that "Novice Rig" could mean a xtal homebrew 6V6G rig and Regen, all the way up to a TS-580, or more.  "Novice Era" spanned about forty years with three or four major regulatory changes, and then there were technology changes, so just what constitutes a "Novice Rig" could be anything from the 1930s, up well into the 1990s!  Therefore, for such an event, it wouldn't do to place limits on who could operate or what sort of rig they could use.  However, this being an event, and since the term "Novice Rig" applies, in the main, to those rigs designed specifically for the Novice Class License as it was for many years, for Event purposes we thought it might be fun to have a simple scoring system just to tally, if for no other reason than just sheer operator curiosity, just how many Classic Novice Rigs one might have managed to contact during what would come to be a week long event.  Ergo the tradition we now have of scoring based on the rig you contact.  For Event purposes, higher scores are awarded for certain types of rigs dating to the "xtal/ 75 watt" novice era.  Higher scores if your correspondent is operating via xtal control, or/ and is under a certain power level.

Since we chose to try out a Novice Centric event using an easy, non aggressive contest approach, I thought it might do to offer a Certificate of  Participation as well.  Since our focus is on participation, and not tallying up huge score numbers, I wanted to make these certificates reflect this.  I own a Letterpress Shop, so why not make these certificates a hand-printed affair to reflect the "hands-on nature" of early Classic Novice operation?  So, I printed our first awards in the same manner, and on the same type of paper that Ivy League Colleges employ for their Degree / Diploma documents.  A very high end paper, metal dies, linseed oil based inks, and the ancient iron platen press.   Each Certificate carries the same level of work that I employ for my clients who pay to the tune of about twenty bucks for such impressions.  It would be worth the effort and material cost investment . . . if others shared the enthusiasm.

We put the word out on SKCC and the various Yahoo Groups Bry and myself were party to.  We set up a FaceBook page to help communicate our vision and to share it.  Bry put up a web-site to post necessary information.   We set a date for the second week of February, 2015.  We put it all out there, both on the Web and on the air.  And indeed, we did find quite a number of hams who quite latched onto the idea.  Soon, before we knew it, our FaceBook page crossed the 500-member mark.  Discussion was prolific.  Lots of web activity.  Lot's of "buy in".

The first NRR event seemed quite successful, although nowhere near 500 people participated, but we did have enough participation during the week to encourage a furtherance, a continuance to this effort.  The FB page continued to grow.  Awareness was beginning to mount.  Rigs were being restored or built in anticipation of NRR 2016. 

This past February, NRR 2016 came . . . and went.  We are still counting the logs sent in as I write this.  I have the certificates ready to label for the participant.  We have much needed and appreciated volunteers to help, it's not just Bry and Myself now (whew!).  Participation during NRR was robust,  we are soon to find out if more log books were sent in than last year.  We are growing.  Lot's of folks are engaged and talking about NRR on the air and on the Web.  Perhaps more than just a few Hams enjoy getting their Novice On, and Recapturing the Magic of those more simple days, with the more simple, yet very classic . . . at least to us . . . Novice Rigs.  Whatever rig that may be!

de -gary // wd4nka.  NRR co-founder and itinerant letterpress printer.

100 word bio for Gary

CONTINUED: A Real Writer

Of course I don’t live in a castle.  I live in an old house on a country road. It’s not as old as a castle and we have central heat and indoor plumbing.   I’ve always been pretty fond of indoor plumbing and wouldn’t want to be without it.    It’s such a long walk across the back field to the woods that I don’t think I’d get very much writing done without at least a half bath. King Arthur could use the castle window, but my wife would be aghast if I tried that.

Real writers begin their task by constructing an outline, often before writing the first sentence of the story.  I usually write the last sentence first.  Or begin somewhere in the middle. Or just think about it all day.  Real writers limit their expository paragraphs, check their facts, use that Thessa thing and a dictionary.  Some proceed to write in a straight line.  But I never check anything and don’t know what I’m talking about most of the time.  No one ever corrects me.  My facts are either flawless or simply convincing.  Or I don’t have any readers.

