Behind the Wheel, pt. 1: Quincy

In 1995, shortly after we got married, Kristy and I moved to Panama City, Florida, on a whim where, for almost two years, I drove a limousine and she waited tables.

I carried a lot of characters in that limousine.

One night I was sent to Lynn Haven, a small community just outside Panama City to pick someone up for a night out. I can't remember this guy's name (I'll call him Quincy), but he sat towards the front of the back of the car so he could talk to me through the window.

He'd just come back to Lynn Haven from serving in the Merchant Marines, he told me. Now, picture in your head the kind of guy who joins the Merchant Marines. That was not this guy. Quincy was doughy, rounded on the edges and was living with his mother. I was 25 at the time and he couldn't have been much older than that.

We were on our way to pick up a girl he'd met only the night before. He was dressed nicely, though in a casual manner, and had a bouquet of flowers for the young lady. He was excited, to say the least. He had really taken a shine to this girl, acknowledging that he'd only just met her, and spent much of the drive telling me of his dreams for the two of them.

He directed me back to Panama City where we pulled into the parking lot of an apartment community somewhere off of 23rd Street, probably near the airport. It looked like the sort of place inhabited by families on the lower end of the income scale. There were beat up cars, ratty patio furniture and kids everywhere. They all came running to see the 110-inch black limousine that had just arrived. Quincy went to get his date while I stood outside the car and answered the questions from the kids and sweated.

Most of chauffeuring is about waiting. Probably ninety-percent of the job is spent standing in parking lots, sitting and reading, listening to the radio or daydreaming. So there I was, waiting in the waning Florida sun in a suit when Quincy came back to the car. Alone.

He asked me to take him to the No Name Lounge, a small pub for locals at the base of the Hathaway Bridge, on the city side. I can't recall the reason he wanted to go there now, or if he gave me one at all, but he said she'd meet him there later.

He went in, I waited.

A couple of hours later Quincy came out, mostly drunk, and said we were going to see this girl at work. She'd never shown up at No Name. I was confused as to why she was working on a night that she was supposed to have a date. And then he told me to drive to The Toy Box on Hwy. 98. This girl was a dancer at a low-rent strip club in the city - not even on the beach side of Panama City, the tourist side.

I felt bad for this guy. He'd been away from home for a while, lonely and had glommed on to the first girl who was nice to him. As it happened, that girl was being paid to be nice to him. And paid to string him along. What I couldn't figure out - and didn't ask - was how he had gotten her address.

We went to The Toy Box. He went in and I waited. I wanted to just leave, but that would have been unprofessional and I didn't think this guy needed to be let down again, though the long walk home to clear his head would have done him good. Hopefully he was having a good time in there, maybe getting something for free. Or at least for the cost of the flowers.

I went in at some point to use the bathroom and get a coffee from the bar. As I was leaving a woman way, way past her prime grabbed my hand and asked if I wanted a dance. I looked at her, at the black holes where teeth should have been, and explained I was working and then wrenched my hand free to go wait in the car a little longer.

I took him back to his mother's house alone that night, poor guy, and I went home to my wife. No idea at all what became of Quincy and his burgeoning romance with the exotic dancer from The Toy Box. Maybe they fell in love, maybe she quit the pole. Maybe they've spent many happy nights since that one sitting in a plush booth in a darkened corner of the No Name.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

I have just finished reading my second favorite novel that takes place in and around an English-speaking newspaper abroad. My favorite book of this sort is The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson, a book that follows Paul Kemp to Puerto Rico to work for the newspaper in that tropical environment of the late 1950s.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman is a novel (though I had to look at the cover after I'd read the first two chapters just to make sure) structured as short stories with characters that work for, or have some dealings with a newspaper based in Rome. In some chapters the characters overlap, in some they don't. When they do, it almost acts as a jump in a newspaper, where the story is picked up somewhere further along. Between each chapter is a short interlude in italics in which the back story of the paper and its founder, Cyrus Ott, is chronicled. These shorter sections begin in 1953 and take us to 2007.

The structure of the book is very intriguing for me. I once planned the same sort of book with stories and characters centered around a rural Tennessee church, to be titled Scenes in Colored Glass. Only one story, "Dominic," exists and it was written more than a decade ago. This book may prompt me to look back into that project.

I like this book. I like newspapers. The novel is a sort of love song to the industry, though Rachman doesn't pull any punches. He admits that newspaper readership and the very quality of content is in decline, but he can't seem to help himself.
My family is a newspaper family. My great-grandfather, great-uncle, grandfather and father all worked for the same paper, The Commercial Appeal. I was discouraged from it at an early age. My father hated working there and I heard nothing but ill about the business and the place day in and day out. As a result, I didn't go into the business. Not then, anyway. Had I been encouraged, I'm sure I would have, it would have only been natural. Even now, as a freelance writer, the work feels natural.

I've always had more of a romantic than realistic notion of newsrooms. I know my idea of what one is, or should be, is purely  based on movies and television shows, but that's fine. I like that vision. I can remember the "old building" that housed The Commercial Appeal when I was a kid and I'd go to work with my father. It was an old Ford factory and the third-floor newsroom had high ceilings with tracks and tubes suspended overhead, concrete floor, tall windows and was littered with paper and noise. That's where it all stems from, this idea of mine that a newsroom is a place where something is made. It was a factory!

It's not that way anymore. I was up on the third floor of The Commercial Appeal just last week. It's just not like it used to be ... I'll leave it at that for now.

I still like movies about newspapers, and novels. It's the romantic in me, the fallow strands of DNA in my makeup from the early part of last century when men and women were covered in ink, characters, news and cigarette ash. When you could get a beer at the lunch counter on the ground floor and nobody left until the day's paper was put to bed. And then it was with a toast and an eagerness for another day.

Some of this is captured in The Imperfectionists. It's good to have these stories, even if they are couched against the weakening backdrop of the industry. Rachman is a storyteller, a newspaperman and a chronicler of what the industry was and what it has become.

Southern College of Watchmaking

While writing a small business story for The Commercial Appeal on a new watch repair shop a couple of months ago, a source casually mentioned having gone to the Southern College of Watchmaking back in the late 1940s. I'm a lifelong Memphian and have heard of many institutions, both still with us and those long gone, but I'd never even heard of this school.

Wanting to learn more about it, I decided it was a worthy subject for the Hidden Memphis series I've been writing for The CA. Up until now, I've written the series about people and this would be the first place written about. What I found was that, even when researching a brick-and-mortar building, it's the people involved who make the story.

The school was a lot more difficult to research than I'd expected, there just isn't much information out there about it. The signs pointed me to Raleigh, the Memphis & Shelby County Room at the library, the Shelby County Archives at Shelby Farms and phone calls around town and up to Paducah, KY.

The story ran in yesterday's paper and I think it turned out nicely. Mike Maple did a great job with the photos, as usual.

There were a couple of interesting details that were left, or cut, out. The school closed in 1953 once the GIs had pretty much all graduated and their GI Bill money went away with them. The funding just dried up. However, the funding to the school was cut before that when it was found that the founder of the school, Forrest Osborne, had begun a second business, Southern Tool & Supply Co., to buy and sell tools and parts to the students. Money was given by the government to Osborne to do so, but he was selling the goods at 10% over retail, which was in violation of his contract. Once the government pulled funding, making a hefty profit was more difficult to do.

