Tag Archives: writing

Dec22

Christmas Shopping

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Ever since the wise men brought gifts to a not so baby Jesus back at the beginning of Christmases, gift giving has been an important part of the holiday season. Now for years out of time immemorial, gifts were usually handmade and created by the giver or at least traded for. Gift shopping as we recognize it didn’t exist. Eventually, that all changed with the rise of commercialism and merchandising until we reached the state we are in today when Christmas shopping is the keystone of many retailers’ budgets for the year, and the “holiday season” begins closer and closer to Halloween, if not earlier since I saw Christmas displays out at Cracker Barrel alongside witches and black cats this year.

I have been part of Christmas shopping throughout my life and I have noticed some serious changes over the years. I started in-store Christmas shopping with my Aunt Cathy when I was big enough to keep up with her in the stores. Now Aunt Cathy was not one to shop early. As a wag once put it in a comedy routine, Aunt Cathy liked to wait until Mary’s water broke to go shopping. As a result, more than once, she and I would be out on Christmas Eve looking for her last minute gifts for the family. She also loves to remind me to this day how she sought far and wide for Star Wars figures and play sets the year the movie came out. Oh how I wish I’d left those in their original packaging.

I also shopped with Mama for Christmas. Back then, it wasn’t unusual for her to start shopping in September because almost all the Christmas gifts would spend some amount of time on “lay-away” at K-Mart or Sky City. Lay-away, for the younger readers I may have, was a type of buy on time arrangement where one would gather up all the treasures destined for the tree into a shopping cart which then got pushed to the “lay-away department” of the store. Once there, a down payment of a certain percentage got put on the merchandise. Then, each successive paycheck until the week before Christmas, you would come in and pay some on what you had on “lay-away.” It was a time honored tradition that sadly has gone the way of the dodo bird in today’s modern retail landscape. For a time though, it shined as a way to get presents for everyone while living from paycheck to paycheck. One interesting thing about lay-away was you often forgot exactly what you had on lay-away so making the final payment and collecting your booty was as exciting for you as it would be for the people the presents were destined for.

Mama moved away from lay-away with Palmetto Bank’s launch of the Christmas Club. This was a novel savings account where, starting in January, Mama would deposit a set amount of each paycheck into the Christmas Club account. The money would grow week by week throughout the year as more was added. Then, the week of Thanksgiving, Mama and the rest of the Christmas Club members would withdraw their funds with a little interest to boot in time for the yearly pandemonium known as Black Friday.

Ah, Black Friday. Honestly, it doesn’t mean much anymore. So-called Black Friday sales begin weeks before the Friday after Thanksgiving. Not much is left to go on sale anymore. There was a time, though, when Black Friday was an exercise in danger and deceit second to none. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, you would pick a newspaper up with all the sales flyers for the various stores. Then, you would spread the flyers out on the table at home and you and your loved ones would plan out your attack.

For many years, Black Friday itself was a riotous event. Sales would begin at 4:00 AM with the doorbusters for the day. Hordes of people would line up outside the mall and the Wal-mart waiting the chance to charge the doors to be the first to get to the item they coveted. That’s if they weren’t one of the hardy breed who had been camped outside the store for a few days to get the best place in line. I know it sounds insane to read about, but my goodness, you had to be there. See, each store only carried two or three, maybe ten at most, of the biggest ticket items like TVs and Tickle Me Elmoes in the store. A lot more than ten people wanted those items.

Every year, the news would have coverage of people being sent to the hospital because they had been trampled in the crush to get in the doors. Also, it wasn’t unusual to see several fistfights in the parking lots between seventy and eighty year old women contesting the purchase of something the other wanted. Here’s just an example: one year in my childhood, the Cabbage Patch Doll was the item of the season. Parents were rabid about securing one of these ugly cloth dolls with a fake birth certificate for their children. Store crew members had to be stationed where the dolls were kept to referee the bloodsport taking place as the dolls flew off the shelves. Grown women were ripping these dolls away from each other so their daughter could have one. It was so bad, news agencies were warning parents not to let their children take the dolls out to play before Christmas because people were stopping on the side of the road to snatch dolls from little kids’ arms. It was crazy.

