Mine Remembered

Mine Remembered

It had been rough getting back here.  The last time I was here I came on horseback.  My three-year-old Roam didn’t think anything much of rough terrain.  The ’32 Chevy Contender that got me here today protested mightily the whole way. 

After pouring myself out of the seat and arching my back to let the kinks out.  I turned to my grandson that was just shy of 16 years, “Here it is.  I spent two long years of my life here.”  I forced a smile for him.  “I was just about your age.”

“It’s falling down, Grandpa.”

“That it is, Boy.  You oughten to have seen it in its heyday.”  I pointed to the weathered gray building, further most right.  “That was administration.  I help raise that structure.  It still standing.  Says a lot for cedar and rough-hewn pillars.  A few of the supports in there still have roots in the ground.”

“When were you here last?”

“Over half a century now.  I remember driving ten penny nails in the roof joists.  The backside of the administration building is only nine or ten feet off the ground.  We’d slide down and leap off like we were a bunch of crows taking air.  Then hit the ground rolling.”  Ralphy came to mind.  “That is till Ralphy broke his ankle.  The foreman said no more jumping.  We had to use the ladder like normal folk.”

“Let me show you the other side.”  I commenced leading him up the sandy shale embankment.  I started out with a limp until I got some lubricant to working in my left knee.  The little slope was slippery, and I ended up crab walking it up.  I thought about there was a time when I’d hit a spot like this at a run and never look back.  We finally, made our way through the rubble and came out on the other side.

“Boy, look up that there hill.   Now, just imagine a wall of fire the height of a tall horse, from that rise to this bellowing down on you.”  I swept my arm across the landscape covering the territory to the horizon.

“Wow, were you scared?”

“No time for that.  We’d were nearly complete with the new building, and we were determined to beat that fire back.  Why it came right down within spittin’ distance of our mine.”  I looked at the green hills and wondered how was it we nearly lost the whole place but for expending our lives energy putting out the fire and the place has lasted another fifty plus years since.  Another fire like that and there be nothing here.

“What did you do, Grandpa?”

“Well, we hunkered down with shovels and hoes and started pulling back the vegetation as far up as we could reach without gettn’ deep fried.  We were bound to deprive that fire of any more fuel.  At the end, when it reached the end of our line we commenced to throwing shovels of dirt on it.”  I remembered the heat and sweat pouring off us.

“The fire was out to defy us.  It spits red hot ash into the air that landed on the Roofs.  We had a couple lads on each roof that stamped them out soon as they lit.  But they were coming mighty fast and hot.”  I grinned.  Here I was winding myself telling the tale.  At that time I was in fatigable, although I was just a runt of a kid.

“I tell you, grandson, it was a long ten hours we fought that blaze.  When it was all over, there wasn’t an eyebrow in the place as they’d all been burned off.  A couple of the older fellows kept pattin’ out their beards.” 

“Can we get in the mine, Grandpa?”

“Don’t know, let's crawl in there and see.  I’ve got lots to tell you about this place.”

  

BAKER BOT - Flash Fiction

BAKER BOT

I was the richest man in the world. Being diversified in every corporate endeavor, that was what made me so much money I couldn't give it away if I wanted.  That's okay, I didn't want to anyway.

In my waning years, I caught a literary craving for Steam Punk.  It was fascinating to me the retro look of machinery from when I was but a little boy.  So, when I founded CyberSapiens with my brother, the engineer, I had in mind this very end for me.

Sure, all our cyborgs were sleek, beautiful, durable and aesthetically appealing and without the law mandated joint markings you would never know they weren't human, so long as they kept their mouth shut.  The speech had always been somewhat stilted.  That wasn't for me, though.  I picked out something much more, well, more unique.

It had a torso, hip and should rotator joints of recycled submarine hulls of titanium.  The calves, forearms, body, and head of light cold rolled sheet metal with a light green powder coat and orange accents.  The chest had a pressure gauge in the access cover monitoring the tiny nuclear fusion furnace that powered unit and the cybernetic control center in the helmet.  In keeping with the retro look and the Tom and Jerry cartoons I loved I told my brother I didn't need more than three fingers and a thumb.

It was ready, and I died.

 When I awoke, it took me a few minutes to adjust to the high contrast view through the yellow/amber lenses.  This was way cool.  I could feel everything through the electrostatic contact made when something touched me, or I felt it.  I was truly pain-free.  I rotated to my feet and gazed at my brother that smiled at me.

"I have a surprise for you,"  he said.

"What would that be?"  I felt the digital speaker vibrate on my right shoulder.  I wasn't sure, it might tickle.  I felt like laughing.

"Oh, come with me, and you'll see."  He opened the door and followed me out.

