PeterSJC

Colin, thanks for the heads-up on the links. I'm just barely learning Google Photos, or whatever they call it. I'll definitely fix the links, but I need to go mow some grass. :) p

...and with that, having extracted everything of value from the episode that I called "Musings," I am placing it in the trash can. It's served its purpose. p

Thanks for your kind words. I see it as one episode (probably not the first) in a series, like television shows where each is more or less a complete story but with continuity between episodes. I have some ideas for Gabriel, whom I invented out of whole cloth. Everything else is very close to events in Lakeview last Saturday . It was a way to avoid the work of research or making stuff up. If I write future episodes, they will also probably be based on things I see here. p

Lake County Chronicles: Town meeting At the corner of U.S. 395 and Safeway, three teenagers were holding a sign and shouting something about a car wash. The closest that George’s Dakota ever got to car washing in Lakeview was when the attendant at Ed’s Fast Break cleaned the windshield. In San Jose, Juan often did the job while the truck was parked in front of the house. George wouldn’t have bothered with it but had learned to be appropriately grateful. Two blocks to the north, a bright-faced stocky boy with blond hair was enthusiastically bouncing a lime-green sign advertising a 4H bake sale in the True Value parking lot. George parked. The sign at the booth said something about Energizer Bunnies. The adult at the booth explained that her club raised rabbits and sold them at the fair. “When I was a kid, we lived in a town smaller than this, but all the cool kids lived out of town, on peach ranches that were on roads named after their families,” George rambled, “and most of them were in 4H. My sister joined, too, but they did sewing and cooking.” “Yes,” replied the sponsor. “We have that, as well as clubs for raising sheep and goats and the like. 4H is very big here.” George paid a dollar for a bag with two M&M peanut butter oatmeal cookies and went into True Value. “I’d like a bag of chicken manure and four of the steer manure blend,” he told the smooth-faced cuddly-bear at the counter, as he pushed his credit card into the machine. “I can load it myself.” As he card lifted the bags from piles at the back of the parking lot, George reflected on how easy it would be to take a few extras. Easy and stupid. In this town, integrity was everything. Five hours later, George drove into the Elks Lodge lot and parked next to a freshly washed new Sheriff’s Department SUV with “In God we trust” painted on the back. It looked as if half of the officers from three different police agencies were there. The sign at the door announced SEN. JEFF MERKLEY TOWN HALL 4:30 PM. George grabbed a flyer for the Elks’ Cow Pie Bingo contest from a table in the foyer. Ten dollars a ticket, only 625 tickets sold; if the cow defecates on your square first, you win $1,000. Nice odds, thought George: they’ll clear about $5K after expenses. Proceeds would be used to support Lakeview Elks programs. Seated at a small table with two clipboards and a roll of tickets, Mona Lynch greeted him enthusiastically. “George! I thought you were going to be out of town. Sign in here, please. Would you like to ask a question?” “Yes, please,” answered George. Mona handed him half of a pair of tickets, and put the other half into a basket. George thought about the question he planned to ask: Senator, with increasing talk of impeaching Donald Trump, you could find yourself deciding whether to put into the White House someone who is actually competent and would be more effective at advancing a Republican agenda you don’t necessarily agree with. Would you be able to rise above partisan considerations to do that? George already knew what the answer had to be—that the senator’s only agenda was to do what’s right for America. The question was designed to embarrass Trump supporters—an overwhelming majority in this part of Oregon—and to drive a wedge between them and the President. George had told his friends that he thought Trump was more useful to Democrats than to Republicans. Agreeing, most of them seemed to think that George was pretty smart to have thought of that. George sat at the table, across from Mona, to help get the attendees greeted and signed in. Most of them knew Mona and the other Democratic co-chair, who had taught some of them when they were in middle school. Dorothy Simms arrived with her two children, sixteen-year-old Carolyn and Gabriel, fifteen. Looking at the two greeters, Dorothy remarked that George’s solid purple tee shirt matched well with Mona’s purple floral blouse. George hadn’t noticed. Mona, in turn, complimented Carolyn’s blue and gold outfit and then asked Gabriel, “What colors do you like?” Gabriel responded with his slightly awkward adolescent voice, “Well, I go more for the more subdued tones, more subtle contrast. Like last week, the afternoon that the temperature dropped and then it rained. I looked up at dark grey clouds and saw a single goose flying under them, gliding, flapping its wings only enough to regain altitude. The goose looked black against the clouds. It took a couple of minutes for it to drift north and over the horizon, and then I noticed the cloud’s contrast with the hunter-green tree leaves, rustling in the wind, and the brownish green of the Warner mountains. It was really beautiful.” His face was glowing as he finished his dissertation. The people nearby listened in rapt silence. “Wow!” said Mona. ”Wow. Are you an artist?” “Not really,” was the reply. “I’m no good at drawing. But I love colors and I like to write.” George was mesmerized. This Gabriel was a kindred spirit, whether he knew it or not. And intelligent. And gorgeous, lithe with lovely full-bodied hair and nearly flawless skin. “If only I were 55 years younger,” he mused to himself wistfully, silently adding, “but knowing what I know now.” Of course, this Tadzio couldn’t have been at all interested in fifteen-year-old ugly-duckling George, either, any more than the old man now. George felt unclean. He wanted to be worthy of being in the boy’s presence. A man wearing cowboy boots, jeans and an open-collared shirt with its sleeves rolled halfway to the elbows came to the table. “Mona, thanks so much. I appreciate everything you do.” Mona looked up, surprised. “Senator Merkley! Good to see you again.” One of the county commissioners—probably a Republican, thought George; they all are—led the Pledge of Allegiance. Standing close to Mona, George hoped nobody else would hear him omit the “under God.” The public stand that he needed to take didn’t have to be too public. Thanking everyone for showing up, the commissioner warmly introduced Senator Merkley. Standing with the lectern behind him, Merkley thanked the commissioner, the Elks Club Exalted Ruler, several people in the audience, and all the rest of the audience. The Senator introduced Carolyn Simms and mentioned some things about her, referring to cue cards he had made previously. Carolyn’s question was about funding for education. Then people in the audience asked their questions as the commissioner drew their tickets from the basket. Realizing that all of the fifteen people with tickets would get their opportunity, George began to feel anxious. One of the questioners thanked Merkley for working with his Democratic and Republican colleagues to beautify the post office. He thanked her for her efforts and said that he had been careful not to step on the grass when he visited it, earlier in the day. Somebody else asked about the recent congressional baseball shooting: would it have helped if more citizens at the scene had been armed, and would Merkley be arming himself (no and no). Other questions addressed regional and national issues. Most of the questions—with the exception of one about the anti-corruption lawsuit that Merkley and 195 other Democratic lawmakers had recently filed against Trump—were not very political in nature. The Senator engaged in friendly dialog with each person who asked a question, while the others politely waited their turn. “Number 351,” announced the Commissioner. Nearly all the numbers had been called. Not needing to look at his ticket, George replied, “Actually, my question has already been answered, so thanks, I’ll pass.’ “Did you ask your question?” George’s brother asked later. “No. That’s not how things are done here.” George silently thanked the God he didn’t believe in, that his number had not been one of the first.