I heard of this reason from two separate sources and I put it in my story. Then I took it out. Then I put it back in. My editor and I finally decided that, with no conviction or even an official accusation, it was best left out.

The other little bit that I never did put in the story, but that I heard, again, from those two sources, was that when Osborne was in his fatal car crash on N. Parkway in February of 1950, he was with someone he shouldn't have been, an employee of the school. There was no reason for that to be in the story, so I left it out.

When I begin these Hidden Memphis pieces, I never know where they'll lead me or who I'll wind up talking with. It's a big part of what I love about doing them. Thanks to everyone who helped on this story and to all of you who read it.

(Nearly) The End

It seemed to him that all his life he had followed the ideals that other people, by their words or their writings, had instilled into him, and never the desires of his own heart. Always his course had been swayed by what he thought he should do and never by what he wanted with his whole soul to do. He put all that aside now with a gesture of impatience. He had lived always in the future, and the present always, always had slipped through his fingers. His ideals? He thought of his desire to make a design, intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad, meaningless facts of life: had he not seen also that the simplest pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most perfect? It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.

The passage is from W. Somerset Maugham's novel Of Human Bondage, near the ending; the last page, in fact. Maugham was a prolific writer who wrote novels, short stories, travel essays and plays in the beginning of the 20th century, and a literary hero of mine.

In the past few years I've written a few hundred journalistic stories and columns, a handful of short stories, countless blog posts and, as of last night, two novels. I want to make it clear that both of the novels are only in their very early first draft stages. I've always written short stories throughout my adult life but never thought I'd be able to handle the marathon effort that is novel writing until the summer of 2009 when on a road trip with my family, the perfect time to think as the miles roll by. At that time I had two short stories that I couldn't help but see as overlapping, so I overlapped them and went from there with the goal of finishing the draft by the time I turned 40 a year later. I did that with a couple of months to spare.

The idea then was, of course, to revise, revise, revise that draft. But I wrote another short story that I felt had themes and characters I wanted to expand on, and when that story won the Memphis Magazine fiction contest, I figured I should ride that momentum. And that finished draft, with the working title The Simplest Pattern (from the passage above), was wrapped up last night to a long sigh, a cigar and the gift of a bottle of wine from Kristy and Andria.

It's a great feeling to finish a project like that, to cross the finish line of such a marathon. Now begins the work, of course. It's nowhere near finished, but it's so good to have a beginning page and an ending page and 324 pages in between. And now begins the fun - the revising, the moving around, the deconstruction and rebuilding. The ingredients are all there and I just need to get my hands into them and mix it up a bit. I'm not the best editor when it comes to cutting, but I can add a spoonful more of this and a dash more of that like nobody's business. Coming in at 69,108 words, I have no doubt I'll be able to whittle it down to 75,000 without even blinking.

It's not a bibliography the length of Maugham's, of course, it's only two stacks of papers on my desk, two files in my computer. But they're my stacks of paper and I intend to make them the best I possibly can.

Objects of Beauty

I wanted to read Steve Martin's An Object of Beauty when I first heard it would be published. I've always been a fan of his short pieces and really enjoyed his first novel, Shopgirl. I love his second, The Pleasure of My Company. An Object of Beauty is really good, though not quite up to level of The Pleasure of My Company, I think.

For various reasons, I didn't get around to reading the new one until this last week and by then I really wanted to because of the book I'm working on. It has elements of the art world in it and I've realized as I'm writing that I just don't know enough to make it believable, at least not to me. So reading Martin's novel was research for me, which made reading it difficult because I kept wanting to stop reading to write, or at least jot down some notes. I'm not plagiarizing ... I don't think, just thinking as I read along and ideas come to me, or names of artists are mentioned that I want to research further.

An Object of Beauty is the story of Lacey Yeager, an ambitious up-and-comer in the art world of Manhattan. That world is a self-contained ecosystem where all the players - from the dealers to the artists to the collectors to the journalists - know each other, who owns what and who wants to sell what. The only question in the mix is for how much a piece will sell, although prices seemed to be growing at every turn.

The action takes place over many years, but mostly in the art boom of the late 1990s when there was no way to not make money by procuring and selling. A young artist could make a piece of art one day, put it in a gallery the next and have enough money to live on for a year by the end of the weekend. Throughout the book there is the discussion of the modern masters versus the new kids of contemporary and minimalist art, and just what art is and what makes it valuable, whether it's time and distance or hype and youth.

It's really a fascinating book in that respect. Martin knows his shit when it comes to art (good and bad) and how it moves around the globe and in and out of fashion and possession. That knowledge became a main reason for me to read and practically study it.

Martin also knows people and relationships, it's what makes something like The Pleasure of My Company so very good. And his new one is good in that respect as well, but maybe not quite as good. Or perhaps it's the fact that there really isn't a character here to feel empathetic towards. The one character I found myself rooting for was the one I expected to like the least when he first entered the story.

The book is written in an interesting way because there is a first person narrative, but that narrator, Daniel Chester French Franks, is not present for most of what goes on. So there will be a chapter with two characters who are not the narrator and then in the following chapter, the narrator will say that he had lunch with Lacey Yeager and she relayed all of the details of the previous chapter. At the end of Chapter 1, in fact, Daniel intriguingly explains:

I will tell you her story from my own recollections, from conversations I conducted with those around her, and, alas, from gossip: thank God the page is not a courtroom. If you occasionally wonder how I know about some of the events I describe in this book, I don't. I have found that - just as in real life - imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.

The collectors in An Object of Beauty of strange, eccentric creatures. I've been interested in collectors lately as I've also recently read The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett. It's the true story of John Gilkey, a rare book thief who became infamous and something of a celebrity in that world of rare book collecting in the 1980s. Bartlett probes that world and gets into the heads of collectors, of why they do it. It's a near-obsessive compunction they have to own a book or an author.

In discussing this with my sister, Elizabeth, she suggested I watch Herb & Dorothy, a documentary about a couple in New York who, although one a civil servant and the other a librarian, managed to amass one of the largest and most important collections of contemporary and minimalist art anywhere. I streamed it immediately on NetFlix and was fascinated by these two people. They live in a tiny, rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan and have, for years, simply bought what and who they liked. And I think that was the key for them, they got to know the artists and admired them, and the artists seem to feel the same for them. Herb and Dorothy Vogel eventually donated all of their pieces to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. It took five moving trucks to move all 4,000+ pieces from New York.

I think I can see it. I wouldn't collect just anything, no snow globes or Hummel figurines, but certainly rare books or artwork. The case is made in Bartlett's book that a first edition brings the collector only a step or two away from the author. It's that game of degrees of separation. I think a painting or drawing is an even narrower gap. When you hold a painting, you're looking at something the artist touched, something actually handled and worried over by that person.

I have a lot of books, and I have a few paintings, but now I'm thinking that maybe I need some more.