Budge and I took place in some Black Friday craziness for a few years. We lined up outside Wal-mart before dawn to be early into the store. We got a few good deals, but truthfully, we were more there to people watch than to actually get any “have to” items. We’d watch the craziness around us until about nine o’clock, then we’d go to the nearest Waffle House to eat breakfast. We haven’t done that in years though. It was just too crazy.

Things got even crazier when, several years ago, stores started opening on Thanksgiving Day, but you couldn’t buy anything until midnight of Black Friday. What happened then was surreal. Huge pallets of something like DVD players would be dropped all over the store to spread out the madness. Those DVD players might be in the frozen food section, while the toy of the year was in the sporting goods aisle. Then, at the stroke of midnight, a store worker would slit the plastic wrapping the pallets and the frenzy would begin. Again, fistfights were common as people who had been standing with their hands on a DVD player since 8:00 had it ripped away by some johnny come lately. Thankfully, that madness ended with the COVID pandemic. Stores no longer opened on Thanksgiving Day and even when the pandemic was deemed over, the idea of giving workers time off shockingly stuck around. Even Wal-mart is closed on Thanksgiving these days.

Now, all that madness is obsolete. Budge and I haven’t been out for a present in five years or more. Our secret? Not really a secret, but ONLINE SHOPPING! It is the greatest. As we’ve gotten older, neither one of us likes a big crowd so sitting at home behind a laptop in a cyberstore is fantastic. Since we only buy for each other, it does cause problems with trying to keep stuff hidden from the other. Each of us has the gifts for the other sent here to the house. It makes things interesting. Still, online is the only way to go. I have all Budge’s presents hidden in the house ready to give to her on Christmas Day and never had to go anywhere! All my presents are piled up on her side of the bedroom and I am forbidden to touch anything under pain of eyebrow hairs being plucked.

So Merry Christmas to you all, and I hope you get those last minute gifts bought with either a run to the late sales at the store, or some overnight shipping from online. In any event, love y’all, and keep those feet clean. See you in the new year.

Jun26

Newest Sign I’m Aging

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Budge’s Dad always said getting old wasn’t for sissies or the faint hearted. Lately, I’ve been realizing exactly what he meant. I turned fifty and the wheels just fell off the apple cart. I’m up and down all night because I’ve suddenly developed a bladder the size of a walnut. When I wake up in the morning, I can’t just hop out of bed and get going like I could in my thirties. Now, I have to take roll call of all the body parts who will be taking part in this morning’s arising. Need to make sure the feet and legs are on board with the program and aren’t planning on ditching at the first sign of weight. The arms and chest have to say they’ll be willing to balance things, and of course, the old brain has to agree to run this whole sorry show one more day. Then I can get up . . . after I stretch a bit for safety’s sake.

Still, one thing I’ve been proud of as I’ve gotten older is my flexibility has remained a staple in my life. I can still sit in the floor cross-legged to work on something. I can get up from the floor with relative ease for a guy my size. Walking doesn’t hurt, which is wonderful. Or, it was until a few weeks ago. I went to sit in the floor Indian style and my left hip screamed out in pain like someone stabbed it with an ice pick. I had to wobble around on the floor some in order to get into a comfortable position. Getting up was a chore as well, since my left leg just didn’t want to play along. I noticed walking was becoming difficult as my left hip and knee started paining constantly. I was at a loss.

I wasn’t terribly concerned though because the pain was mostly manageable. I had my yearly checkup with my primary care doctor and I mentioned the new ache to her. She offered to have a set of x-rays done or set me up with some physical therapy, but I told her I’d just wait and see what happened. Well, what happened was ten days later I could barely walk. Every time I put my foot on the floor, pain shot through my knee and hip. I got in touch with my doctor and asked for a referral to an orthopedic doctor. She set me up and the wait to go see him was the longest two weeks of my life. I had to officiate my step-dad’s funeral while waiting and I was almost in tears, from grief, yes, but also because standing felt like nails being driven into my hip and knee.

Finally, the day came for my appointment. By that time, a slow shuffle was about the best I could manage. I got checked in, and the nurse took me back and had me change into an x-ray suit because my shorts had metal in them. Then I went for x-rays. I have to say that was the most thorough set of x-rays I’ve ever had. They included measuring devices and four different poses and the way they had me turn and contort was pure agony on my leg. I was so happy when they finished.