Cole, that may be the most useful piece of advice I have received here. I suspect Chapter 1 won't survive in its present form: it was mostly a character study, and now I have other characters that I am beginning to develop and some ideas about how their paths will cross. As you suggest, pursuing those is more productive than continuing to dwell on the one character who will probably be my primary protagonist. To all of you who have helped me so much, these past few days, thank you. I'll be back. peter

Colin, thanks for your helpful comments. Yes, I agree that "Life was good" is not very interesting, now that you pointed that out. "Life seemed to be good" seems to promise that it is about to take a turn for the worse. I'm thinking something like, "This is good, thought George. I think my life is going to get better," which should raise the reader's skepticism, given George's capacity for self-deception and mood swings. Re-reading this chapter, I am liking the exposition of George's history a lot less than I did when I wrote it. Too much narrative: it reminds me of what I imagine a psychiatrist's notepad might look like at an intake interview. So, I don't know how much of this chapter will survive, though the lawn mowing and goose watching will, somewhere. Someone, perhaps in an AD forum, wrote that a writer should show, rather than tell, so I think I'll want to reveal things about George more incidentally, e.g., with something like " 'Dammit!' He pounded his fist on the table, knocking the glass of milk into his lap. The asshole was right again. George was a total screw-up." Or... "Inside the box he had packed the previous year he saw, unopened, two nanocomputers and a large bag of electronic components." Again, thanks! peter

Cole and James, thanks so much for your encouraging words and guidance. My admiration for what both of you have written makes that all the more meaningful to me. Cole, the short-story thing was a bad idea, but even proposing it and seeing your response helped me to clarify that. To make it work as a short story, I would have to trim (by a lot) the negative musings and then beef up the turn-around and ending to make it sufficiently long and, as James suggested, provide more than just a moment of transcendent beauty. Perhaps if I had the protagonist about to take his own life, and then the transcendent moment—or something else—prompted him to remember some ways he has made a difference in the life of someone who was similarly discouraged, it would work, but that would be a different story. My reason for including such extensive musings in Chapter 1 was that I wanted to put as much of George's background as possible out there, before focusing on the thrust of the story—how a socially and politically conservative small town changes a rather bitter liberal old guy who moves there from a big city. (As I have stated in other forums here, my favorite stories involve redemption in one form or another.) I'm still working out how to do that. James, I like your suggestion of getting other characters involved soon. I have already been working on a couple of them. I think The Americanization of Alex S. is a great example how an old person and a youngster can touch each other's lives. So, thank you both, and anyone else who has been kind enough to read what I wrote. My take-away from this is that I have a lot of work ahead of me. With your indulgence, I will post some of my (hopefully better) intermediate efforts here. peter