For Sale: Ideas

When I was a kid, drawing was probably the number one past time for my sisters and me in our house. My father is an artist and had all of the supplies at hand, all we had to do was grab a stack of paper, a few different shades of pencils, some pastels, charcoal, an eraser that looked like Silly Putty ... whatever we thought we might need. Supplies were never the problem for me, ideas were. I would sit at the table with all of these tools spread in front of me and just stare off into space. "What should I draw?" I would ask. I'd look around the room or try to imagine a scene, yet felt any idea was forced and, therefore, I was uninspired. Perhaps this is why I never developed the skill.

Writing is different. Ideas aren't a hangup for me when I have a pencil and lined paper in hand (we're talking about fiction here, column and story ledes are a whole other matter). Now, I'm not saying all ideas are particularly good, or that they are necessarily worthy of pursuit, just that there has never been a kink in that particular creative hose.

The problem I do have, and this is new for me, is when I come up with an idea that is good, and probably much more marketable than anything else I've written, but I just don't want to write it. I've got a couple of ideas now - one is for a young adult series that involves some fantasy and passing through portals and such, and the other is science fiction and may work better as a script. These are two genres that I simply have no interest in, not enough to sit and write tens of thousands of words on them anyway.

Are ideas salable? Is there some sort of Cogitation Craigslist out there? Because I really like these ideas and would love to see them written, just not by me. So if you find yourself sitting in front of that blank page with no good young adult fantasy or science fiction ideas, send me your credit card info and they're yours. Cheap.

Traveler

Ron McLarty is an actor. The name may not strike a chord but his face almost certainly would, it did for me. As soon as I saw a picture of him, I said, "Oh, yeah, I know who that is." He's a well-cast character actor in Spenser: For Hire, Rescue Me, The Practice, Ed, all of the Law & Order spin-offs and even Cop Rock; on the big screen he's in Heartburn, The Postman, The Flamingo Kid and many others; and has narrated over 100 audiobooks.

McLarty has carved out a nice little niche for himself, it seems. He probably gets a nice paycheck, without too much stress and responsibility, for doing something he loves.

Oh, and he's also a novelist. I've just finished reading Traveler (2007) and I've previously read The Memory of Running (2004). I enjoyed them both.

Traveler is the story of Jono Riley, an off-off-Broadway actor with a few commercials and primetime television shows under his belt. He lives in New York, has a girlfriend who is a firefighter and spends much of his time tending the bar at Lamb's. The action begins when he's informed that a childhood friend has died in his hometown of East Providence, Rhode Island.

His late friend, Marie D'Agostino, is his first true love, the sister of one of his best friends and then there's the connection of Jono's presence when she was shot in the back as a young girl. She didn't die then, but the .22 caliber bullet would lodge too close to an artery to be removed and years later would "travel" to her heart and kill her. Jono returns home to pay respects and, in doing so, becomes caught up in the past, in his days with his buddies and family and of the rash of shootings. It becomes a mystery that Jono works at with all the gusto of the one-character plays he specializes in back in Manhattan.

The book is a trip through Jono's past and a sentimental portrait of the mid-sixties just the way those who came of age then like to remember it - wide-cuff blue jeans, t-shirts, crew cuts and smokes with doo-wop, girls in skirts, baseball and tough-love parents. It's all there and, though we've read and heard the stories thousands of times, manages to come off as genuine, we get the sense that McLarty is describing his own childhood, his own friends and the neighborhood in which they ran.

They mystery of the shootings is there and Jono manages to become embroiled - he never really actively figures it out, though it is revealed in the end - with the help of a retired cop from the neighborhood, a priest, old friends and his girlfriend. It's a thriller without the whodunit being overbearing. They question of who shot Marie and the others is there throughout, a subplot interwoven into chapters that flip-flop from the past to present.

Though my retention for most of what I read is embarrassingly nonexistent, I do remember enjoying The Memory of Running as one of those books you come upon and don't expect much from, but find yourself enthralled by what you're reading. It's like someone giving you a gift you didn't even know you wanted. So when I came across a first edition Traveler hardback on the bargain table at Davis-Kidd Booksellers, I couldn't resist. It only cost a dollar, but would have been worth the full price of $25 (there were a couple of others at this price and may still be there if you hurry).

I went to McLarty's website and found the story of his first being published:

Beginning with the early years of his career, McLarty’s passion for writing led him to completing 10 novels, in addition to his plays but his efforts to interest a publishing house were unsuccessful. Several years ago he was able to persuade Recorded Books into producing his 3rd novel, The Memory of Running, directly onto tape as an audiobook. It is believed to be the first recorded audiobook of an unpublished novel. Stephen King listened to it in 2002 and wrote his entire column “The Pop of King” about Memory calling it “the best book you can’t read”. This lead to the publication of The Memory of Running in the USA and fourteen other countries around the world.

I envy McLarty his niche, both in the worlds of acting and writing. He may not be setting either of those worlds on fire, but he's making a living and, obviously, loving what he's doing.

Chronic City

For the past couple of weeks I've been carrying around Chronic City (2009) by Jonathan Lethem. Ever since finishing it yesterday afternoon, I've been carrying it around still, trying to make sense of it all, trying to figure out if I even like it or not. I think it's only gotten heavier since finishing.

I suppose I do like it, there are plenty of books I haven't finished because they didn't hold my interest. I liked his earlier novel, Fortress of Solitude (2003), and loathed another, the name of which I can't even remember I disliked it so much (he's written many others, try one of them before reading the one I can't remember).

Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

I'm realizing that my uncertainty about Chronic City isn't new, that I didn't just close the book and then attempt to consider its worth, but that I've read it entirely in that state of confusion. I kept trying to figure out what it's about, because certainly the characters, their relationship with each other and the places they inhabit must be about more than just what Lethem has put on the page. He's an enigmatic writer and I questioned throughout whether I'm smart enough for his literary enigmas.

It's the story of Chase Insteadman, a former child star living off royalties and making his way through Manhattan society and simple afternoons spent in diners and staring out of his bedroom window at a flock of birds that habitually buzzes a church steeple a few blocks away. He befriends, through happenstance or by design (ah, the conspiracies abound in the City of Chronic), Perkus Tooth, a former rock critic and all-around pop culture savant. Through their world, spent mostly in Perkus's cramped, darkened apartment listening to obscure cassette tapes, watching Marlon Brando movies and smoking dope, traipse Oona Laszlo, Richard Abneg and Georgina Hawkmanaji. An inordinate amount of time was spent by me trying to figure out what these names could mean, whether metaphors or anagrams (this book itself was borrowed from a friend - Mitch Major - someone who could have lent his own name to a Lethem character).

In and out of the daily lives of this group walks a giant tiger (or is it?), a lost love orbiting the planet (or is she?), chaldrons ( or ... you get the idea ...), Gnuppets, the mayor and the topic of rent control and eminent domain, virtual worlds and a three-legged dog.

He's a deep writer, Lethem. The prose is layered in adjectives and metaphors. He may have used all of the words of description Hemingway once shaved from his own paragraphs. Perhaps those words were in the suitcase, folded like so much laundry, that Hadley Hemingway lost at the train station and have remained lost until recovered by Lethem.