My nurse took me back to the exam room and I got changed out of those horrid shorts to wait on the doctor. He bounded in and shook my hand heartily so I immediately asked him how old he was. He said he was thirty-seven. I told him it didn’t matter, but I was at the age where I just wanted to know if my doctors were older or younger than me. Trust me, the older crowd is getting thinner and thinner. He had me lie down on the table and manipulated my knee. It didn’t hurt at all. It was my old smooth working knee. Then, he torqued my hip. I almost came off the table. White hot pain shot through my hip like lightning. He smiled and asked me if that hurt. I pointed out to him a special place in Hell awaits smartass doctors, and he laughed. He said my knee was perfect, absolutely nothing wrong with it. My hip, though, was another story.

He took out his phone and pulled up my x-rays. First he showed me my pristine knee. He said I wouldn’t have to worry with it for years. My right hip was also lovely. It had a clear band where the cartilage separated the hip socket from the hip ball. The left hip was a disaster. The nice clear band of cartilage was replaced by spiky things that filled up the entire space between the ball and socket. He gave me the bad news. My left hip was bone on bone and had become severely arthritic. That grinding is what was causing me pain.

Then, he gave me my options to fix it. He said I could take Celebrex for the pain and that would work for awhile. He told me shots into my hip wouldn’t do any good but if I wanted to go that route just to see, he’d set me up with one of his partners and I could try and proved him wrong. Physical therapy would make things worse. The only thing that could provide me permanent relief is a new hip. He said he’d done hundreds and it would be an outpatient surgery. I was borderline body mass that he liked to work with, but I was in spec so it wouldn’t be a problem. All I had to do was tell him when to set the surgery up. I asked him for the largest dose of Celebrex and some time to think. He said that was fine because it wasn’t going to get any worse.

See, I have a strange reason for not wanting to get a hip replacement right now. Budge is in pain from her hip – also the left one – but she can’t have a hip replacement because they told her her body mass index is too high. She’s taking Lyrica to get through the day but the only real relief will be a hip replacement. I don’t want to get one because I don’t feel it’s fair for me to walk around pain free with a new hip when she is still in lots of pain almost daily. She says that is a silly reason and I need to get it done so I can help her. I’m thinking about it.

Right now, I take a huge dose of Celebrex every morning and limp a little through the day. I have to be careful how I sit in the floor now to do things like clean the cat boxes. Walking is okay, but a wrong step still reminds me that hip needs replacing. So, here I am. I’m going to have to decide between my principles and my pain. Right now, I’m hold steady with principles. Budge is having a hip shot on Monday to see if that will help because the source of her pain is not arthritis like mine is so she’s got different options. If it helps her, I may schedule a surgery over her Christmas break. We’ll see.

Until then, remember I love y’all and keep those feet clean!

May29

My Funerals

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My stepdad passed away last Saturday. He’d battled congestive heart failure for a long time and it finally got the best of him. To be honest, I’m surprised he made it as long as he did. After Mama died, I thought for sure he was going to grieve himself to death or die of a broken heart. He rallied though, and made it another thirteen years. We laid him to rest today. I preached his funeral.

That surprises many people when I mention anything to do with preaching, but I do, in fact, hold an ordination as a Minister of the Gospel from the church where I grew up. My great uncle and grandfather were the main two members of my ordination council. I’ve performed nine funerals and four weddings. It’s mostly for family, but a couple of the weddings were for former students.

Today’s was the probable last funeral I’ll do, unless something unexpected comes up. Budge has told me I am absolutely not to do her funeral, but I am to sit in the front row and cry like a baby. I don’t see that being much of a problem should something happen to her. She doesn’t really want a funeral anyway. Instead, she wants a party. I’ll do my best but I can’t make any promises. I’ll probably shrivel up and die if something happens to her anyway.

Funerals are hard. Trying to give comfort to a grieving family and tie up the end of a person’s life is a weighty thing. I’ve been extremely fortunate in that eight of the nine funerals I’ve done or helped with have been for believers. Now at this point, if you aren’t a believer, first, I’m surprised you’re still reading this blog and you must have been directed here by a search engine, and two, don’t fill up my comments section with how silly it is to have faith in anything. Everyone has faith in something. Even atheists have faith that nothing exists after death, so everybody’s got some kind of faith.