Real writers have an editor to spruce up their prose.  I read my stuff to my wife’s dog and usually don’t get an argument from her.  I thought twice before writing the last sentence because I don’t want to be accused of animal mental cruelty.  I’ve always had a feeling the damned dog wouldn’t testify favorably on my behalf.  Murphy envies any attention I get from my wife and she follows me everywhere, as if her assignment was to watch me like a hawk.  She’s not much of an editor, however.  For a Springer, she’s barely literate.

Real writers use proper punctuation and don’t write run-on sentences.  I don’t know anything about punctuation but I just love run-on sentences because they’re so efficient and I don’t need to add extra pronouns or think up synonyms to avoid repeats and I can forget all those silly rules that Sister Clementia taught me back in fifth grade and better known writers than me don’t seem to worry about it so why should I.

Real writers are famous.  Now, there I come closer to the definition.  For I am indeed famous, if only a tiny bit.  I take my articles down to the copy shop and have hundreds made.  At one time I stuffed them in the mail boxes of unsuspecting residents up and down the road. I stopped the practice after a run-in with the U.S. Postal Service. Last week I decided to hand deliver my masterpieces by knocking on doors.  I reckoned each visit would be an opportunity to converse with a neighbor who for reasons unknown no longer spoke to me. Murphy mulled it over and decided to come along.

Hardly anyone answered their door, even though sounds of life were often evident from within the house.  A few did greet me, however, including Mrs. Grant, who opened her door naked and drunk,  evidently thinking it was Halloween.  She wore only a wizard's hat and carried a tray of Halloween candy.  In her inebriated state, she pronounced a sentence or two with one long slurring sound.  It reminded me of something else real writers are known for.  Typos.

"I believe you've forgotten your Magic Robe, my Ladyship," I said with grace and aplomb.

Her eyes widened and she glanced down.  Murphy huffed a dog laugh.  Mrs. Grant  raised and lowered the tray as she tried to decide what to cover.  I did not know a person could blush from stem to stern.  She raised a foot and an orange painted toenail pushed the door closed. 

I called out, ”Sorry to have disturbed your bath, ma'm." From inside came a tittering, then an exploding laugh.  Murphy and I looked at each other.  I thought to ring the doorbell once more, but resisted.  That damned dog follows me everywhere.

copyright by David Griffin, 2007, 2013

Writer

This article was written for  the online magazine, Author’s Bazaar, March, 2012, No. 14.

All of us writers have no doubt heard the famous quote, “Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”  Some have heard it attributed to various authors.  (Wiki says it’s by Gene Fowler, journalist and playwright. Others ascribe a similar saying to sports writer Red Smith.)  But I’ve never had a  problem with creative writing and only occasionally with factual writing.  Sitting down at a keyboard evidently sets up a chain reaction in my brain that leads to sentences coming out my fingers.

I write what I’ve read.  Somewhere in my mind, banging around since I first began to read, is no doubt every phrase I ever laid eyes on.  I’m just rearranging and repeating them as I type.  A life time of voracious reading of decent prose has helped my craft  immensely. 

I remember opening a thin book as I stood in front of my grandmother and proudly declaimed, “See Dick run,” as though I were the town crier with a hot new story.  My reading ability happened quickly.  Only a few months before I had asked Mom if I was holding the hymnal upside right in Church while I pretended to read the lyrics and sing along with the congregation. I was one motivated reader.  I am one motivated writer.  I want to spill it out.

It doesn’t come out perfectly, of course.  There was a time when I hated editing my own work.  It felt like I was killing my issue, I guess, because I didn’t want to destroy what to my inner ear sounded so wonderful when it rolled out on paper.  But today I view the process as an opportunity to crisp up my phrasing and smooth out the delivery.  I believe good writing doesn’t call attention to itself.  It goes right down the reader’s gullet,  smooth as butter.  If I watched his or her eyes they would not dart back to re-read a phrase or arch an eyebrow to ponder a muddy sentence.  I would have scooped her up into my word wagon as I drove by and have her there with me, hearing my writer’s voice, understanding my context and recognizing my metaphors.   There would be a glint of expectation in her eyes as she avidly reached for the next sentence, one after another.  Such wonderful writing doesn’t come directly out of my head any more than Premium Hi Test comes right from the ground.  The product has to be refined.

