From Luna City 12 – A Brief Snippet

06. November 2024 · 3 comments · Categories: Chapters From the Latest Book, Luna City

(Now that  I am mostly recovered from a ghastly cold, and have managed to finish the notes for West Toward the Sunset, I am back to work on Luna City. Herewith part of a chapter called Fame, wherein Joe Vaughn becomes a literary sensation. For all the wrong reasons, of course.)

“I thought you should know, cher,” remarked Richard’s boss, Lew Dubois, the C-suite level manager who had become at least a much of a friend over the years of their acquaintance, “That Anne’s good friend – you will recollect Madame Creighton Doyle, who writes the novels most romantic and amusing? Her newest novel is to be launched upon her millions of breathlessly waiting fans tonight. Alas, the formal party sponsored by her publisher will be in New York, and not here.”

“Oh, the best-seller. Yes, I recall – and I honestly I can’t say that I mind in the least,” Richard replied. When he cast his mind back to the previous year, he remembered briefly encountering Trish Creighton Doyle on several occasions. She was a woman of certain years, given to wearing flowing, chiffon-laden garments. The customary dreamy expression on her countenance suggested that her mind was most usually occupied somewhere other than the here and now – unimaginably far, far from the mundane here and now. “We are simply full up with guests at the moment! Even with forewarning…”

“This is in the nature of a forewarning,” Lew replied. “But not as it concerns the Cattleman or the Crystal Room, but rather some of our dear friends. First, I am nearly certain that many of Madame Doyle’s readers will fall upon her latest like famished wolves on a tasty piece of filet mignon … and decide that they simply must see for themselves the enchanted circle of stones … that real circle which was made so many years ago. Madame Doyle has put the pictures which she took of the pagan monument on her website as part of the advance publicity…”

It was mid-morning at the Cattleman Hotel, the hour when Richard and Lew could both be found in Lew’s office, confabulating over what to expect in the near future, about any foreseen and unforeseen events affecting management of the ornate boutique hotel which had dominated the western side of Town Square for more than a century.

“The stone circle at the Age of Aquarius? ‘Strewth – I had better warn the Grants,” Richard considered the prospect with a shudder of horror. “It was bad enough the last time that they were mobbed by visitors; treasure-seekers, ghost-hunters and UFOlogists all converged on the place a couple of years ago. It was a mob scene, culminating in a riot, and then in their old place burning to the ground, although the all-hands brawl had nothing to do with the fire. I couldn’t get a decent nights’ sleep for weeks. At least this time, they have a pleasanter place to live in… and Judy will be thrilled no end, having oodles of imaginative visitors to listen to her tales of New Age this and that…”

“Oh, most definitely, my friend,” Lew agreed. “Tell M’sieu and Madame Grant to expect any number of visitors to their magnificent stone circle…”

“Which, alas, looks much more impressive with the aid of artful photography and the cooperation of nature,” Richard replied. “The marker stones aren’t anything like Stonehenge or Avebury, being about a quarter the size. I’m afraid the baying fans will be quite disappointed…”

“But not in another aspect,” Lew was fiddling with his computer, and the printer across the room whirred and clanked into life. “My wife has sent me a copy of the news release regarding Madame Doyle’s book … the cover was embargoed until the very last minute…”

“So, the Grants will get a boost in visitors to the Age,” Richard mused, as Lew collected a sheet of paper from the printer tray. “And likely the good Colonel Walcott’s reenactor group … I do recollect that the Doyle woman was taking pictures of their encampment and costumed reenactors at the 4th of July celebration in the square … what is the plot of the book? I know someone told me once, but I can’t recall. Something about a woman going through the stone circle and traveling into the past…”

Lew nodded in grim agreement. “A woman of the most modern American times … and discovering fulfillment and love in the arms of a fearless Comanche warrior chieftain of almost two hundred years in the past…”

Richard snorted with rude laughter as Lew handed him the paper. “According to some of the stories I’ve heard from the reenactors, that would have been about the last … oh, f**k me running! Has Joe Vaughn laid eyes on this… this … Oh, my god. He will absolutely lose his mind when he sees this, let alone what Jess will think…”

“I suspect that Madame Vaughn will be amused,” Lew observed. “To discover that her husband has been made into the bare-chested hero on the cover of a best-selling romance…”

“Joe will die of embarrassment,” Richard replied. “And he will most definitely do gross bodily harm to the first person who ventures a jesting remark…My god, I suppose I shall have to tell him. I can only hope that he will not reach out and slaughter me, once I show him this abomination!”

