40-Year Run (cont’d)(5)
FROG. My youth, through high school. Prepare to take a tech writing job, out of
town. To move to a trailer in Wewa and
let the house go. Begin packing, selling
furniture.
GI. Two hitches in USAF, with year at junior
college in between. No job yet. Boxing up my stack. Calling antique dealers. See that Stroll
and Ponder (in progress), Synthesis
(projected), and Three Screenplays
(projected) form a metaseries, Breakthrough,
the first half of the meta-metaseries To
Be Determined. Does that make Scufflin' and To Be Determined a meta-meta-metaseries?
STUDENT. FSU and Tulane. Undergraduate and postgraduate work in
anthropology. Digging Indian middens, burial
mounds, temple mounds, and historic graveyards, slave quarters, stockades. Put The Full Magnolia up for sale. Maybe the azaleas and the dogwoods will
offset the carpet and the paint job.
APPRENTICE. The first nine novels and my chronicle. Working as a potter's helper, laborer, clerk,
janitor, and technical writer. Begin
driving to Tallahassee, looking for
any job, anywhere. Write--if you find
work. File new unemployment claim. Awarded $250/week for 14 weeks. Like finding money in the street. Maybe the worm has turned. Sell furniture at estate sale.
JOURNEYMAN. The years in Delray
Beach, before and after working for IBM. Writing Ten-Year
Run and Deadlock. James King hires a bass player, to replace
his wife, and lets Owen go, with no notice, no unemployment, no severance pay,
no golden handshake. At least he didn't
put him out on the side of the road, 100 miles from his broke-down car, with
the change in his pocket, like the Gillis Brothers did. Welcome to the fellowship of itinerant mendicants,
Owen. BROKE-DICK DOGS of the world,
unite! You have nothing to lose but your
chains. Your bonds. As Paul said to the Ephesians. I remember driving Owen up to South of the
Border, at the North Carolina
line, to join up with James King, thinking that Owen was taken care of, for
awhile, until the next DEBACLE. It just
came sooner than any of us expected, the old ROLLBACK. Owen is a chip off the old BLOCKHEAD. They weren't getting any cherry and he isn't
alone. He is BUSHED. We are all a bushed generation. One of them leitmotifs, or themes. Which see.
MASTER. The years since moving to Panama
City, culminating in my chef-d'oeuvre, Scufflin'. Short.
But I wrote it in a week. And Animal Farm was only 30,000 words. You can see Orwell working out the ideas for
it in his notes, letters to friends, book reviews, and "As I Please"
columns in the Tribune. The Gillis Brothers and David are Folk
Masters 1994 at Wolf Trap and Janice signs with an agent for her
bodice-rippers.
STAGE
FOUR. From the completion of Scufflin' to the present. Into the maelstrom. As nonchalant as a dead pig in the
sunshine. As I write, that looks like a
geographic move and a new economic arrangement.
Foreclosure, eviction, crushing debt.
Having to deal with attorneys, realtors, insurance agents, and bill
collectors. All I need is a bicycle, a
typewriter, and an FM radio. All Brenda
needs is her garden, her chickens, and to be left alone, in peace. See that MASTER and STAGE FOUR combine, to
form POST-MASTERPIECE NOVEL. Sign a
contract to sell the house for less than we owe. We'll have to pay the second mortgage holder
the difference. Move into the trailer
behind Granny Brown and Uncle Wayne.
Move Brenda's plants, her chickens.
My bicycle and my typewriter, my FM radio. We're where we were eight years ago, or when
we moved back from North Carolina,
almost 20 years ago. Or in with my
mother 15 years ago. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Or, home is where, when you have to go there,
they have to take you in.
DOOLALLI
TAP. End STAGE FOUR, begin
TRAILER LIFE. Add TRAILER LIFE on to end
of POST-MASTERPIECE NOVEL. Owen gets a
job with a road band, and flies to Nashville. Balder moves into an apartment at the beach,
where he has a summer job in an amusement park.
Brenda and I are as rich as students, for the first time since leaving
Tulane, although we don't have a pot to piss in. Or is it because
we don't have a pot to piss in. Owen
flunks his try-out and flies home, where he hooks up with a hot picker and
moves to Texas, we think. Rename TRAILER LIFE DOOLALLI TAP. It's such a relief to know what is
wrong. Delete Three Screenplays and add MYTHS AND TEXTS to list. My breakthrough is complete.
BUSHED. The first book is HIDDEN AGENDA. 120 pages.
The Proposal/Outline, Draft Manuscript, Preliminary Manuscript, and Key
to an adventure story set in Tallahassee
and Calhoun County. A small book.
Small is beautiful. None but a
blockhead ever wrote for money, sex, revenge, or office politics. The second book is GULF COAST BLUES. 39 pages.
About writing a book of the same name.
For Big Bend Books in Tallahassee. Then comes DAILY TYPEWRITING. 67 pages.
The aftermath of sending out the first two parts of BUSHED. In limbo, as I wait to hear. Soldier on.
Cut bait, fish, clean up--it's all part of the process. Be prepared.