Hemingway's lost suitcase full of manuscripts is one of my sole, semi-obscure pop culture reference, yet Lethem is a master at the dropped name, the long-forgotten novel or album, the illicit relationship whether fact or implied, and I'm sure I only recognized (or at least understood) a fraction of them.

It is this confusion by me as a reader that would normally leave me with a quarter finished book place back on the shelf, dismissing the writer as too pretentious,  too intent on trying to impress rather than entertain the reader. But Lethem is good enough and the stories in Chronic City are compelling enough to keep me reading.

I also read this book while chest deep into my own novel and when I would pick up Chronic, it was with an eye toward structure, how Lethem made it from point A to point B, or from point C back to A via B. It's a tedious way to read a book, so I admit that part of the problem I had with it may have been my own doing, but so be it. I feel that, along with being entertained, if not somewhat baffled, I may have just learned a thing or two.

So, there you have it. I like this novel and it only took me two weeks and one day to figure it out. Better late than never.



*I just looked it up and the name of the Lethem novel I dislike so much is You Don't Love Me Yet (2007).

A Moveable Feast

Each weekday morning there's a lull in my routine after the older kids leave for school and the youngest wakes up and needs breakfast, dressing or just to sit on the couch with me for a snuggle and to watch Dora. In this time between the rush of lunch-making and dashing off to daycare, I've been reading Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast.

Or, I should say, re-reading it.

When I was younger, in my early 20s, I read it probably almost a dozen times or so. After buying a little retail business and becoming mired in that day-to-day, same four walls existence, I found no time to write. For almost a decade I didn't write anything of any substance. In that time, I couldn't even think of reading A Moveable Feast, the story of Hemingway's early years in Paris (1921-1926) when he pursued the noble vocation of writing, recounting those days when he would forgo food and live in near poverty if it meant the time to write a good story, or even one true sentence. Romantic, I know, but I couldn't think of the memoir without thinking that I should have worked harder when I was younger at what I knew deep down I wanted to do. Not necessarily as a career, even, but just something I wanted to accomplish - a novel, a story, one sentence.

So I set the book aside, though I always knew where it was. The copy I have is an old paperback Scribner Classic published by Macmillan Publishing Company. It's unremarkable except for the well-worn creases in the spine, dog-eared pages and the underlining of favorite passages, not just of mine, but of my good friend Jim Phillips. When we were roommates for so many years long ago we would both read the same copy and make notes of particularly noteworthy sentences or paragraphs. Jim is a songwriter in New Mexico now.

"on the train"

Several years ago, my sister Elizabeth was going to Paris for a vacation and I loaned her my copy (I wasn't going to read it) and she made it even more special by taking photographs of areas or landmarks Hemingway mentions, cut them out and placed them in the appropriate pages within the book. So now it's a treat to read:

Now you were accustomed to see the bare trees against the sky and you walked the fresh-washed gravel paths through the Luxembourg gardens in the clear sharp wind.

And tucked in there, between pages 10 and 11 is a little two-inch by three-inch picture of just that scene and with her handwriting on the back, "fresh-washed gravel paths."

Or, on page 179, to find a photo of a street sign marking rue de Tilsitt and reading that this is where Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived.

They are little treasures in a book filled with treasures. Hemingway began writing this in Cuba and there are mentions of his working on it, worrying over it as he did, all through A.E. Hotchner's wonderful biography of his later years, Papa Hemingway. He eventually set it aside to write The Dangerous Summer which would become Death in the Afternoon, and Feast wasn't completed until after his death.

It's romantic, I know, this notion of squirreling away in a Paris flat, eating mostly bread and drinking in cafes, lighting a wood stove to keep warm in the mornings while you hammer away at the great American novel. But so what. It's a pleasant thing to read and I'm glad I'm in a place where I can do it without wondering "what if" and having that depression set in when there's something I know I should be doing, but am not. And, anyway, writing should be romantic. So should reading.

I read one chapter each morning and it gets my blood flowing and my brain working and puts my heart into whatever I have to do that day. In the book, Hemingway talks of how he would prepare himself each day to write, this is how I prepare myself.

(I'm nearly finished re-reading A Moveable Feast. What's next? What other books of inspiration are out there?)

Shelby Foote's Pipe

The photo above is of a pipe that once belonged to Shelby Foote. It's a meerschaum by master carver Beckler in the image of Robert E. Lee.

In a past life I owned a small pipe & cigar shop in downtown Memphis and Mr. Foote was a regular customer (William Faulkner was a customer before my time, but that's another story). I acquired this pipe when Mr. Foote's son came around selling off some items after his father had passed away. I bought it with an eye toward profit, of course, but then found I couldn't part with it. How would I prove its authenticity anyway? I can't even prove it to you, so you'll just have to take my word.

I inherited Foote as a customer. His routine was that every six weeks or so he'd call and tell me he would be down that day, and I'd put his order together - two pounds of a tobacco I called Mello Mix and a few canisters of Edward G. Robinson pipe tobacco. He handled the blending himself. Sometime that afternoon, he'd pull up to the curb in his little white BMW, come in and pick up his package and then leave. I'd include an invoice and he'd mail a check within the week.

It's how he'd done business with the previous owner for decades and I saw no reason to alter the arrangement.

But then I did. Or, I tried to. One day he called to say he'd be down and I said, "Mr. Foote, your house is right on my way home in the evening, why don't you let me take this tobacco to you so you don't have to make the drive downtown?"

My thinking was that when I showed up at his doorstep, he'd show me in and ask me to sit for a bit. Maybe we'd have a drink and talk about writing and reading and whatever he might want to discuss. I'd get to see where he works, where he wrote the three volume The Civil War and some of his novels.

Instead, he thanked me and told me just where, outside of his front door, I could leave the package.

Be sure that, after pulling into the Footes' driveway that evening, I made my presence known. I got out of my car and slammed the door as loudly as I could and took my time walking to the door, hoping for that spontaneous invite. I left the tobacco and, as I was getting back into my car, I heard someone calling to me. I looked around, and then up, and saw the old man leaning from an upper window, from his turret, waving down and thanking me. I waved back.

Shelby Foote did not cotton to visitors or small talk with strangers. But he did, at some point, allow interviewers from The Paris Review into his home and I've just read that interview. It's fantastic. From the beginning when the interviewer writes, "Dressed in his regular writing attire (pajamas and bathrobe) Foote opened the door, a rambunctious chocolate Lab retriever named Bird barking and leaping behind him" to his tales of time spent with Faulkner, his writing process, the evils of Hollywood and, of course, the Civil War.

I took to heart, though, the answer he gave to the poorly-worded question, "What kind of advice would you give young writers?"