Anyway, I’ve had the majority of funerals be for Christians. Most of them, really strong Christians like my great-grandmother, Big Granny, or my great-aunt Elizabeth, who were both founding members of the church where I was ordained. Preaching the funeral of an unbeliever is the hardest and saddest thing I’ve ever had to do as a Christian. It’s disingenuous to give the family false hope.

That’s where trouble lies, especially in the South. Everybody thinks he or she is a Christian and, unless specifically told otherwise, so is everyone around them. That’s just not the case. Ultimately, of course, the Final Judgement will be conducted by God the Father and Jesus Christ, so I’m not saying I KNOW this person went to Heaven and this other person went to Hell, but let’s just say someone who dies screaming in his hospital bed that “they” are coming to get him and he can see the flames, probably doesn’t have a date with the Gates of Pearl. Again, though, God is merciful so I’m not going to tell a family their loved one is definitely going to Hell either. It’s not my place.

In cases like that, it’s best just to speak to the needs of the family for closure and avoid any judgement calls. That’s what I had to do for the first funeral I ever preached. It was terrible. She was my cousin and a teenager. She lead a wild and dissolute life and died in a horrible car crash within sight of her home. I was the second preacher for that funeral and I just spoke about God’s love and grace to the undeserving and let the older, more experienced pastor handle the thorny questions.

I’ve done the funeral of my great-grandmother, like I said, and two of my great-aunts. They were easy as pie. They were all Godly women who lived a good long life, except for Aunt Betty. She died in a car crash, but she was still older. I just turned to Proverbs 31 and read about the virtues of a Godly woman. It was the easiest thing ever. Mama always said the best funerals are preached while we live, then all that’s left for the preacher to do is tie everything up in a nice bow, say a prayer, and shake hands with the family.

My Papa John was a hard funeral for me. He was a strong believer. In fact, he’d been my pastor growing up. His death started the introspection into my faith, deciding just what I did and did not believe. His death wasn’t unexpected, but it came suddenly when it came. Watching Mama on the front row of chairs while an October rain beat down on the funeral home tent made it hard to concentrate on what I was saying. She was so bereft and forlorn. She never really was the same after that day.

Now HER funeral was THE hardest one I ever did. Losing Mama rocked me to my very core. I honestly didn’t know what I believed in any more and yet I had to stand in front of her casket and tell soothing stories about her life and how great she was, which wasn’t hard because she was great, but at the same time I was wrestling with doubts and wonderings of my own that would really affect me for over two years after she died. It was a beautiful day for her funeral though. Ten o’clock on a crisp, bright March morning just like she wanted. No visitation. No one looking at her when they didn’t have the common decency to come see her when she was sick.

Today’s funeral for Rob wasn’t awful. Rob was a believer, if a little rough around the edges. His only goal for the last thirteen years had been to die and go be with Mama. I might have mentioned that a time or two during my remarks. It was a motley crew of us at the graveside. Suits and ties mingled with ripped jeans and band t-shirts. I wore Crocs because that’s how Rob knew me. He would have been confused if I’d been standing up there in a black suit and tie.

I read a lot of Bible at his funeral. I went Old and New Testament, picking out some of my favorite verses along the way. I was terrified of screwing something up since today’s funeral was the last of my responsibility to Rob. The last thing Mama said to me before she lost consciousness was please watch after Rob. I’ve spent the last thirteen years making sure he had a roof over his head and car insurance so he could drive. I helped with bills. I loved Rob anyway because he was so good to Mama. The family was completely satisfied with how I conducted the service. My step-aunts’ pastor was at the graveside and he was very complementary of what all I said, so in all it was a success.

So that’s the story of my funeral ministry. I’ll always be available for family or anyone who needs me to preach their funeral, but it never gets “easy.” It’s always a big responsibility. Now y’all know that I love you, and make sure to keep your feet clean.

Dec26

Holiday Summary 2024

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Christmas has come and gone for the year and except for New Year’s, the holidays are past. To be honest, Budge and I don’t really consider New Year’s a holiday much anymore since it takes all our energy to stay up and watch the ball drop. It was an eventful holiday season this year; much more than I would have liked it to be.

Budge got out of school the Friday before Thanksgiving for a dentist appointment. She knew she was about to be out six weeks, so what’s one more day? We went to the dentist; it was fine except Budge has to get a crown in January, but other than that, no big deal.