My first attempt at serious fiction. Some comments and questions after the story. ------------------- Musings As he pushed the lawn mower back and forth over eighteen-inch grass, Georges Gilbert Celeste Latourette, George to his friends, was glad he had torn himself from the computer. He invested most of his waking hours in front of it, engaging in constructive pursuits like editing Wikipedia articles, writing impassioned political Facebook essays—read by others with similar points of view, and reading stories at his favorite internet site. Stories about well-adjusted, athletic, clear-skinned teenagers with full heads of hair, who stood up to bullies and found romance with other teens like themselves. He spent countless additional hours secretly playing mindless games and viewing online porn after everyone else had gone to bed, making himself more depressed as he tried to ignore a sense of impending doom regarding the consequences of his procrastinations. George was enjoying the physical activity. Maybe it would keep him from having another heart attack, though that seemed unlikely, given the ice cream binges at his brother’s house, where he had been crashing for a year now, and the desserts and extra portions of somewhat nutritious food at the Lake County Senior Center, three days a week. Extrapolating from his grandfather’s fatal heart attack at age 46, and his father’s at 65, he thought there might be some hope. On the other hand, both of his parents had gotten type 2 diabetes and George had recently graduated into prediabetes. It was hard to stay motivated, and he sometimes thought that an early death would save him from Alzheimer’s and provide some money for his relatives and causes that he supported. The grass surrounded one of his rental houses, currently empty. Much of the grass was somewhat shorter, but the yard was large, like many yards in Lakeview and unlike the meager weed patch surrounding his house in San Jose. This job would end up taking a few hours and two refills of gasoline. George used the time to think about his plans for the yard. There would be a passive solar greenhouse, partially buried and containing enough thermal mass to avoid spending nonrenewable energy and money on heat during the winter, when temperatures sometimes dropped below zero, Fahrenheit. And vegetables, enough to eat healthy salads all year. He was currently making do with overpriced organic produce from Lakeview’s only supermarket and, occasionally, that same produce after it expired and found its way onto the Senior Center freebie bench. He also wanted to set up a workshop in the building behind the house where he was mowing. It would have a woodworking section—George could begin to use the joinery tools that he had purchased over the years—and an electronics section where he could learn how to program Arduino and Raspberry computers to set up a home security system and automation for the greenhouse. The Arduino and electronic components that he had purchased a couple of years ago were still in their boxes, so he might need to buy another nanocomputer to take advantage of the latest technology. Of course he would never do any of those things, just as he would never free himself from his possessions. His house in San Jose was a badly organized warehouse, filled with four dead people’s stuff. Uncomfortable Victorian chairs and fine display cabinets filled with beautiful things that George and Héctor had bought together. The entire contents—paintings, furniture, and junk—of Richard’s parents’ house. And all of Richard’s things. Richard had been a shopaholic, acquiring arguably useful items for twelve years before hanging himself in the hallway, leaving George to deal with it all. George knew that if only he could haul everything to the dump and fix up the house, he would get enough rent money to buy things he liked better, sufficient to fill another house. But, like most of his other plans, that would never happen: it was too hard to let go. He would do to his relatives what Richard had done to him, except for the hanging part. All he needed to do was eat as he had been eating, sleep as he had been sleeping, and take his medicines as consistently as he had been taking them. His name had been a gift, sixty-eight years earlier, from his father, Dr. John Francois Latourette, Junior. It had created problems for him as a child, especially when the principal read it at his eighth-grade graduation. Celeste? Celeste! And badly pronounced, as if he were two Georges. The names were a tribute to his Huguenot ancestor Georges de la Tourette and Georges’s brother Gilbert-Celeste, and to his famous distant relative, Dr. Georges Gilles de la Tourette. The brothers’ great-grandparents had fled from France to Switzerland after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, eventually reaching England. Seeking more freedom and opportunity, Georges and Gilbert-Celeste crossed the Atlantic in 1700 and settled in Manakin Town, Virginia, where they built a house, bought some slaves, and became Americans. The story was a source of family pride—except the part about the slaves, of whom George learned only as an adult. But to George the child, his name had been one more example of how his father wanted their family to be different, better than families that had televisions, drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes, cussed, and had extramarital sex. Families whose dads let