Writing is a craft, of course.  It doesn’t take long to get the basics down, but it is indeed a lifelong process of learning.  I can’t speak as an expert, but I do have a few opinions on how to go about it.  We all have different ways of approaching our craft.  I’ll have been thinking of a topic but often wait for a terrific opening phrase to pop into my mind, words I can’t wait to get on paper.  It’s why I always carry paper and a pen with me.  Look hard enough and you’ll find other authors writing on napkins in restaurants or on their boarding passes sitting in the corner of the airport bar.  (Yes, the latter could be an aluminum salesman figuring his commissions.)

At home, my PC is set up and organized for writing, with electronic folders separating my projects into easily accessible categories of Complete and Working and Stuff (thoughts, research, and trial paragraphs.)  Computerized folders hold a variety of writer’s tools and resources.  I back it all up at least once each week … immediately, if I’ve just written a story that will make me as famous as Stephen King!

My short stories are 500 to 2,000 words and I publish them on the Internet. Thirty or so essays and stories are rolled into a self published book each year.   I seldom have a complete story or idea in my head when sitting down to write.   I’m a big fan of  the “stream of consciousness” method.  If I waited for a story to flesh out in my mind I’d never sit down to write it.  An early piece, “The Good Shepherd,” was in my thoughts for at least ten years.  I became so disgusted bouncing it around in my head that I finally sat down and wrote it so I could forget about it.  I might have written the tale a decade earlier and eliminated the time I wasted thinking about how to construct it.

When I feel like writing, I sit down and write.  About anything.  I might open my Working file and add a few sentences to a story in progress, get stuck or become tired of it and switch to another piece I began a week or a few years ago.  I have over a  hundred “starts” as I call them,  most having a few paragraphs, some a few sentences and others a few pages.

When writing, multiple resources are open on my PC, such as Wikipedia, Google and  TheFreeDictionary, the latter for use as a word checker and thesaurus.  I can’t tell you where my paperback thesaurus is in this book lined room my wife calls my cave.  Before we moved to a small modern house, we lived in an old farmhouse and I wrote in the cellar.  My PC was set up among shortwave radios in the former fruit cellar beneath  sturdy old floor beams.  I could look upward to see the joists decorated with cob webs that were there when we moved in 35 years ago and were still intact when I left last November.  They were probably a hundred years old.

Ideas come from everywhere.  I believe a writer can write about anything.    I approach all of my subjects as stories.  In each piece, whether it’s fiction or factual, I try to form a “story arc” and also put a hook in the intro.  Finding an opportunity to include a twist or two to surprise the reader in a way that brings a chuckle is another goal.  With memoirs I embellish, believing the story trumps the facts (and I freely admit it.)  I’m a storyteller, not an historian, and my reader wants to be entertained.  (So do I!) He doesn’t care whether the homemade balloon a friend and I made when we were thirteen  really rose high enough to fly me over my home town.  He just wants to soar with my imagination over the neighborhoods and downtown buildings and land safely in a cornfield on the other side of town.

When I get a story down on paper and edited , it’s no more than a vision typed out from my head.  I need another person to read it and tell me if the words mean anything to them.  Before I bother my wife for her impression,  I always read the article aloud. (Later versions of Adobe Reader will do that for you.)  It’s a great way to catch mistakes and awkward phrasing.    Next, I change the font and arrange the printing of the piece to somewhat resemble a magazine article.  I often use a Caslon font and narrow columns to simulate The New Yorker.  I find that reading the piece in that mock environment puts my brain in a highly critical mode where my expectations easily recognize poor writing.  Grammatical mistakes and muddy sentences stand out sharply on this stage. 

Posting my stories on the Internet and self publishing via PrintOnDemand allow changes to the copy any time.  (See my PrintOnDemand article at:

http://www.windsweptpress.com/pod.htm

 I constantly read and re-read my work and make minor changes.  To me it’s not a chore.  I feel the way a sculptor might when he discovers a burr on the smooth surface of his work and carefully rubs it away to make the piece even more finished..