Tuesday before Thanksgiving though, the real adventure started. We had to be at the hospital at 5:30 AM for Budge to have her hysterectomy. She’s been angling for a hysterectomy for a couple of years now for various reasons I won’t go into here, but finally her doctor and our insurance got on the same page and approved the surgery. She went back about 7:30 AM for the procedure to begin. I went to the Chik-Fil-A there at the hospital and got some breakfast.

I got back to the waiting room, and waited. Budge’s doctor came out about 9:45 AM and told me the operation was successful and everything was fine and I should see Budge in about thirty minutes. Well, those thirty minutes turned into nearly three hours with no word from anyone about anything. I finally got called back to see her and got an explanation for what went wrong. Her pain was out of control, so they gave her a variety of pain killers at once. That made her blood pressure tank. I mean, really low. Scary low. They pumped her full of fluids to get her blood pressure back up, but the couldn’t give her anything else for pain except Tylenol.

After much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, they got her in a room and I went to see her settle in. Looked like everything was going fine. She was supposed to stay one night and come home the next day. That was before Missy appeared on the scene. Missy was Budge’s CNA. She was helping Budge into bed when she let go and Budge fell onto the bed on her left side. She said then that it felt like she’d broken a rib, but thankfully she hadn’t.

What HAD happened was one of the paths the surgeon used to do the hysterectomy lapriscopically had burst. When Budge got up a few minutes later to go to the bathroom, she was bleeding like no tomorrow. She naturally thought it was from where her uterus had been, but they soon figured out it was from the surgery channel. I could go into a lot of detail about what all this incurred, but to hit the high points, Budge developed a huge hematoma in her left abdomen that was bleeding. It took two days to get the hematoma partially drained and the bleeding to stop. Instead of one night, she stayed three nights, including Thanksgiving in the hospital.

We got her home and I played nurse to her. At first, I had to help her up and down out of her chair. That lasted about a week. Then she was able to get about, but I usually still helped her, and sometimes still do, because her belly is sore. It still looks like she was in a car wreck with all the bruising, and it’s still bleeding just a tiny bit so she has to wear a surgical dressing on that side.

So, I tended her for the last month as best as I could. For two weeks we got meals from different friends and families and we are extremely thankful for that because early on she did not feel like getting out anywhere. Now though, she is getting around on her own for the most part, even though I still help her some. She’s supposed to go back to school when classes start up on January 6, but we’ll see.

Well, that’s the scary part of the holidays. Compared to that, everything else has been fine. We didn’t get out to Christmas shop, because why would you when you have the power of the Internet to do it for you? Except for a few close friends we exchange small gifts with, Budge and I only buy for each other anymore. It makes me sad, but the majority of people we used to get gifts for are no longer with us.

Used to, we’d have a big gathering of friends and family at Mama’s house on Christmas Eve. Budge would help her get the food ready and I would run to the store when needed. Christmas Day when Granny Wham was still alive, we would go to Daddy’s for his side of the family to have a dinner or a supper, depending on who could come when. Papa Wham died the year before Budge and I married, so she never got to spend Christmas with him. When I was little, Granny Wham fixed all the food and everyone came to her house on Christmas Day, but Lord, that’s been nearly forty years ago since we were able to do that.

We had a quiet Christmas at home yesterday. We usually go to some friend’s house to see what their six kids got for Christmas, but Budge didn’t feel like it this year and I wasn’t too excited about it myself with all that has happened so we stayed home and opened gifts. We both got things we wanted and expected along with things we didn’t expect. Neither one of us is easy to buy for. Then we put a pot of chili on to cook for the day and we just dozed for a while then went out to get some snacks for lunch. We ate our chili and that was Christmas.

So, that’s our Christmas season. I hope all of you had a Merry Christmas and I hope the new year makes all your dreams come true, but to tell the truth, I wouldn’t count on it considering the state of the world. But in the mean time, know I love y’all and keep your feet clean.

Nov4

Mayday! Mayday! We’re Going Down In Flames!

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hindenburg-wide

Unfortunately, that’s not a Led Zeppelin album cover, but a fairly close rendition of the state of my project.

I thought y’all might like a progress report on my project for NaNoWriMo. After all, I did make a big splashy announcement in my last post about how I was going to finally start that novel so many people have been pestering me about. Well, here is my report:

OH LORD! The HUMANITY! THE HORROR!

Truthfully, I don’t think Hemingway or Faulkner either one did it this way. Of course, they were most likely drunk during the entire time they were writing so they may not have noticed anyway. The short precise’ is, this has so far been an unmitigated disaster, heavy on the unmitigated-ness. Let me give a bit of a rundown.

First, for over a week before Friday, I would have trouble falling asleep because the characters and plot points were dancing like sugar plums in my feverish little mind. I practically had the entire first chapters ready to go, and I was just waiting on Friday to begin like the rules stated. Woke up Friday ready to start . . . nothing. The blank page with the accusing little blinking cursor at the top was a Xerox of my mind. Everything was gone as completely as degaussed hard drive. I had one page of notes I’d made and I started getting them somewhat organized, but everything else was, to quote Mortal Kombat, “Toasty!”

On top of my sudden loss of information, I started suffering from my first cold of the season. My head was completely stuffed and my chest — the real worry — was as tight as Dick’s hatband. I was wheezing and trying to cough, but the cough was nice and dry and hacky. Long experience with my doctor let me know it would be futile as resisting the Borg to bother scheduling an appointment. Dr. Lopez does not believe in antibiotics for “colds.” I agree, since colds are viral and antibiotics are useless against viruses, but I’ve also suffered from recurring bouts of walking pneumonia since I was in kindergarten so my chest being so tight bothers me. Oh, and there’s the little matter of the rasping and wheezing which didn’t do much for my nerves since it hasn’t been all that long that I watched Mama DIE rasping and wheezing. So, the cold triggered unwanted memories of Mama’s last days sending me into a nice depression that even now is spiraling downward as I write this.

Those little tidbits would be enough to put the quietus on the project but I’m not done recounting this Job-ian disaster just yet. I soldiered on through the weekend typing what I could remember into this amazing new word processing program I found that is JUST FOR NOVELISTS!! It outlines your novel and keeps up with your character biographies and lets you storyboard the plot points . . . using it early Saturday morning had me thinking I’d found a successor to sliced bread. I typed in several character biographies and outlined parts I couldn’t completely remember. I was slowly making headway even as I fought the black dog down from my throat. One of the greatest points of this program is it runs off a flash drive so I can move between computers as the mood to change scenery takes me.

Except . . . it doesn’t.

Nope. I moved from the desktop to my laptop just fine. I typed up a few hundred more words, saved and backed up everything, then took a break. I took the flash drive BACK to the desktop, and that’s where, to quote the band Citizen Kane, “The bottom dropped out.” Not only was my project gone . . . the entire PROGRAM was gone from the thumb drive! I didn’t panic, because I backed everything up on my laptop . . . except I didn’t. While sorting out this whole sordid debacle, I found in the “readme.txt” file on this program (you know the ONE thing people read LESS than the EULA for new software?) that running the program on a jump drive requires you to create an empty .ini file, which I did not. As a result, my project saved partly on the desktop in some strange location and partly on the laptop in an equally strange location. When I FOUND the two projects and tried opening them, Marilyn, my trusty desktop, told me they were corrupted. Well OF COURSE they were!

So, I’m back to square ZERO and if I choose to continue on this path of agony, I’m going back to OpenOffice or MS Word.

I say “if” because of the LAST piece de resistance I discovered last night reading some headlines on MSN. Harper Lee, author of my second favorite novel — To Kill A Mockingbird, is suing her hometown for copyright violations relating to her work and the museum the town erected years ago in her honor. Apparently, as she has gotten older and more infirm, Miss Lee — or someone representing her — has become quite litigious over her sole written work. This isn’t the only lawsuit she has in the works. So, why should I care? Well guess what MY NaNoWriMo project novel was to be based on? The events and some characters from To Kill A Mockingbird!! Well OF COURSE it is!

I had planned a continuation of sorts delving into the behind the scenes actions in the jury deliberation room and the eventual fates of some of the characters. It was all going to be derivative which is supposedly fair use under copyright law, BUT I’ve found the law to be what the judge SAYS it is and the judge SAYS what the person with the highest paid LAWYER wants him to say. I don’t have a lawyer, highly paid or otherwise, so I’m at an impasse. I don’t want to waste time writing unpublishable fan-fic BUT, I don’t want to get sued by a little old lady from south Alabama either.

So, I’m in the shadow of my own end zone and I’m punting. What’s coming next is anyone’s guess but y’all will be among the first to know!

TIl then, love y’all and keep those feet clean.

Oct24

Taking the Plunge

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Oh god what have I gotten myself into now?

Oh god what have I gotten myself into now?

“You should write a book!”

“I wish you’d write a novel!”

“I just LOVE your stories; why don’t you write a novel?”

“You are such a talented writer; you need to write a book.”

Okay, FINE. Y’all talked me into it, mostly because I’m tired of hearing it! So November is National Novel Writing Month or “NaNoWriMo” to the initiated and since all one has to do is sign up on their website, which I did, I suppose I’m one of the initiated.

I’m also one of the terrified. I’ve never been much on challenges. Someone would say, “I dare you to ____,” and I’d politely decline. My reasons ran the gamut from inability to fear to outright cowardice, but the results were the same. I’d be branded a chicken, but I managed to avoid broken bones, road rash, and grounding for my entire childhood and teenage years so I’m not complaining.

This challenge, however, has been a long time coming. I really have been pestered for years by people who seem to think I can produce a work of book length which people, besides them, will want to read. It was a common theme in college from my professors, especially my Southern Literature professor and my Writing Methods professor. Some of my colleagues (and a good many students) during my teaching career would goad me to turn the tales I’d spin for them of my childhood and adolescence into a book length narrative and even today, friends and family delight in saying, “I’m still waiting for that book!”

So, I’m taking on NaNoWriMo. The challenge is to turn out a rough draft of a NOVEL in thirty days, beginning November 1st and ending Midnight on November 30th. My biggest worry is the stories people love me to tell and write so much are not eligible for this contest. Under the rules, those constitute a “personal memoir” and that genre isn’t allowed. Instead, I’m supposed to produce “a work of fiction with a minimum of 50,000 words within the 30 days from 11-1-2013 to 11-30-2013.” Of course, it for memoirs to be disallowed since I’ve got a person or two still to pass away before I could write EXACTLY what I want to say and not catch hell from someone.

To give you a little perspective, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is 46,118 words, Kurt Vonnegut’s much-lauded and loved Slaughterhouse-5 is 49,459 words, and that bane of the existence of American Lit high school students everywhere — The Great Gatsby — weighs in at 47,094 words. By contrast, HP and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first and shortest of the Harry Potter series is 77,325 words, my favorite novel — To Kill a Mockingbird has 99,121 words, and Tolstoy’s Russian tome War and Peace tips the scales at a heartbreaking 587,287 words or 37,140 MORE words than the entire Lord of the Rings PLUS The Hobbit.

Looking at the word count next to those paragons of fiction, 50K doesn’t seem like anything nearly insurmountable, but I know when I sit down and look at that blinking cursor taunting me from the top of a blank screen, 50K words are going to be magnified. I figure it’s a lot like eating calamari, sure, that bite doesn’t look very big, but when you pop it in your mouth and start chewing, it grows exponentially! I look at it as 50 of my typical 1000 word blog posts set end to end. That works out to around 1.6 blog posts per day . . . EVERY DAY instead of my usual schedule of three or four posts a month. I’m not thinking this is going to be easy.

But, to quote Julius Caesar as he stood by the cold rushing River Rubicon on January 10, 49 BC, “Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος” or “Let the die be cast!” If I’m going to write a book, I may as well do it in November. I have a couple of ideas I’m going to be whittling down over the next few days, but if any of y’all have something you think I could knock out of the park, be sure to let me know in the comments or drop me an email.

In the meantime, love y’all, and keep those feet clean!

Sep1

So Much for THAT Idea

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Tool #1 for writing the great American novel.

People have been asking me when I was going to write a book ever since I was in junior high school. Some of them claim I have a way with words perfectly suited to a novel while others who have heard me tell stories throughout the years say I need to get them written down.

Well, for various reasons, I haven’t spit out the Great American Novel yet. I primarily blame the fact that I no longer drink liquor to excess as the main cause of my creative dearth. As anyone who has studied American Literature — AFTER the Puritans, of course — can attest, to be a famous American author, one should be consistently somewhere between two sheets in the wind and completely knee-walking drunk to do any work of substantial literary merit. Myriads of American Novelists from Edgar Allan “the Raven” Poe all the way to Mr. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas himself, Hunter S. Thompson all sought their inspiration in the cups or other, even more potent doorways to alternate realities. Faulkner to Fitzgerald, Kerouac to Capote, with Tennessee Williams, Raymond Chandler, and my fellow South Carolina boy Pat Conroy thrown in for good measure — all red nosed lushes of the highest order and more than one dead of complications from alcohol well before their creative genius was fully spent. Yes, alcohol and drugs it seems are the keys to unlock creativity in American men of letters, and who am I to gainsay arguably the most famously alcoholic American novelist, Papa Hemingway, who gave the sagacious advice, “Write drunk; edit sober.”

and Tool 2 for writing the great American novel.

However, since I prefer a happy marriage to fame and fortune and walking upright hangover free to lying on the bathroom floor with an ice pack, a glass of ginger ale, and a heart full of the-morning-after regret, I have been a teetotaler for nearly twenty years. Understand please, I have no quarrel with the fruit of the vine, the clear nectar of the potato and agave, or the golden honey of the oaken barrels; in fact, once upon another lifetime, I made good acquaintance with Messrs. Jim Beam, Jose’ Cuervo, and the Lynchburg Legend himself, Jack Daniels. I’m afraid, however, that we all got along far too well and the good gentlemen simply didn’t know when to leave and I hadn’t the heart to throw them out. We have long since parted company, however and since I’ve no desire to tempt fate or further trash my liver, I willingly choose to forgo the traditional lubricant of the creative gears of the American novelist.

Of course, the other — and more reasonable reason — I have yet to grace the Amazon hot 100 (or some such list currently topped by the pornographic 50 Shades trilogy) is much simpler. Writing a book is hard — extremely hard. It takes great focus and discipline and I am woefully lacking in both. Still, riding down the road last week, a great idea for a novel struck me hard. I’d just watched the “Spear of Destiny” episode of Brad Meltzer’s Decoded the night before on the History Channel and the Lance of Longinus had been poking my mind ever since.

He’s the guy with the spear.

For those who don’t know, the nickel tour of the legend of Longinus goes something like this. According to church tradition, Longinus was the name of the Roman soldier who stabbed Christ in the side with a lance while Jesus was hanging on the Cross. From there, further traditions variously have Longinus’ blinded eye being healed by a drop of Christ’s blood or his being cursed by Christ to walk the earth (a la the Wandering Jew) until the Second Coming.

I adore history from all periods and I’m not picky. I enjoy social and political history just as much as military history. So I thought, “why not write a novel about the adventures of Longius after his contact with Christ on the Cross.” I would take the tradition of him being doomed to wander the world and walk him through time on a series of adventures. I even figured I could make a series out of the idea and have Longinus — usually going by some pseudonym — participate in wars and events from 33 AD all the way to the present day. I tell you truthfully, I was excited and pumped up about this project. It seemed like just the thing to keep my mind off the present difficulties I’m having in multiple areas and maybe, if someone besides Budge, liked the initial book enough, I could contribute a little more to the family income.

I was all ready to get the first novel going. I was going to have Longinus as a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan. He’d get what would be a mortal wound on any other man, but since he’s cursed, he’d recover in the body bag and cut his way out, terrifying the poor morgue worker in the process. Then Longinus would befriend the worker and start telling his story.

I was READY TO GO!

Then I sat down to do some research. With one Google search on Longinus, my entire project collapsed like an over-risen cake in a 7.5 earthquake. The very first entry on the search results page just wadded my whole idea up and tossed it in the wastebasket as if it were a piece of junk mail or a late credit card payment notice. Someone else had the same flash of insight I did and started a series called Casca: The Eternal Mercenary. In 1979. It’s up to 37 books now. So who, pray tell, was the author who crushed my dreams? This guy

Well, crap.

Yep, Mr. “100 men we’ll test today, Ballad of the Green Berets” himself — Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, Green Beret, Vietnam War hero, songwriter, top 40 artist, and — apparently — author of the first 22 books of the series I had just planned to write. I knew about SSgt. Sadler. His Ballad of the Green Berets is one of my favorite songs from the ’60s. I just had no idea he’d written a book — or 22 — about the character I wanted to bring to life. The series has continued, written by other authors chosen by his estate, since Sadler’s untimely and suspicious death in 1988. It’s up to 37 now. Number 38 is coming out in 2013.

Wellup, so much for THAT idea!

Love y’all and keep those feet clean.