their sons use bad grammar, who played catch with them and took them to baseball games. John had wanted George to be better than his less intelligent classmates. When other kids made fun of his name, George told them about his illustrious relatives, which alienated him from them even more. Well, George thought, Dad got his wish. John was an accomplished but pathetic man who passed his lack of emotional intelligence onto his son. He’d gotten his other wish, too. Having heard, “When will you ever amount to anything?” many times as a child, George had fulfilled the implied prediction. But John’s biggest sin was that he never taught George how to have fun or experience joy. How could he have? As he pushed the lawn mower, George pursued his favorite fantasy: going on a one-way trip to when he was a kid, but with the knowledge he had as an adult. This time, he wouldn’t waste his life. He had spent a lot of time in libraries and on the internet to prepare himself. Smarter than everyone else, he would become a visionary teenager, warning the world about carbon dioxide and HIV and standing up for civil liberties and racial justice. He could prevent the AIDS epidemic before it happened and get a Nobel Prize for that. He would get to have sex and romance with guys like the ones in the stories. Put that asshole algebra teacher in his place. Have a perfect put-down for the guy who gave him grief over a sweater that his grandmother had bought for him at a rummage sale. Best of all, after his father used a coat hanger on his bare buttocks, he would say, “Asimov was right: violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” Of course this would earn him another spanking, but he would take the pain without crying. His experience as a BDSM bottom would help with that. He would goad his father into beating him until the police hauled him off for child abuse. Maybe almost seven decades is enough, he mused. People didn’t live much longer than that, anyway. But first he had to straighten out his affairs. He finished the mowing. A good afternoon’s work, but not really progress: the grass would only grow back. He noticed he still had some time to work on his current carpentry project, constructing a pair of garage doors. Attached to the workshop, the “garage” was more like a carport, with a sloping roof and a trapezoidal opening in the in the front. Doors would allow the tenants to store their stuff, as he was keeping the workshop for himself. The work went slowly: George had many nice tools but meager skill. Still, he enjoyed using his creativity to solve problems like putting a door into a non-rectangular opening adjacent to the main building’s eaves. Using a spirit level and protractor to measure the roof slope—not very accurately, it turned out—George tried to visualize exactly how he would need to cut the 10 foot piece of 2 by 10 lumber. The board had to be wide enough to attach just behind the front rafter, but not so wide as to hit the transverse slats supporting the sheet metal. His mind wandering, he looked up at the sky, now a deep gray though sunset was not due for another three hours. He saw a lone goose gliding below the clouds, barely moving except for an occasional wing flap to regain a bit of altitude. Those wings, along with its long neck and extended feet, defined a shape that reminded George of a kite. Very slowly, it drifted north and over the horizon. The dark goose, dark green tree leaves fluttering in an increasing wind, and brownish green of the Warner Mountains contrasted with the clouds in understated elegance. The temperature had gone unusually low for June, but the inside of the truck would still be warm. George climbed down the ladder and blew into his hands to warm them as he basked in the wonder of what he had just seen. Looking toward the garage, he noticed something on the roof. Could it be his brother’s favorite framing hammer? Yes! Having misplaced it two days earlier, he’d imagined it waiting to become a lawn-mowing casualty. He retrieved it and noticed the lack of any new rust. Life was good. -------------------- My first draft of this started with George coming off the ladder and seeing the goose. But that seemed too short, even for flash fiction, and I wanted to explain the significance of "life was good." Eventually, I came to see it as the opening episode of a story, tentatively called Lakeview Chronicles, about a gay senior citizen moving to a small town, finding that he had brought his demons with him (and sometimes fighting them), and finding some moments of happiness. There will be realistic descriptions of the problems and satisfactions of old age, a lot of old people and probably numerous younger characters, hopefully, if I somehow learn how to write credibly about teenagers along the way. Not much action, but less introspection than in this introduction to George's character. No dramatic ending or happy-ever-after, unless I can find a way to make that believable. The story could be open-ended, but episodes will build on previous ones. So, here are my questions: Did the story hold your attention? Would it hold the attention of the kinds of people who read the tales in Awesome Dude? Would this be viable as a stand-alone short story? Any suggestions or other comments—even those like "this was so boring I couldn't finish it" or "I never got to the point where I cared about the protagonist"—will be gratefully received. Thank you! peter