On the street, I must admit I drew a lot of stares although I moved silently as all the motors and servos were well suspended and my new body was thoroughly tested for noise shorts.  We turned the corner, and there was Boston's Confectionary Center.  The largest in all the state.

As soon as I saw it something happened.  A flash popped into my net, and I dashed across the street to reach it to the screeching brakes of a Uber cab.  I made it fine leaving three finger dents in the Ubers hood.  Ripped open the door, then threw the handle down on the floor after I gained entrance.  What the heck was going on.  I was obsessed.

There in the center of a table was a grand pink three tiered cake.  I spun, picked it up and held it high admiring it.  Why did I find it so elegant?

My brother turned up a few minutes later and laughed.  I thought he was going to bust a gut and wished he would.  "What did you do to me?"

He sputtered it out, "I downloaded Julie Richardson's Vintage Cakes Cookbook to your compulsory net functions."  He smacked me on my shoulder with a resounding thud.  "Little Brother, You’re a baker bot now."

What makes a good story?

Here is my take on what makes a good story.

A super idea, great writing, clever construction, and relevance make a story good.

Starting with the first one, we writers have a passion about something.  We queue on writing prompts, a news flash, the efforts of a snail dashing cross the yard that we came across or it could be a message of spiritual or political import that we want to put out metaphorically or overtly.  Could be we just want to play the Devil's advocate and stir things up.  Whatever the case we have to write it well.

That takes us to great writing.  That entails a vocabulary appropriate to the intended reader.  It means putting the modifying phrases close to the object.  It means a comma in the right spot and less Yoda think, which is what I suffer from the most.  This tell you, I do.  There are volumes written on correctly putting out ideas and feelings on paper.  I have a near half-dozen in my library.  Although, you might not know it by my first draft.  These first two are pretty straight forward.  We all have great ideas and grammar can be edited and fixed.  What about the construction of the good story?

When talking about how to construct the story it gets a little dicey.  Do the plot and subplots interweave cleverly?  Do story elements introduced here and there interlock in a meaningful way?  The intended readers probably haven't read Steven King's book on writing or Sol Stein's "How to Grow a Novel".  Yet, they will know what they like.  The readers know from plenty of reading what works for them and what doesn't.  There is a given about readers, the more they read the better they get at reading.  Once tasted a superbly written book they won't give much time to a lessor wrote one.  Part of that maturity in the reader brings into play the final item I bring up and that is relevance.

First off, not everything we write is going to work for everyone.  That is what makes relevance important.  Is what is being read meaningful to the reader?  Some readers are cross genre readers; even though they probably have a favorite genre that is read most.  It could be for relaxing or for education.  One of the elements, in my mind, to the relevance of story is the objects written into the story that relates.  For instance, if I were writing a story about a trucker and wanted a reader that is a trucker to enjoy it I would have to get into the story stuff that a trucker can identify with, such as an electronic logging system gone awry or the mysterious discovery of a 17th gear in a sixteen gear compound axle drive.  The trucker/reader might wonder, what is that going to do?  A good story has to have relevance to the reader.  That is why we hear the advice given to new writers; write what you know.  When we write what we know it gives credence to our prose.  Otherwise, research and write what you've learned.

To wrap up, take that super idea, write it well with clever construction and make it meaningful.  The audience will grow.

Took a Break in Writing

I wrote last week about our vacation and my lack of writing because of it.  It took a bit to get back into the swing of being home and finding a new routine where I could get some wordsmithing in. 

I'm not quite all the way there yet.  I did though get in a couple thousand words that to date are probably some of the best writing I'm done.  So good in fact, that I may have to mess it up a little in order to keep it in the style of the rest of the book.  Or, perhaps I should rewrite the previous 70K words. 

Nah, I'll see if I can improve them in the editing.  Previously, when I got stuck and laid off writing for a bit to figure out what I was going to do, I thought about the dilemma facing me at the time.  That took me through the problem and I came up with a clever bit of plotting to tie things up.

This past June, while on vacation, I hardly gave my book a thought. 

I attended my writer group for my monthly thrashing on the material I submitted before I left on vacation.  They were all so kind and gentle, letting me know it was some of the worst stuff I've put out over the past couple years and I was lovingly encouraged to fix that.  It wasn't the content or story line that was bad.  That they all love.  It was the way I put it (my grammar). 

I have to admit.  I don't do well with putting my modifiers and adjectives where they ought to be; close to the object.  I sometimes feel I have Yoda think.   I turn my wording around and I don't even know Spanish so there is no excuse.  I'm not outwardly handicapped.  I'm handicapped in my writing.   All fixable, of course.

I've been at writing this book for so long family hardly ask me anymore as to how it is going.  Slow, it is going slow.  This break I took from it in June has actually been invigorating now I am back to it.  I can see an end in sight.  I know just where I want to end the book all I have to do is move my protagonist through six more years of his life.  Hey - I can do that.