To read, and above all to reread. When you read, you get the great pleasure of discovering what happened. When you reread, you get the great pleasure of knowing where the author’s going and seeing how he goes about getting there—and that’s learning creative writing. I would tell a young writer that. Of course I would tell him: work, work, work, sit at that desk and sweat. You don’t have to have a plot, you don’t have to have anything. Describe someone crossing a room, and try to do it in a way that won’t perish. Put it down on paper. Keep at it. Then when you finally figure out how to handle words pretty well, try to tell a story. It won’t be worth a damn; you’ll have to tear it up and throw it away. But then try to do it again, do it again, and then keep doing it, until you can do it. You may never be able to do it. That’s the gamble. You not only may not be able to make a living, you may not be able to do it at all. But that’s what you put on the line. Every artist has that. He doesn’t deserve a whole lot of credit for it. He didn’t choose it. It was visited upon him. Somebody asks, When did you decide you wanted to be a writer? I never decided I wanted to be a writer. I simply woke up a writer one morning.  

I love to read known, established writers' advice to those of us sitting at our desks, sweating. It makes me think that what I think and do with my pencil and paper each day may, one day, amount to something.

I count myself lucky having known Mr. Foote, as much as I could know him. There was the odd time or two that he lingered in the shop and we talked. We talked, not of writing or the Civil War, but about pipes. He loved his pipes - the Canadian was his preference with its short mouthpiece and long, straight shank - and, by his count, he had thousands, many sent to him by fans.

I'm a fan and I appreciate having a pipe of his now. It sits across the room atop an old Underwood typewriter, perfect for me to look up to for inspiration and to remind me to stay right where I am and to work, work, work.

The Cool Kids

When I was first asked to write The Memphis Flyer's cover story, "20<30" - a look at twenty twenty-somethings who do good work, are artistic, entrepreneurial or just cool, my first thought was, "Why am I not on this list?"

And then I remembered that I'm 40.

40 Years Old

My next thought was, "What did I do in my twenties that might have been noteworthy?" Good question. I got married when I was 23 and moved away briefly. I came back to Memphis and worked for The Commercial Appeal. My first child was born when I was 27 and I bought a business at 28. I'm not sure any of that would have put me on this list.

But this story isn't about me. It's about them. So I settled in for interview after interview after interview. A friend recently read the piece and asked if writing it felt like a marathon. The work was more like a bunch of quick sprints. The length of each little bio - 150-200 words - didn't require an hour of interview, so I found myself trying to find the hook, figure out who these people are, what they do, why they do it and why they love it, in as short a time span as possible.

I wanted to know why Mary Phillips enjoys growing greens in Binghamton, how Sarah Petschonek finds the time to do everything she does, what it is Brad Phelan finds satisfying in the realm of film and video. I thought readers would be curious as to how Kat Gordon got into baking, what Tal Frankfurt did in Israel and Amanda Mauck did in Haiti, and how Shayla Purifoy decompresses after her workday. I wondered what Josh Belenchia's favorite meal consists of.

After the first couple of interviews, I learned what to ask to get them to open up about what I needed to know. They were all great about it and eager, forthcoming and open. I wish I could have taken more time with each and they are certainly deserving of more words.

I love writing profiles of interesting people, and this was rapid fire interviewing and writing.

Earlier this week I interviewed an 82-year-old man (it's not a "1<90" story) who learned to fly airplanes at 17 before he dropped out of high school. He joined the Air Force and went to Korea, then joined the Army to fly helicopters and found himself in Vietnam. After military service, he flew corporate planes and trained others to fly. It's a fascinating story and I get about a thousand more words to use on him. Look for that story soon in The Commercial Appeal.


All of these stories are about passions and what drives the individual to do what they do. Many are just beginning on the adventure while others are winding it down and reminiscing about life. Either way, they're good stories that are fun and enlightening to write. I count myself as lucky to be able to do so.

[The great photos in The Flyer story (including the ridiculous one above) are all by Justin Fox Burks (you can see more from him here and here. I got to watch some of them being taken and it was a blast getting to watch Justin work.]

The Music of Chance

I want to visit Brooklyn.

I want to go there and find out where Paul Auster lives and just hang out in front of his house. Maybe sit on a stoop and read while I wait. I hear Brooklyn is lousy with stoops. And then, when he leaves to walk up to the corner store, or to the office I've read he keeps nearby for writing, I'll walk with him. I'll tell him thanks for what he does and for his imagination.

That's all.

I won't wait for him to buy his cigarettes or beer or light bulbs, or whatever he's getting at the store. I won't hang around until he finishes up his day of work because, as much as I respect what he does, I respect his need for solitariness. It's what he writes about so much after all, men who are alone, either by choice or the will of someone or something else.

That's how it is in The Music of Chance, which I've just finished. The reader gets inside of the main character, Jim Nashe's, head because that's where so much of the story takes place. From the very first when his wife leaves him and he comes into an inheritance allowing him to drive across country and back again, as though it's a compulsion. And it is, to keep moving forward, alone, becomes an addiction for Nashe and the first third of the book is his travels. And then he meets young Jack Pozzi - Jackpot, as he's known - and things change. Things stop.

And I'll stop there because to say more would give away too much of this story.

I love reading Auster because he puts us so much in the mind of a writer. He makes us feel what it's like to sit in a room alone with a typewriter and imagine a man and a wager and a stone wall.

I love, too, that he's written so much (more than a dozen novels, collections of poetry, screenplays, essays) and I've read relatively little of it. It's exciting to know there's so much more out there for me. I found my copy of The Music of Chance at Second Editions, the used bookstore inside the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, recently when I stopped by for work. It's a very good condition hardback Faber and Faber Limited edition that was published for Great Britain.

I don't seek out an Auster novel, but I keep my eyes open for them in any used bookstore I happen into. That's the best way to discover his work - in a dusty bookstore, among stacks and stacks of old books, all alone.

The Ages and Stages of Music

We're a musical household. Any time we're home, whether lounging around reading, cooking dinner, doing laundry or dishes, or disciplining children, there is music playing.

Some of us (me) are more intent on having background music than others and usually end up picking the music. If it's up to me, it ends up being a shuffling of Elvis Costello, Jack Johnson, David Bowie and the Rolling Stones or, if the mood is different, Billie Holiday, Oscar Peterson, Dean Martin and Lester Young. Either way, Kristy and Andria will listen to it and rarely complain out loud. The kids have no choice.

In the interest of fairness, however, I decided some time back to create a Pandora station with the top picks from each of us to share so it could be accessed from any of our phones or computers.

With a third leaning towards Dylan, Springsteen, Prince and Lyle Lovett; a third interested in Garrison Starr, Nick Drake, Coldplay and Al Green; and a third of Black Crowes, Paul Simon, U2 and Velvet Underground, I thought we'd have a pretty interesting mix, a radio station made just for us.

I put it all together and took it live. It was awful. I don't think I even made it through a sink full of dirty dishes before I had to stop, dry my hands and delete the whole damn thing. I can't even remember what songs it threw out at us, but I didn't care for them, any of them.

We can tolerate, even enjoy each others music when we get to pick the artists, songs and albums, but Pandora should stay out of our business. And now we've got another coming of age with his own music tastes. C used Christmas money to buy himself an iPod Touch and, having turned 13 a couple of days ago, he's been given album downloads and an iTunes gift card. I helped him set up his own iTunes library and store account.

The first album C ripped from our household's collaborative CD collection was Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (a great choice). After that, I had  him go through my iTunes library (some 2,439 songs) and make a list of what he was interested in so I could copy it over to his account. His list included all of the Jack Johnson because Jack sings about the sea and C is my son, and I can't help but think a part of him would rather be on the bow of a sailboat, watching the whitecaps disappear beneath the hull and racing a pair of playful dolphins. He picked out some Beatles (though no Stones, which concerns me), Spoon, Louis Prima, Coltrane, Cory Branan and the Beastie Boys. I chose Costello's My Aim Is True because he lives under my roof.

He also had "Nightrain" off of Appetite for Destruction. I asked him about that and he said they'd played it in band. C plays alto sax with his school's concert band. I laughed at him and told him they probably played the Duke Ellington/Jimmy Forrester composition, "Night Train."

It's all a learning process, though, and one not done so much with the head as with the heart and gut. I'm interested to see where his musical tastes lie and where this explorations will take him. He perused the iTunes Store today with his store credit but he said, "I couldn't find anything." And yet, they have all. the. songs.

It takes time, I know. When I was his age, it was 1983 and I was blaring Def Leppard's Pyromania, Quiet Riot's Metal Health and Prince's 1999 through my jam box.

Only time will tell what he clings to and what tunes end up coming from underneath his door or, Lord help us, mixed into our home Pandora station.

Happy Old Year, Happy New Year

Two-thousand and ten. Fin. 

This is the time of year when, popularly, we look back at the year past and say, "good riddance." Not me. Not this year. I like 2010. There have been years recently when I've been glad to see them go. Hell, I've opened the door for them and shown them the way with a hand to the collar. This year, though, was good to me.

I turned 40 this year and it feels right. I think maybe I've been 40 for quite a while and am finally able to live in its skin. I feel like Benjamin Buttons as his body ages backwards, yet his years advance chronologically. At a certain point he was the same age as his body and that was the time he felt he got to be himself at last. It's the same situation in the novel The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer, because it's almost the exact same story.


It was a good year professionally as well. Things clicked and my pencil did right by me. I wrote a cover story for Memphis Magazine, a cover story for The Memphis News, I was admitted to the Moss Fiction Workshop with the great Richard Bausch, I finished the first draft of a novel and am halfway through the first draft of a second, I wrote a few short stories and one of them, "Sea Change," won the grand prize for fiction in Memphis Magazine. I am currently working on a cover story for The Memphis Flyer which should appear in February. 


That's not a bad year.


I don't make resolutions for the new year, but I do look forward. I hope, in 2011, to complete the first draft of the second novel and then buckle down and get to some deep revising of both books. I hope to place some more short stories in literary magazines. I hope to keep the writing moving forward ... always forward.

At the end of 2010, life is good. My family is happy and healthy in a house that is raucous and fun - three adults and six kids, how could it be anything but? There is food in the cupboard, a stable of close friends, music on the hi-fi and the ideas come fast and furious. 

The new year has a lot to live up to, but I'm starting it with the advantage. Now here's wishing you and yours a very Happy New Year. 


Here's a view of my desk at the end of 2010:

Hidden Memphis: Nelson Smith III

Some time ago, my sister, Elizabeth, was working for the UrbanArt Commission and made a studio visit to check on a project she was managing. The project was a monument for Manassas High School being cast from concrete and bronze. The artist was Nelson Smith III. She told me later all about the studio, how packed it was with art, the crappy part of town it's in, the vastness of the space and the friends Mr. Smith had sitting around chatting with him, passing time in the middle of the day.

More recently, one of my editors at The Commercial Appeal told me that Chris Peck, THE editor at the CA, had an idea for a series on people and places around town that many people might not know about. These subjects would almost define Memphis, yet live in near-obscurity. Did I have any ideas? Would I be interested in writing it? What to call it?

Well, of course I was interested, and the first person I thought of was Nelson Smith III (Prodigious output of 'general practitioner' found everywhere from hotel rooms to dashboards to clubs; CA 12/26/10). Mr. Smith approached those who ran the Shoney's restaurants in Memphis back in the 70s and told them he could make a Big Boy statue for the cost they were having them shipped from California. They gave Smith a statue and he fashioned a mold from it, cast a new Big Boy on spec and put the two side-by-side. "Which one is yours?" he asked. They couldn't tell and he had the job. He made over 20 for the restaurants over the years.

Elizabeth told me about some of the work he had done, but also about what a nice and gentle man he is. Part of what I love about my job, about freelance journalism, is the people I get to meet day in and day out. Not just meet, but nearly inhabit for a time. I drove to Smith's studio at the corner of Thomas and Huron, in a part of Memphis that is nearly deserted now, save for the clump of houses at the end of Huron, a dead end street. There was wash hanging on lines outside these homes and people sitting on their porches. Dogs ran through the street and there were cars that looked long-abandoned in yards and at the curb. The man who answered the door of the squat, brick building appeared kind and open to questions. For the next hour, he told me all about his life and his work. He showed me around his studio, pulling sculptures from piles and telling me the stories behind them.

The studio itself is the old Currie's Club Tropicana, and Smith told me that any black artist who was anybody back in the day played there - B.B. King, Ray Charles, Isaac Hayes ... he showed me where the stage had been and you could almost hear the guitar and the Hammond B3 organ oozing from the plaster and lumber he had laying about. Smith would think of something - a mold or a piece of cornice he'd sculpted - and could go straight to it, wherever it was and whatever it might have been buried under.

The series, by the way, is to be called "Hidden Memphis." It will be semi-regular and I look forward to meeting and researching the subjects, be they people or places. If you have any ideas, any at all, please let me know at richard@richardalley.com. The story in the CA got some nice comments and one e-mail from a local children's book author, Alice Faye Duncan, who said that her father had a portrait of her painted as a child, when she must have been two or three, but never knew who the artist was. It was simply signed 'Nelson III.' My story led her to the artist and she has contacted him to buy some of his artwork. Helping with these connections is another reason I love my job.

Nelson Smith III is a fascinating subject, he is locked into the modern history of Memphis through the artwork and signage he's produced for some of our most iconic establishments - Libertyland, Mark Twain restaurant, Holiday Inn, Shoney's, Shakey's Pizza ...  the list goes on. And so does Nelson.

Irish Eyes

I've been reading Irish lately. I finished Dennis Lehane's The Given Day the other day and immediately picked up Snow in August by Pete Hamill. As has become customary for me this time of year, the holidays and end of the year, I read the "Zooey" portion of Salinger's Franny and Zooey over the past couple of days.

This thematic reading is not by any design. I'd heard a lot about Lehane and had never read any, but picked up The Given Day at Davis-Kidd on the outside bargain tables. I figured there's no losing when you find a 700-page, deckle-edged hardback for $5. It was pretty good. It wasn't great, but it was entertaining with several compelling story lines and many colorful characters. I suppose I was expecting greatness from the author of Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone. It was a bit more simply written than I expected, yet it was an epic story of early-20th century Boston and the clashes between Irish, Italian and African American wrapped up in the fight for equality in the Boston police department and among the city's laborers. There is even some baseball thrown in with Babe Ruth popping up from time to time.

I found the Pete Hamill in the used bookstore at the library a couple months ago. I was enthralled earlier this year with his novel Forever and I've read more of his work in the past. Hamill writes with the swiftness and sentimentality of the newspaperman that he is. Snow in August, the story of a friendship between an Irish Catholic boy in Brooklyn and Jewish rabbi so far doesn't disappoint.

Franny and Zooey is comfort food. I've never thought of it as an Irish tale, but in the first part of "Zooey," when Zooey and his mother, Bessie, are having their wonderful bathroom conversation, he implores her to leave him in peace saying, "If I'd wanted this place to fill up with every fat Irish rose that passes by, I'd've said so. Now, c'mon. Get out." I read it every year around this time and I never fail to find something new in it. This time it's the sense of family and the fact that, while Franny is going through her breakdown, Bessie, in her search for understanding and for help, seeks out the still-living brothers. She asks Zooey for help, she calls Buddy and contemplates calling Waker, the priest. Even as Bessie and Zooey are going round and round in the bathroom, and while Zooey is upsetting Franny in the living room, and Zooey condemns older brothers Buddy and Seymour for turning he and his sister into "freaks," the closeness of this family is underscored.

The theme of family is carried through all of these books, again an unintended way for me to read, but a treat nonetheless, especially at this time of year. I've spent whole days the past week holed up with my family, playing games, reading, eating and entertaining. It's what this season is all about and it's a bonus to find it played out in art.

Because I Said So: Seasonal spectacles put kids on world tour

This week's column is about my kids' various Christmas programs at their schools. I'm very proud of them whenever they take to the stage, but it is with a certain amount of anxiety. No parent wants to see their child mess up and be embarrassed in front of friends and strangers. Luckily, they didn't. They were all little professionals and I was spared the pangs of empathy.

I've written recently about the hunt for a column topic and how it can bring me to near panic. This was one of those times. This was one of those weeks when I carried a legal pad and pencil around the house, writing a sentence or word here and there. They weren't cohesive thoughts, but simply ideas. Eventually, when I had a few pages of these ideas, I attempted to stitch them together into a theme. I wasn't completely sold on what I ended up with as an idea, but, reading it in the paper, I guess it came out okay.

Certain columns are more difficult to write or, rather, I feel there is more weight associated with them. These tend to be the Thanksgiving and Christmas columns, which seem to always fall on my weeks. I like my last two years' Christmas columns, making this year even more difficult (so you don't have to run off to your own archives, I've dug them up and linked them here: 2008 and 2009).

And, in case you didn't catch it in the paper yesterday, here is 2010. Enjoy!

Last week began the home stretch into Christmas. The light of a red nose is visible at the end of the tunnel for kids who have been staring into the darkness of the school year with very little patience and much, much hope.

'Tis the season of joy. 'Tis the season of the off-key, of missed cues and flubbed lyrics.

I spent last week on the circuit, touring the many musical performances of my kids' schools, their harmonies through the holidays.

The oldest, Calvin, on saxophone, and some of his bandmates from White Station Middle School serenaded shoppers at the Wolfchase Barnes & Noble. In addition to holiday standards "Jingle Bell Rock" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," they played the Chinese melody "Kangding Love Song."

A portion of the sales that night went to benefit the middle school, while a majority of my kids asked me not to sing along with Johnny Mathis on the drive home.

There was a distinctly global feel to 9-year-old Joshua's program at Richland Elementary School the next day as well. The fourth grade presented "December Around The World" in which Joshua, dressed like an elf-size Apollo Creed, delivered the speaking part of that most classic of Christmas characters, Uncle Sam.

(When I was a student at St. Louis Elementary, I delivered a rousing performance as a member of the chorus for "Feliz Navidad" in our Christmas program. The critics, if I recall correctly, declared my performance bueno.)

My youngest attends Roulhac's Preschool, and their Christmas program is always a treat of the unknown. Corralling so many 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds down the aisle and onto a stage to sing along with words whose meanings they don't yet fully grasp could go either way. Could, in fact, go every which way.

They did great, though. Despite my little girl delighting in singing carols all week only to substitute the odd noun and verb with even odder words for bodily functions -- like some festive, though offensive, Mad Lib -- at showtime she was nothing but professional and hit all of her marks.

Thankfully, all practice for these shows is handled at school. We are spared at home from the repetitious singing and banging like Janie Bailey playing "Hark! The Herald, Angels Sing" again and again while George tears the living room apart in "It's a Wonderful Life."

The holiday season is not just about gifts for the kids, but about time -- the wonder of how slowly it moves as a child and the quickness as an adult -- and I consider myself lucky to have the time free to be a part of these yuletide spectacles.

There is always that fear in parents, just before a kid goes onstage, that feeling of butterflies like the childhood anticipation of Christmas Eve. But when they walk out with the smiles of accomplishment and pride on their faces, it's like waking up and seeing, once again, the magic of Santa in the night.

Richard J. Alley is the father of two boys and two girls. Read more about him and his family at uurrff.blogspot.com. Alley and Stacey Greenberg, the mother of two boys, take turns on Thursdays telling stories of family life in Memphis. Read more from her at fertilegroundzine.com and diningwithmonkeys.com. Become a fan of "Because I Said So" on Facebook: facebook.com/alleygreenberg.

It's Only Rock-n-Roll ... But If I Could Just, Maybe, Lie Down Here For A Minute ... ?

I've just finished reading Life, the biography of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. Amid the anecdotes of his childhood, meeting Mick Jagger, getting the band together and off the ground, and their subsequent success and fame, there is, of course, the sordid history of his drug use.

While reading this book, I came down with something nasty - drainage, coughing, sore throat, chills. I went to the doctor and she prescribed me 875 mg of the antibiotic Amoxicillin twice daily and 10 mL of something called Entre-S Suspension with pseudoephedrine, chlorpheniramine and dextromethorphan, also twice daily. I believe it was the latter of the two medications that, as the medical professionals say, knocked me on my ass.

There I was reading about Richards and his binges of pharmacy-grade Merck cocaine, heroin, pot, Jack Daniels and whatever else the Stones's touring doctor had in his little black bag. And while imbibing, he's barely steering clear of prison in Canada, France and Fordyce, Ark., bedding groupies, staging larger than life tours, jamming with Gram Parsons, George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry, taking phone calls from Hoagy Carmichael and writing the tunes that would become Exile on Main St., Sticky Fingers and Tattoo You.

I went to my son, JP's, Christmas program at his school all hopped up on this Entre-S Suspension and all I could think of was that I wanted to crawl back home and onto the couch for the rest of the day. In fact, that's just what I did. I have spent days on this sofa doing little more than reading about Keith Richards because that's all the dextromethorphan would allow me to do.

So my hat's off to the guy. It may only be rock-n-roll, but I'm going to need a nap and about five days recovery time.

Because I Said So: No debate here: Make it a real tree every year

In the previous post, I lamented the process of writing a column. Or, rather, coming up with an idea for a column. As I'll do in such situations, when inspiration is slow (as slow as Christmas sometimes) in striking, I walked around our doughnut-shaped house with pad and pencil in hand and stared at the kids, stared out the windows, peeked into the refrigerator and lay down on the couch in my office.