Cole, authors are often advised, "Write what you know." My first story, if I ever write it, will be about an old man who came out to himself as an adult. When He Was Five so perfectly captures childhood—or is it an idealized childhood?—in a way that I could not begin to do. I have been fortunate enough to be a part of the life of a young former neighbor, now six years old, and everything I've read in this story rings true. If you care to share, I would like to hear how you manage to capture the essence of a childhood and adolescence from which you are presumably far removed. p

I just went back and re-read this. It's just as good now as it was a few years ago. A wise and loving parent and the sweetest kid that you can imagine impart their gifts to each other, and we readers get to watch. No villains, no drama, just a lot of warm fuzzies. I know I have said this before about some of Cole's other stories, but this one has to be his best!

Oh, but it is a chapter. The GA web page says so: "FIRST CHAPTER Chapter 1". :) There doesn't seem to be a way for a short story or novella at GA not to be a chapter. I concur with all you guys: it is a very nice story. p

I tend to like "journal" stories, and this is one of my favorites. Fifteen-year-old Reggie initially hates his school assignment—to keep a journal for 16 weeks—but warms to it as the process helps him gain insight and maturity. At the same time, the story that Reggie tells was interesting enough that I stayed up to read it, until I fell into bed, and finished it after I woke up. This story breaks the general rule that you need a villain to keep the reader from getting bored: all of the important characters are quite sympathetic. I especially liked the aphorisms, written in boldface type, which Reggie inserted into his narrative. They started out pretty lame, then became one-line jokes worthy of a good stand-up comedian, and eventually were quite profound. http://www.themustardjar.com/journalhome.html p

Chapter 11: Ah, good things come to those who wait patiently—and even to those of us who react before we see where the author is taking us. I should have trusted Cole more. I like the way everything seemed to come together in Chapter 11.