I know that we are all the same in a different sort of way.  My woes in writing are not strange to some of you.   Perplexing to you prodigies though, like those silky hard-body women doing weight loss ads - who never were over 3% body fat from the day they were born.   That tells us if I can do it, so can you.  I can.  I just have to work at it a little harder.

Thanks for coming by.   Now I will go and try to write the right way. 

6700 Miles

Hi all, we just got back.  This was one of our stops along our 7200-mile trek that we truncated to 6700 miles.  I won't bore you with a travel log at this point (leaving myself to do so later).

Overall, it was a super great trip and we learned a great deal about motor homing.  One of the many things I learned is my routine was blown all to hell.  I only wrote one evening in an RV park.  That means for a month I only wrote 600 words.

Why was my production so low?  As you could guess, I wrote so little is because of a number of things.  First and foremost is the same thing that I think gets most of us out of writing.  A break in our routine.

Authors and wannabees like me write about the pitfalls of not writing and what to do about it.  Getting motivated, writing junk until it jells into some coherent and so forth.  What I think is at the top of the list is structure, routine, a time and place consistently.

When we have a place where we are comfortable and a time where we expect to be productive and free of distractions our word count soars.  Get in a motorhome and head down the road thinking about how many miles we're going to make today, where will we dump if we don't rent a spot in an RV park and why isn't the propane on, doesn't give much time to think about that scene I want to write or how to weave in the next chapter with a new character that I'm going to introduce.

The break in routine doesn't have to be as dramatic as my trip.  One of the gals in my writing group commented, "I didn't write anything this past month.  I have relatives visiting."  At least, I got a short story of 600 words. Ain't I proud of myself. Ha...

Now I'm home.  Yet, my routine is broken.  I use to count on two days a week to write as I watched my granddaughter toddle around trying to stick her fingers in the outlets.  That's over.  I don't babysit anymore.  I have all kinds of remodeling projects going on.  I'm flooring, replacing windows, chopping on that darn stump that's been in the yard for two years.  When am I going to write?

I could write at night.  I've done that.  But (I admit it), I'm old.  I don't know when to quit and then I'm wasted the next day and everything else suffers.  I am still distracted.  I have the camera full of pictures from the trip to download.  I have a shoe box of receipts to sort and a ton of mail to review.

Sure, it's a matter of priority.  What's important to me and what's important to my wife.  Writing is way up toward the top of my list.  It is a little lower down (toward the bottom) for my wife.  So, there is that to consider.

There is so much to be said for stability in life.  I don't know what distracts you.  I suspect the more successful of us have one or more things going for them.  They are in a nice productive routine or so committed and talented that they can write anywhere at anytime. Of the latter, I am so envious.

Foul language and Writing

Thirty years ago, I was in a writing class at a local community college.  I wrote an embellished story about an outing I was at with an outlaw motorcycle gang I rode with for a while.  In the story I populated it with the language that was use by such people.  One of the fellow students objected to the foulness of the writing.  The professor chided her with a discourse on reality and how I represented the tale with gritty realism.  I think I was wrong to write it that way.

Now, decades later I have come to realize that although the world has digressed into more foul language than ever before, particularly by women and children, that I don't like it.  I would submit to you that I have throughly appreciated the badness of a bad guy even when they never uttered a cuss word.  In fact, I don't even notice the character didn't have a foul tongue.  I do notice when they do and frequently stop reading or watching a movie when it gets excessive.

An argument, I suppose, for using foul language in writing is for the realism and perhaps shock value.  Also, for those that have a foul tongue of their own wouldn't find any fault in reading such material.  Yet, I would suggest that if our writing is kept clean of cussing it would reach a greater audience than it would otherwise. 

I have on occasion reached for a way of saying something and only a foul word to express it would come to mind.  As I paused, searching my mind for another way of saying what I wanted to say without using the foul expression I came up at a lost.  That was years ago after I had made the effort to clean up my speech.  So that I don't sound too sanctimonious I let you know I haven't always been so clean cut.  Ha… Here is how I came to depreciate foul language.

Am I all wet on this?  Let me know how you feel about it.  What degree of foulness can you tolerate?

Foul Mouthed 

As a person we evolve our personalities.  Hopefully for the better.

I don't cuss or swear.   It hasn't always been that way.  As a 24 year old First Class Petty Officer on a Frigate, I could throw out a crude spew from my mouth that could practically cling to the bulkheads.  Everyone did.   As is said, birds of a feather flock together and flock we did.  Yet, we had our factions.  There were Snipes, Twigits, Deck Apes, Skivvy Wavers, Sparks, Gunners and of course Zeros.  In order not to be factionless, every group had their varying levels of initiation to be a well working component of the group.  I was a sonar man so our hazing was rather mild like sending the new guy to the supply department for a box of Sonar contacts compared to the new Snipes that ended up with a butt full of #90 gear oil from a grease gun.

Sometimes our evolving comes about gently over time and other times it's an epiphany.  For me it's been more a string of epiphanies that has made me a better person depending on who you ask I suppose.

I was on the main deck.  That's the deck open to the sea coming up from below.  Going on up from the water is the 01(oh one), 02 (oh two) respectively; going down toward and under the water is the 1st deck, 2nd deck and so forth.   I was just coming out of the hanger bay heading for the hatch to the first deck when I crossed paths with a Third Class who's name is lost to me over time.  He pleasantly greeted me as we crossed paths.  As I put my foot on the first rung of the ladder I returned with a barrage of vile degrading obscenities and descended to the first deck and headed for the mess decks.  The mess decks was about 30 feet away.  By the time I entered the mess decks I stopped up short as it sunk into me as to what I jerk I was.  I turned around and went back up to the main deck and found the fellow and apologized to him.  Sadly, it was such a common occurrence by anyone that he stated he hadn't noticed my rude behavior.

I vowed that I would stop swearing and cussing.  I didn't cuss or swear before I joined the Navy and I was determined that I would return to that.  It wasn't easy.  I slipped from time to time, but being aware of it pulled me up short each time and the occurrences became further and further apart and now years and years apart. 

As the years move on and I became a Chief Petty officer it became evident to my fellow sailors I was not typical.  I didn't cuss, drink alcohol or coffee.  I was true to my word and expected the same.  I told my men that I didn't expect them to stop cursing if they wanted to only not to do it when they were talking to me.  There was a line on the evaluation forms for personal reviews that addressed "Expressing oneself well  orally and in writing".  Which is generally always marked with the highest marks.  I told my men that I did not consider swearing and cursing expressing oneself well.

I never have considered myself better or above any other.   Yet, when it comes to language I found I looked down my nose a little at foul mouthed people.   It seems a bit thoughtless, inconsiderate and slow minded for people to be foul.  

Of course, they are not all that all the time.  In the Bible I read in the Book of Matthew that which proceeds from the mouth comes from the heart.  I was unaware of that when I decided to stop cussing.  But now that I know that when I think about it, would anyone who realizes that their hearts harbors such foulness that they would spew it from the tongue.  Some people, yes but for most people is probably no.

I submit there is no good time for foul mouth cursing and swearing.  The argument that we are in an environment where everyone does, like being a sailor or a construction worker or a politician on open mike  doesn't hold water with me.

Road Trip

Tomorrow, the wife and I head out on a 7,200 mile road trip taking up the whole month of June.  Fortunately for me, I don't have the good sense to be worried about it.  It's all planned out, the RV serviced and repaired where needed.  Conceal carry permit is obtained and the camera charged.

A friend that knows that I am a writer asks me, "Oh, you're going chronical your journey?"  Suddenly, I felt silly.  That hadn't occurred to me.  I don't really expect much excitement or anything unusual to happen.  Who knows, I might be surprised.  I responded with a "Gee, I suppose I should."


There are some folks out there in the ether that post every little thing.  They go to the store and get home and post, "I bought gas today, 15.7 gallons."  Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind that.  There will be 47 comments, ranging from 2.3 gallons on the motorcycle to 48 gallons on the motorhome.  I grin and if I could have remembered what I got for gas yesterday I might have thrown it in there too.  But, I'm not that kind of poster.  I’m a greater commenter than I am to post originals.   


I like to think I’m posting something remotely interesting or thought provoking to somebody.  So why would I journal my road trip?  I suppose I would for memory, the scrapbook or for relatives that are interested.  There might be something of interest enough to post some comments about it when I get back as I expect not to have a lot of WiFi connections along the way. 

Being that this is the first time out in a motorhome, I don’t know what to expect entirely.  It’s an experiment.  I like to have my mobility freedom.  The thing is long.  It isn’t the sort of thing you run down to Safeway in for a bag of chips.  This long trip for a month ought to make up my mind as to how I feel about keeping the RV or trading it off for a trailer or chucking it all together

When out on a road trip on the Harley we hop off the road at a whim.  Something catches our eye, or we see the exit for the world’s largest ball of yarn.  I wonder if we will be as apt to do that with the motorhome. I will post a summary for those that are interested when I get back.

I’ll put on my writer’s cap and try to be observant of details and write those things up on this trip for future use.  I think that there is more value in the stories about a place than the place.  I’m not introverted, but I am not intrusive.  I’m not one to draw people out.  I know that isn’t the best way to be for a writer.  It is just the way I am so I suspect I miss out on some interesting material people might have to offer.  I will make an effort to get some engagement on this trip, to push my comfort zone out a little.  We’ll see how that goes.

Wish us luck.