Input from others is essential.  Probably the most helpful feedback on my writing in recent years has come from the bloody streets of Internet critique groups.  Don’t go there if you’re thin skinned.  I’m sure a few nascent authors have given up writing after suffering a beating or two from some of the nastier critics who inhabit these forums.  The worst offender in one group I belonged to (the group I was proudly kicked out of, frankly) had never had even a single story published. But as vicious as the  remarks could be, many of the group’s writing insights were right on and I learned a lot.  If you do join a tough group, just be careful.  Don’t believe everything you’re told.  Internet writing groups can get sidetracked on one aspect of writing and will begin to concentrate on it to the exclusion of all the good things in your prose.  Some Internet writing critics would have scolded Thomas Jefferson for his lack of a hook and a story arc in the Declaration of Independence.

I wish I had begun an organized program of creative writing long before I retired.  Today I’d know more about the craft and my writing would by now be more efficient.  I don’t know why I didn’t start, except time was always in short supply and my story ideas didn’t appear to form complete plots.  How was I to know the best way to solve a plot problem (for me, at least) is to sit down and write it out.  And if  it doesn’t make sense, change it.  I’ve learned creativity doesn’t happen when I’m thinking about a potential story.  It takes place while I’m writing or in the midst of solving a writing problem.

Just because drops of blood don’t form on my forehead as I write doesn’t mean the effort isn’t work.  I spend quite a bit of time on it.  But I figure that it’s what I’m meant to do at this stage of my life.  And if all the hours I put into writing were not enjoyable, I’d be fishing instead.  Come to think of it, I do need to get some flies tied for spring!

copyright 2012  David Griffin

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CONTINUED: Bus Stop

I began to trust that soon I’d be inside the comfortable womb of a heated conveyance.  As we neared the curb I saw a rudimentary gate consisting of two horizontal boards that were now open to admit passengers.  I didn’t know why, but each person stopped at the gate for just a second, even though it was open, before climbing the steps into the bus.  Dad shuffled up to the two boards and stopped, then moved forward.

Now I remembered where I had seen this hesitation at the gate.  In church the priest and altar boys stopped for a second when crossing from the aisle through the railing onto the chancel of the altar.  Almost like knocking on heaven's door.

I stepped up to the gate.  It slammed closed with a vicious thwack.  I became angry and scared at once, but something deep in my soul prevented me from trying to scoot under the boards or crash through them.  I did not want to be left there alone.

“That’s my Dad,” I shouted, to no one in particular. “I have to be with him.”

My father stopped, turned and retraced the three steps he had advanced beyond the gate.

“I guess this is it, then,” he said.  “I’ll see you when you get there.”

“Why can’t I go with you?” I cried.

He shrugged his shoulders.  Good old Dad always accepted what was expected of him.

He reached out, but was too far away to touch  me.  He turned and walked to the bus.  He climbed the stairs and soon became invisible to me.  The bus pulled away.  I scanned the windows, straining to see him.  When I didn’t, I hoped he was demanding the bus driver come back for me.  But Dad was never a very demanding person.

Now first in line, I looked up and down the street.  Traffic increased as I stood there. A furniture delivery truck from a local department store edged toward me as it came near the curb, bumped up over it and sped past on the sidewalk.  The truck's rear view mirror sliced the air above my head as it coursed it's way south for fifty feet and dropped into Bleecker Street, where it made a sharp right turn and sped west toward the Hotel Utica.   I felt exposed.  Since he no longer stood in front of me, the large form of my father ceased to cast a shadow of protection over me.  And eventually his influence would begin to wane.

I was disappointed in the dream to be on my own, but I never for a moment doubted his best intentions and hope for my success, his love for me.  As I stood waiting for the next bus, my thoughts roamed through the life Dad and I had together.  And at my young age in the dream, I found myself wondering why he had stopped kissing me.

At age 4 or 5 I’d sit down on his lap and kiss him on the cheek before going to bed.  I can still feel his rough five o’clock shadow and smell the soap he used to wash up at night before coming home from work at the newspaper.  And I remember the evening he put his hand out to stop me and said.  “You’re a big boy now, we should shake hands, not kiss.”  So that’s what we did.  At ages five and thirty-seven, we shook hands before bed each night.  I didn’t care about the kiss, I missed the closeness and the smells. 