“You will be most tactful, revealing this information, of course,” Lew appeared to have been relieved of a dangerous burden. Someone else would take on the fraught chore of telling Joe Vaughn that a casual picture of him, snapped as he came from a turn in the civic dunk tank the last 4th of July and briefly embraced and kissed Jess, had been utterly transformed by a cover artist … transformed every possible detail save Joe’s clearly recognizable dark, hawklike countenance. He was recognizably on the cover as a bare-chested, dark haired Comanche warrior embracing a slender woman with flowing hair and a diaphanous drape of some kind. Now Richard recalled Araceli’s description of Trish Creighton-Doyle’s output – always the studly romantic hero, embracing a woman clad in something flowy … only the period details and setting distinguished one of the Creighton-Doyle oeuvre from another. Lew appeared to have handed off that dangerous assignment to Richard – a case of discretion being the better part of valor.

“Lew, I will be the very soul of diplomacy,” Richard assured his boss, while taking a good long look at the full-sheet picture of the book cover.

A Time-shattering Romance, from the best-selling author of Those Bolyn Girls.

Richard’s heart sank, right down to the level of his kitchen clogs. For a long moment, he wished that he could hand this off to his redoubtable Aunt Myra, she who was unaccountably adept with blades, small arms, and the physical martial arts, ostensibly a traveling international journalist but most likely an operative for a secretive governmental agency designated M-something-or-other.

Once There Was – The Best Catalog, Ever

20. October 2024 · 6 comments · Categories: Domestic, Memoir

In the time before the internet became a thing, when I was mostly stationed at bases overseas, I could rejoice when the base post office put up the mail … we had numbered post boxes, the kind that one sees in the post offices now, with the little locking doors with a small glass window. My post office box was nearly always packed tightly with mail. On really, really good days, there was a pink cardboard slip which meant a package – take the slip to the window and collect your package. Depressing it might be to see a package slip, and the parcel window had already closed on a Saturday afternoon  which meant  waiting until  Monday to get the package. (In Greenland, though, whenever an airplane came in with mail, the post office clerks would call the radio station, and the duty announcer would read out that so many pounds of mail had been received, and the post box numbers who had gotten packages on the air. The post office window would be open for exactly half an hour then, no matter what the day, or hours – and on hearing your box number read out, everyone would beat feet for the post office. This was Greenland – everyone knew to the minute when an aircraft came in, and if it were coming from Stateside, there would be mail on it.)

I subscribed then to a number of magazines – magazines of news and cultural interest, mostly, with some hobby publications among them … and catalogues. Oh, I got catalogs – so many that the post office clerks swore that sometimes they had to wedge my mail into my post box with the aid of a crowbar. There were just so many things that weren’t available to  us through the exchange, or on the local economy. Clothing, books, household goods, hobby materials and supplies, small furniture kits, movies … even certain food items – anything the least bit non-standard had to come by catalog mail order. (In the case of Greenland, there was no local economy, only the souvenir booth on the Danish side of the runway, and the little trading post store, which was about  the size of a corner minimart.)

Of course I was the recipient of catalogs galore, for all the things that couldn’t be obtained locally and for which I had a taste or an interest. One of my very favorite clothing catalogs was the original Banana Republic line, when it was truly a vendor of quirky yet practical travel clothing and accessories. A fair number of their early items were military surplus of all sorts of other militaries, much of which came in color palettes which explored the vibrant spectrum of olive-drab green, tan, brown, gray and dull blue, but which had the benefit of being durable, practical and well-made. The original Banana Republic’s clothing tended to be pricy – rather like LL Bean items of the same era – but ever so worth it in the long run; comfortable, practical fabrics, flattering cuts, and modest – suitable for wear on countries where excessive displays of flesh were not advised – and infinitely variable. The ideal for their kind of traveler, I gathered from their content, was the one who could do a world tour with a single small piece of luggage, and still be comfortably, practically, and tastefully turned out for every possible occasion, from morning trek to see a ruined temple in the jungle to a tea party at an embassy that afternoon. I liked that kind of practicality – liked it very much, although I could only afford a couple of pieces from them. A mid-length khaki drill skirt was one of them, and another was a pair of flat-heeled ballet pumps that I wore all over Europe; the soles were ribbed rubber. Perfect for hiking through places and streets floored with slick stone and cobbles, which – wet or dry – were a hazard. The Banana Republic catalogues were literate, even just fun to read. They stood out among my collection of catalogs for that very reason. I understand that the handful of Banana Republic brick-and-mortar locations were just as spectacular, in décor and design. Alas, I never got to visit one in person. Eventually, the couple who had built the brand sold it to the company which already owned a big nationwide chain and a couple of other brands, and Banana Republic stopped being the quirky, original source for high-quality travel clothing and exotic military surplus. It became just another generic brand of mall-marketed clothes, just like all the other generic, cheaply-manufactured generic mall clothing brands.