I like most of what Nigel has written, but this is one of his best, IMO. The first time I read it, I missed a lot of stuff; on subsequent passes, I kept discovering new gems. Bravo!

Yeah, I have been wondering that, too, and if the story were more about Reggie, I would expect Cole to show us some answers. For now, the focus seems to be on David and the campers.

Chapter 9... OK, I have no doubt that Cole will give Luther what he deserves in a future chapter. What bothers me about this chapter is David's and especially Reggie's response when a camp counselor bullies a 13-year-old camper, threatens a sexual assault on him, and then attempts to carry it out. (Yes, I consider the towel incident sexual assault.) At the very least, the adults in this story needed to get him off the island immediately. Simply humiliating him in the pugilistic equivalent of pool sharking is inappropriate, and it gives the campers a message that Reggie is not serious about making the camp safe for them. Just saying. I still like the story a lot and look forward to each new chapter, but this part strains my credulity. I realize that my criticism may be premature—we'll have to see. p

I seem to be painting myself into that corner, but that doesn't quite "feel" right, for reasons that I find hard to articulate. By "dramatic improvement in the trajectory ," I mean that the person was headed in a bad direction and then turns around. I think growth tends to be a more gradual evolution, though it, too, can be triggered by a crisis. I may have been overstating my case in saying that Ren is about Ren's redemption——really, it is more about his growth. I do think the term fits David's situation better. Perhaps an essential part of redemption is that the person is forced to confront demons that s/he has not dealt with before. Or maybe not. In a story, not yet posted online, that I recently read, a "good" person has a dramatic improvement in his life by accepting the kindness and good advice of others.

I suspect Luther won't be redeemed in this story—though it might happen in a sequel—because the story seems to be coming to an end. I think this story is mostly about David's redemption. Redemption is my favorite theme in fiction. It doesn't require that the person be initially evil: in this story, David is being redeemed from his mediocrity. For redemption to work well in a story, IMO, we need to see it from the POV of the person being redeemed. For that reason, I didn't find Hec's redemption in Ren very interesting: he goes off to military school (IIRC) and comes back a changed person. Hec's redemption was important primarily because Ren's actions set it in motion. Ren is basically about Ren's redemption, IMO. Obviously, I am taking a broader view of redemption. I would define it as a usually painful process of internal struggle that results in a dramatic improvement to the trajectory of a person's life. p

Merkin, I completely agree. As a reader, I suspend disbelief and understand that the trajectory of the story serves many purposes, including the development of character and the maintenance of suspense and drama. Completely true-to-life stories are usually kind of boring.

Chapter 8... OK, Cole will undoubtedly resolve this in Chapter 9, but I just gotta say that at this point Reggie probably has a legal obligation, not only to fire Luther and get him off the island, but also to report the attempted sexual assault. I understand not wanting to subject Nick to a possibly traumatic interview with a law-enforcement officer or social worker, but Luther's behavior has gotten beyond the point where do-it-yourself justice is appropriate, IMO.

"And then it all blew up"?! Oh no, a cliffhanger! Mr. Parker, you are an evil man! :) I usually wait until a story is complete, before beginning to read it. This time, I slipped up, and now I'm hooked. I think I have said this about several of your stories, but this is one of your best. David, with his combination of laissez faire and nurturing, is a role model for us all. This is basically a feel-good story, with happy outcomes likely for all of the characters except Luther. In some ways it reminds me of Camp, a movie I have watched several times. I am happy that you are already laying the groundwork for a sequel. It will be fun to watch all the characters—including David—continue to grow. p

Bravo!

I really enjoyed this story. First, it showed an example of great parenting: I wish my own father had been more like that. At the same time, the father in that story is giving the reader good advice on finding the balance between assertiveness and overreacting. And I liked seeing the boy's growth as, encouraged by his father, he found his own creative solutions to his problems. And of course, I enjoyed seeing the haberdasher being gently put in his place. Great story!

Thank you. It's a great story, and I am so glad it has not been lost.