And he never said he loved me. It wasn't a phrase someone from his stiff-necked Irish background was allowed to use.  I wondered if he believed you could only love God, and if so, what did he say to my mother?  He was not a hard man.  He was gentle and long suffering.  He was humble and he was certainly pure, or at least took mighty steps to be so.  He instructed his boys to lead pure lives.  We were never allowed to see a movie indexed by the Legion of Decency beyond “A -  Morally UNobjectionable.” 

After the night we began shaking hands, he never gave me a hug.  Today I and my wife and adult children hug all the time and say we love each other.  That phrase ends just about every long distance telephone call from the kids. “Love ya, Dad, Mom.”  This has come about because when the kids were in early high school, a time when they would have rather kissed a dead walrus, I forced them into hugs and I always said, “I love you.”  I don’t remember how many years, but it probably took a few before they returned the sentiment.  They may have been in their last years of college. But I never gave up. I had come from a family that certainly loved one another but showed  no outward expression of it.  I didn’t want to produce another family with the same handicap.   I didn’t want my children standing on a bus stop some day thinking I’d never told them I loved them or allowed them to hug me.

In his last year I was able to tell my father I loved him.  It seemed to make him uncomfortable.  About six months later, as he lie in Faxton Hospital at the very end, I wanted to repeat it, but I did not.  I wish I had.  And kissed him, too.

As for the dream of the two of us at the bus stop on the Busy Corner,  I don't remember how it ended.  I guess I’m still waiting there.  It seems such a long time since he climbed aboard and disappeared into his bus to heaven.  In the years since I have built a good life, and I believe a spiritual walk that worked for me.  It was seeded by my father, and made with God's grace and my own travails and insights, plus the inestimable help of everyone who ever touched me, whether they casually brushed by me or married me. 

Each of us reaches the head of the line in life when parents and mentors pass beyond, leaving us to stand more exposed to the world than we did before. We get used to it.  We learn to trust our own insights and judgments.  We get on with it.  We grow up.  We grow old. One morning we’ll look down the street and see the bus coming our way.

"I'll see you when you get there," he said.  I hope it comes true.

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Copyright by David Griffin, 2016

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Raz Ma Taz

Aside from the young man we call Sonny, sitting in the small hut on the far side of the paved plaza, where he takes money and sells  cigarettes … and I’ve often wondered what else …  a forty-ish woman in a halter and muddy shorts stands on the other side of the pump I'm using.  A smoking cigarette hangs from her lips as she pumps enough high test gasoline to blow us all to Kingdom Come if a hot ash drops down and ignites the vapors.  I find myself hoping she’ll finish up and leave.

A small dog appears beyond the garbage cans where a dirt road comes down the mountain to the gas station.  Licking its paws, it lies down in the dust, as if waiting for someone. Maybe for Sonny, since his motor bike is parked over there behind the cans, just off the pavement.

Out on the highway, a pearl grey Chrysler New Yorker slows down and turns in to join us, bobbing up and down on enormous springs, and swiftly bringing its passenger to the pumps in comfort and style.  From the velvet padded depths steps a man of my height, dressed in cream colored pants, a blue striped shirt, shoes that cost more than my riding mower, and a cream colored teardrop fedora, circled by a black band.  He is a vision, complete with Caribbean tanned skin.   Here among the bird poop and fly specked overhead lights, turned on in the daytime for no apparent reason,  I am struck by the sight of  him, appearing in our midst as we go about  the dirty chores of our ordinary lives.  Mary the Mother of God would not have been more impressed when the Archangel Gabriel showed up in her pantry.  I almost cringe as I think of Mr. Fedora getting any of the messiness here on his garments.

The man looks around, as a Martian might upon landing, and then walks over to the little hut.  He might be seeking directions and I completely understand his reasons for consulting neither myself nor Gravel Gertie  at the next pump.  We may appear to him as no more than the local fauna.  He may think us incapable of intelligent human speech.