I wish that I had kept some of the catalogs, though. Just for sentimental value. Maybe I have – and they are buried out in a box in the garage.

 

Now And Again

08. October 2024 · Comments Off on Now And Again · Categories: Domestic, Random Book and Media Musings

So, another busy week at Chez Hayes – some work for a client, and all but the finishing touches on the WIP, the YA pioneer adventure story, with the working title of West Towards the Sunset. I might make it into a series, in the spirit of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. I loved that series, as a young reader, myself. Not all that fond of the TV series version, which spun radically away from the books in ways large and small. My everlasting conviction has been that historical fiction is a gateway drug into an interest in actual history. I think that more people initially became interested in the American Civil War through reading Gone With the Wind, or in the American Revolution through Johnny Tremain, or any number of other riveting narratives set in other historical periods … so why not throw my own books into the grand mix? My personal motto was always that of the Armed Forces Radio and Television  Service, an enterprise in which I served with  only moderate personal success. (Hey, I got a pension out of it, so, whatever…)

The motto was “To Inform and Entertain” – so it’s my hope that my own books inform and entertain, and perhaps inspire a life-enhancing further interest.

Anyway, West Towards the Sunset is all but done – just a few hundred words to the afterward/postscript, and out to the volunteer beta readers in the next day or so.

In the meantime – coping with a neighborhood concern. A close Aged Neighbor of advanced years and uncertain health passed away in hospital a week ago Friday. We were close – close enough that my daughter was on her Life Alert roster, and we had the names of her next of kin and their phone numbers (most of whom lived several states away.) We regularly walked her dog, Penny the Labradoodle, and had walked with her, when she was in better condition, so frequently that a couple of other neighbors thought that she was my mother. We found a kitten for her, a full sister to Miso, among the collection on the other side of the neighborhood, a fluffy white kitten which she named Snowy, who grew up to be affectionate and spectacularly dog-like, for a cat.

Then Penny the Labradoodle at 15 years old and arthritic, became reluctant to walk more than half a block.  Aged Neighbor fell a couple of times and went no farther than the group mailbox – propped on a walker, to the covert relief of us all. Then she crunched her car fender, and gave up the keys to the car to another neighbor … Anyway – a handful of us in the nearby houses were very fond of Aged Neighbor and kept a careful eye on her.

Aged Neighbor’s family are all touchingly grateful to all of us for having seen to her care and wellbeing. Snowy has been adopted by one neighbor. Another neighbor has a friend who may eventually adopt Penny the Labradoodle. Aged Neighbor’s family all gathered this week to sort out the house. They have no need of her household things, clothes, furniture, objects d’arte and monumental brand-new new cat tree, as they drove from out of state and have full households of their own anyway. We’ve been given a good share of them – including the cat tree! –  either to use for the Daughter Unit’s eventual home, or to pass on to Goodwill. The remainder have been given to other friends and neighbors. That took up the rest of our time this weekend.

And that was my week – yours?

Good Eats

28. September 2024 · 1 comment · Categories: Domestic

I’ve spent time in the kitchen  this week – time that I should have spent on finishing the last chapters of the W-I-P, but this writer does not live on bread alone … but regular meals of relatively healthy, and home-cooked foods. One of the projects in the kitchen was the disposition of half a bushel of carrots. A friend of my daughters is another single parent, and one in a sufficient state of want to be the object of a gift of foods from a church pantry … to be precise, an enormous number of enormous carrots. Very fresh carrots, and not a bit woody and flavorless because of their gargantuan size. But carrots … the friend gave half to my daughter, and I spent a morning peeling, slicing, and brewing up brine to make pickled carrots. Yes, I have a large stock pot, and a collection of canning jars … and so, pickled carrots. Eight quarts of pickled carrots. And then, another eight quarts of mixed vegetable pickles from the Ball canning cookbook – giardiniera, which is wicked expensive when bought in smallish jars from the specialty foreign foods selection at the grocery store. It’s not so pricy when made from fresh, and even though the costs for fresh vegetables in season is a bit more  than they were three or four years ago … scratch made giardiniera is still cheaper. Even though I couldn’t find the teeny pearl onions that some recipes call for; I didn’t mind; those specialty tiny onions have always been pricy and are a major pain to peel  and prep.