Then when luck comes, you are ready.
MYTHS
AND TEXTS. We move into the
trailer behind Granny Brown and Uncle Wayne.
I respond to an issue of Stony
Hills with Bukowski eulogies and a reminiscence of Raymond Carver by Curt
Johnson. The myth of the writer
discovered in small presses who goes on to fame and fortune. I drive Owen to Tennessee
to join Doyle Lawson's bluegrass band.
Coming back through Penland, I learn Jack Neff has died. Then, from Lynne Savitt, I learn Patrick
Kelly has died. They illustrated the
covers of Open Book and Evil Genius. Turned down for state grant in poetry. Attend meetings of Literature Panel and send
out open letters to all and sundry in reply.
MATERIAL
CULTURE. Enter first 30 pages in
Jack Kerouac Literary Contest, fiction category. Unload trophy house on Martin
Lake, which we sold so the bank
would not foreclose. We will owe the IRS
$15,158.13, Transamerica $7,620.61, my mother $8,000. Owe Sears, VISA, and Blazer Finance another
$8,000, $1,500 to a second VISA card.
Our assets are $4,000, including both vehicles. My unemployment benefits run out. The teevee dies, Brenda loses both contact
lenses, needs new glasses, and I break a filling on a canine tooth, look like a
derelict at job interviews, if I had a job interview. Continue to send out feuilletons I call
whistle sheets. The Florida
novel as a roman-feuilleton. Or, sheet writing as a bully pulpit. Contents:
houses, cars, bicycles, housewares, boots, hats, typewriters, radios, my
stack. Ask Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest
Fund for $1 million grant to publish Culls.
FRIENDS. See attorney about filing for
bankruptcy. Fill out worksheets. Net worth -$37,065.09. Monthly expenses $1854. Monthly income $1282. We are rich in friends. Memories of 16 of them. Balder working out to get in shape for Marine
Corps boot camp in October, then music school, then a service band in New
Orleans.
BAD
HABITS. Advise attorney to
proceed. Bad habits are cigarettes,
beer, coffee, water, writing, worry. I
have quit cigarettes and beer. Turned
down by Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund.
GARLIC
POWER. From age 50 to 55 I wrote
45 books. I wrote 27 books in the last
18 months. Too much. Now to live in the moment and be grateful for
what I have. I have everything I need. And I got it by simplifying, dropping out of
the rat race, losing everything I thought I wanted. I haven't felt a peace like this since the
grand productive days. File Chapter 7
bankruptcy. Stop looking for a job until
after the meeting with our creditors.
Then, a fresh start. A new
series. A sort of a coda.
HOMESTEAD. Writing Evil
Genius in Pop Cason's house in Delray Beach. Invite the State of Florida
to participate in celebrating Jack Saunders Day, November 30, 1994.
The day I will complete writing 100 novels without selling a word to New
York or Hollywood. The Great American Florida
Novel. Sui generis. Write "Doppelganger, or, Haint,"
for Original Ghost Story Contest.
Includes review of BLASTER: The Blaster Al Ackerman Omnibus.
TORPOR. See that HOMESTEAD
and TORPOR form a Zed Double. Writing Open Book through LEPROUS HOTDOG in Delray
Beach and Panama City. Many side trips to the keys. A Dirt Writer, PE, PI Novel. Find a sea bean, walking on the beach. First one on Florida's
Forgotten Coast. An omen?
WILD
GUITAR. Sell Pop Cason's house
and buy The Full Magnolia. Brenda moves
to Panama City. Both of us downsized by our employers. Owen drops out of high school and joins a
bluegrass band. Write books MOTET to
OVERNIGHT SUCCESS. Start calling the
four books of Poetry as a Way of Life
the Dirt Writer, PE, PI Quartet: Living Hand-to-Mouth. Move Jack Saunders Day ahead to October
15. The Comédie humaine was 90 novels or
novellas. Begin to write book that
turns into CRANK. The first book of a
new series, PI Novel. Begin LAGNIAPPE. The second book of PI Novel. Poems and vignettes.
DOUBLE-OUGHT. Writing Scufflin'
and Write On! The book begins with us both out of
work. Brenda teaches school, is laid
off, goes to work in a prison, as an office automation specialist, after six
more months of unemployment. I work for
IMI, am laid off, and am out of work for 19 months. Lose house, move into trailer, declare
bankruptcy. Owen playing fiddle with
Doyle Lawson. Balder goes off to Marine
Corps boot camp, then six months of music school, then a trumpet slot in the
band in New Orleans. Finish CRANK.
Finish Culls. Celebrate Jack Saunders Day. October
31, 1994. Start STARTING
OVER, the same day. Like Anthony
Trollope. Sufficient unto the day is the
typewriting thereof. The typewriting,
the job search, and the household chores.
The full magnolia. I once had a
house named The Full Magnolia. Now I'm
down to a trailer, Lazaretto. To the
stateroom of a trailer, Sans Souci. As
Peter Rowan says, "Good morning, Mr.
Timeclock,/ there's something you should know./It ain't me that needs
the money,/it's just the people that I owe."
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