Leaving the man to the mercy of Sonny, I pump gas into my pickup truck and get to thinking.  Although his impeccably clean New Yorker is  certainly more impressive than my four wheel drive pickup, he and I are really not much different.  If you stood the two of us side by side in our boxer shorts and took a snapshot,  we’d look like two overweight brothers, one better tanned perhaps.  But dressed … he, dapper in his clothes and fedora, and I, rumpled in my jeans and polo shirt … we appear as different as night and day.   Either could have chosen the other’s style, however.    How did the two of us come to have such different tastes?  I choose LL Bean over Gucci.  Even my best suits are a bit on the informal side,   Glenn Plaid instead of Banker’s Stripes.  What determines our choice of a presentation style in life?  For that’s what it is, a show we choose to make to other people.  And with very little thought about it afterward, it becomes our habit.  I suppose we could call it misleading. But that would make how we dress more deceptive than we mean it to be.  Most of us.  Most of the time.

Through the window of the hut I see Sonny gesticulating as he speaks with the stranger.  He may be providing directions.  If so, I’ll bet the first leg will take the traveler to the hamburger stand owned by Sonny’s cousin, Morris. 

I turn to my companion at the pumps, and sensing she’ll see the humor in my question, I ask, “What’s he got that I ain’t  got?”

I find out later she could have answered, “a gun.”

Instead, a smile forms on her lips. 

“RazMaTaz,” she says.

 I think she may mean ‘Pizzazz.’  ‘Raz Ma  Taz’ means something else, I believe, but I can’t bring it to mind.  I will remember soon enough.

Mr. Fedora comes out from Sonny’s shack and walks to his car.  He glances first up at the mountain and next at the garbage cans overflowing onto the edge of the pavement.  He looks at Gertie for what seems a long moment.  She is faced away from him and probably doesn’t see his glance, but there appears to be a stiffness to her bare shoulders as his gaze lies upon her.  Without even looking my way, he gets in his Chrysler and drives off, bumping along the narrow access road out to the highway.  

As I remove my gas receipt from the pump,   Gertie slams the gas nozzle into the hanger on her pump.  She flicks her cigarette over among the garbage cans.  Opening the door of her car, about to climb in, she swats her behind with both hands and a cloud of mud dust billows out from her butt.  She looks over at me and winks while rubbing her bottom salaciously.

“Raz Ma Taz,” she says, and hops in behind the wheel. 

She neither takes a receipt from her pump or visits Sonny to pay in cash.  She is running off without paying for her gas.  Her rusty blue car has no muffler and the engine explodes into life sounding like an 18 wheeler.  With a roar that sends the birds scattering in every direction, her old car pulls out of the gas station and on to the highway.  It looks like she is struggling into a jacket, which is rather odd on such a warm day.  Watching all of this, I fail to notice Sonny come running out of the hut until he is standing next to me. 

 “You know her?” he says. 

“No,” I say.  “Who is she?”

Saying nothing, he turns to walk back to the hut.

The birds are now coming back down to roost on various outcroppings of the encrusted canopy.  I suddenly remember the meaning of Raz Ma Taz:  a deceptive move to disguise the real play.  Something more than a “drive-off” is going on here.

“Sonny,” I shout.  “Everything OK?” 

With his back toward me he sticks his arm up and waves good bye as he continues toward the entrance to the little shack.  But about ten feet from the door, he abruptly turns right and runs to the motor bike, parked behind the garbage cans.  To my surprise he jumps on, starts it up and screeches through the gears as he heads away from the gas station on the dirt road.  He flies up the incline, the dog chasing after him.

When I get out on the highway I see the banged up rusty blue car  and the pearl grey New Yorker off on the side of the road together.  The Chrysler’s front fender is torn up.  Gravel Gertie is wearing a blue jacket with “DEA” written across the back.  Gun drawn, she has the man in the blue striped shirt bent over the hood of his car.  A dark blue van is just pulling off the road to join them.  The cream white fedora lies over in the grass, away from the road. She took him down where it would be safer for citizens like me.

It’s time for me to get home and start mowing my yard.  Boring work, but I won’t be complaining about my ordinary life for the rest of the day.  Tonight we’re invited to a rather formal house party.  I’ll have to dress up.  So that no one recognizes me, I guess.

 

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Copyright 2009/2016  by David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress