Personal Snippets

 It might surprise some to learn that my formal education ended with the 10th grade. In the lower classes it was possible to fake it enough to pass with reasonably good grades. Never mastered English, math, or much else. I quit faking at the end and failed the tenth miserably.

In my home were no books. I never held one in my hand before my teacher had them passed out. As I looked at all those pages of symbols it seemed to me that I could never make sense of them. Yet, within a few days I was reading with the best of them.

A teacher read The Black Stallion, by Walter Farley, to the class, which stoked my interest in reading for myself. I found out about libraries, becoming a fequent visitor. Books about boxcar children and a dog named Jinks (of Jason Vally) soon led to Dickens and Ray Bradbury.

I was intrinsically unable to grasp my studies, as I mentioned before. But I read all the time. While in the Navy I aced the GED for my honorary diploma.

One day, at age 19 I discovered Generation of Vipers, An Essay on Morals, and Opus 21, all by Philip Wylie. I had never encountered a mind whose purpose was to make us think and feel. Wylie changed my life. He made me want to seek out other authors with unique perspectives.

I tried my hand at writing, but found I had little to say. Still I persisted by writing undisciplined verses and song poems. The years were cruising by. Turmoil from personal circumstances made my effort more irrelevant than ever.

At one point I became alcohol free, after practically swimming in it for years. Ate healthy food. Suddenly I could not just begin stories. I could finish them. I did not say they were good stories.

After I retired there was time to work at it. Not knowing Strunk from Wagnals, I relied on the good books I had always read for structure, syntax - whatever - as was imprinted in my memory. I made a book with Lulu to preserve these fledgling efforts.

One day I showed my brother a draft of the first chapter of EndEarthers. He made me promise to write it out in a book. And so I wrote the first of six stories, eventully publishing with Draft2Digital. Now I am nearing completion of a companion volume which I call Bolder Colors.

At 83, my time may be short, but I intend to go as long as nature will let me.

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