The other project in the kitchen came about because we tried out a pulled pork spice mix, which turned out to be a bit lacking, even in the slow-cooker with a boneless pork shoulder at $1.99 a pound. (Which is excellent for that cut of meat.) I thought of using it as a filling for tamales. My mother, being a cook with four or five hungry teenagers in the household was a master of cheap eats. In the town where I grew up, there were maybe four or five elderly Hispanic ladies who made tamales from scratch, and Mom was the only Anglo. Back in her early married life, Mom learned Mexican cooking from the couple living next door in GI grad student housing at UC Santa Barbara. Traditional Mexican food has the benefit of relying on inexpensive ingredients, and being tasty and filling. So – I refreshed my memory of making tamales, found a recipe on line for what looked to a pretty good version … and oh, my – they were better than good. Light, fluffy, flavorful. I think the trick to this one was creaming the lard or Crisco, and then mixing in alternate thirds of the masa and  broth. I made up another full batch for the rest of the pulled  pork and packaged them in sets of four with the vacuum sealer for the freezer. I don’t believe we’ll buy prepared tamales again – this recipe was so good, using the Mi Tienda masa from HEB.

And now, back to finishing off the last two chapters of West Towards the Sunset.

The Most Wrecked House

17. September 2024 · Comments Off on The Most Wrecked House · Categories: Random Book and Media Musings

So, I am an aficionado of a certain kind of YouTube series – of ambitious DIYers who most usually have either mad professional building skills, or a generous income (most often both), plus absolutely insane levels of optimism, who take on a decrepit bit of housing, or at least something with all or most of a roof on it. Over a number of years or months, these skilled, and hopeful masochists take on an abandoned or derelict rural property – a tumbledown pig farm in Belgium, a decayed village house or farmstead in Portugal, a ruinous French chateau, a French village hoarder house with half the roof fallen in, or a burned-out country cottage in Sweden. Usually at least half the time-lapsed video is of tearing out the decayed bits, and sometimes the finished result is painfully ultra-modern interior and looks like one of the display rooms in an Ikea outlet … but if the owners are happy in it, who am I to quibble over their tastes in interior decoration.

Some of these spaces are very far gone – the Swedish cottage was burned out in a fire, and the Portuguese farm complex is such a tottering wreck that the best that the young couple can do with the remains is salvage the cut stone that it all was built from and use the stone to sheath new conblock walls of a construction in the original footprint. But I think this week, I have found the most thoroughly wrecked historic structure available in any real estate market – this first through a feature in the English Daily Mail newspaper. For some reason their newshounds lighted on a mid-19th century house in Frankfort, Maine – a mansard-roof mansion at the crossroads of a hiccup of a town, and one which is so visibly wrecked that even the most optimistic real estate listings can’t even begin to hide the decay.  When the listing warns you to wear safety shoes and bring a flashlight … and there aren’t even any pictures in the listing of the interior … yeah, this place is a real estate disaster.

If it were built of stone or brick, there might be hope for a renovator – but if it is all wood, the roof has leaked for decades, with wood-rot and black mold throughout all three stories and not a shred of anything resembling preventative maintenance … no; as my daughter the real estate agent says cheerfully – nothing wrong with it that a couple of gallons of gas and a book of matches couldn’t fix. We had a friend in South Ogden, when I was stationed at Hill AFB, who were trying their best to renovate an 1895 Italianate brick three-story on 5th Street. It had been the wife’s childhood home, and she had a sentimental attachment to the place. It eventually turned out that there was nothing much of good quality about the structure, save for perhaps the thick and solid brick exterior shell. If they knew at the beginning of the project what they knew by the end, they would have gutted the shell and built anew, bottom to top. She wound up hating the place – and was inexpressibly happy when they purchased and moved into a well-preserved 1920s Craftsman-era bungalow several blocks distant. In reality, I suspect that many hopeful renovators share  that discouraging experience.

The mansard historical wreck in Frankfort comes with an acre, which looks like woodland. Probably, the only workable solution is for a purchaser to salvage every shred of usable elements surviving decades of neglect, demolish the wreck – and build an exact replica incorporating those elements on a new site a bit farther back from a well-trafficked local road.

Well, I will be keeping track of the mansard wreck in Frankfort – it might very well turn up someday, as the focus of a madly optimistic, skilled and well-financed YouTube enthusiast. And I wish them the best of luck.

They’ll need it.

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