Later that afternoon, we put up the family Christmas tree in our living room. Kristy went to get one and, while she was gone, I climbed into the attic to pull down the boxes of decorations, dug up the tree stand and cleaned it and told the kids, again and again, to stay away from those decorations until the tree arrived.

And when the tree arrived, while I had my face stuck in it removing it from the van, forcing it into the stand and attempting to right it, the one thing that struck me was the smell. The aroma of this particular tree, for some reason, seemed more pungent than in past years and it flooded me with memories and with the season. And since then, I've heard more people comment on the smells of Christmas as they decorate - their own trees, candles and baking.

So here is this week's column as seen in The Commercial Appeal. Smell it and enjoy.

When I was a kid, the Christmas tree lights we had were the large, outdoor-style lights. They were painted bulbs of red, blue, orange and yellow, and the paint invariably chipped, allowing the pure white light to peek through. I don't know where those lights came from; they predated me, but that strand was something we always had balled up in the collapsing cardboard box of decorations hauled from the attic each year.

For our first Christmas together after my mother remarried, my stepdad, Steve, came home with a 14-foot tree that just barely brushed the peak of the cathedral ceiling in our house in southeast Shelby County. In the place of a metal stand was a crude X of 2-by-4s hammered to the trunk just like in the movies. We raised it and used twine to tie it off to various places in the living room to hold it upright in a scene that would have made Clark Griswold proud. I'm not even sure how, or if, we decorated it to the top.

I've had a Christmas tree in every place I've lived as an adult, and all have had one thing in common -- from my childhood tree weighted down with 50 pounds of lights to the towering spruce of adolescence and the very tree in our living room as I write this -- they've all been real.

I refuse to take part in the real vs. artificial debate. I don't want to hear about your aluminum, your multicolored, your fiber optic. There has never been any choice for me; give me the sap, the imperfections, the needles swept up well into springtime and the smell. That smell is the very scent -- along with baking cookies, cinnamon candles and anticipation -- of the holiday season, the aroma of memories.

The tradition in our house has become one where my wife, Kristy, goes to a lot to find the tree. I have no more business choosing a tree than I have in choosing an assortment of doughnuts for this family; something is always a little off -- too short, half of it is missing or dead, there aren't any chocolate sprinkles on any of these. I buy, I don't shop, and I've been known to walk onto a lot and point at the first tree I see. "Tie that to my car."

So she goes, and she has fun with it, and she always finds a good deal and a pretty tree. My job is to cut it from the car, haul it inside and make it stand upright. My job is to keep from saying things in front of the kids that will keep me on the naughty list. But we manage to stand it up, and have it stay there, every year, and once it's decorated and the kids are standing around watching, despite the imperfections, it's perfect.

Not only does it look perfect, but it smells perfect. It smells just like Christmas.

Richard J. Alley is the father of two boys and two girls. Read more about him and his family at uurrff.blogspot.com. Alley and Stacey Greenberg, the mother of two boys, take turns on Thursdays telling stories of family life in Memphis. Read more from her at fertilegroundzine.com and diningwithmonkeys.com. Become a fan of "Because I Said So" on Facebook: facebook.com/alleygreenberg.

Column How-To (or not-to)

My grandfather, Cal Alley, was the editorial cartoonist for The Commercial Appeal from 1945 until he passed away in 1970. He was asked at some point how long it took for him to produce a cartoon and his answer was "ten hours and twenty minutes ... ten hours to work up the idea and twenty minutes to draw it."

As a freelance columnist with a biweekly column, Because I Said So, in that same newspaper, I feel the same way about writing. However, it takes me about a week to work up an idea and thirty minutes to write it (all tinkering and editing after it's written I put on a new clock).

Deadline is Monday before the Thursday it's due to run and I like to go into the previous weekend with at least an idea. Even if it's only a theme or a word, I like to know what it will be about. The writing is just heavy lifting, not even so heavy at only 500 words. If I don't have an idea as we slip into the weekend, I'm a little worried. If I don't have one by Sunday, I start feeling a little panicky. And if it's Monday morning with no column, then full-on anxiety comes with that morning's coffee. And at over two and a half years and more than 60 columns, ideas aren't quite leaping from my pencil.

It's a hell of a thing to have space every two weeks to write and say whatever you want, something from your own head and heart that will go out to thousands of people. It's work I'm proud of and don't take for granted and I want for each one to be the best one. This is self-defeating, of course, but that's my aim every fourteen days. 

It's Sunday morning now and I find myself in the panicky stage as I'm not quite sure what's in store for this week's column. There's still time, though, I'm telling myself. Over and over I'm telling myself that. I'll give myself another ten hours of thinking, though, and then I'll begin sketching something out for you.

Back From Recess

I unintentionally took about a week and a half away from the novel in progress, which has a working title of The Simplest Pattern. The beginning of last week was spent racing deadlines before the Thanksgiving holiday, and then leaving town for that holiday. Upon returning, there was catching up with work to be done as well as reading the December issue of Memphis Magazine (more than once, I admit).

Not only did I take time off from writing, but from even thinking (obsessing) over it. I felt guilty about it, as though I'd forgotten to feed one of my kids for over a week.

What I've found, though, when I finally sat back down with it and read over a couple of chapters, is what a treat that can be. When I read through, it was as though for the first time and there were a few passages that surprised me. Did I write that? ... Well, that doesn't suck! I found myself thinking.

She lies on her back and stares up at the ceiling. She closes her eyes and Seth sees a small tear form in the corner. He doesn't know what to say, doesn't have the capacity for words and compassion that he wishes he might at this moment and so he stays silent. In that silence lives all the sorrow of Lillian's and all the fear of Seth's.

It also renewed my interest in the characters and the story. Not that I'd lost any interest, it was only a short break and unintentional at that, but it made me anxious to sit down with it again, to scoop some cereal into that kid's fat face, and see where it's all going.

I walk around with these people I've dreamed. I think about their thoughts and predicaments, about their manner of speaking. I get lost in them and, I've been told, I lose myself in the story.

I took a break from all of that and now it's time to get back to work.

Is This Good?

As writers, we should spend as much time as possible on this side of the laptop or desktop, typewriter or with pen in hand, working, crafting and revising. We should also spend an inordinate amount of time with our noses in books, reading to get a feel for language and the stomach-plummeting feeling of a plot twist or well-crafted hook.

But we also probably spend more time than most wallowing in our own feelings of uncertainty. I know I do. In the near-constant search for a story idea, metaphor, the right word or just a pencil, is the search for validation; that need to know that what I'm doing is worth a damn. Or even worth another half-hour.

Over at the blog This Writing Business, Stacey tackles the feeling well in her post What I Write ... & Why, and Secret Agent Mom takes it to another extreme with Write On. I'm currently in the Moss Writing workshop at the University of Memphis where Richard Bausch touches on the subject of insecurity almost weekly. Part of his mission with the workshop, he says, is to break down the myth and to assure us that the questioning feelings we're having as writers are not specific to us and that, no matter how successful we might become, they'll never go away. It's part of what we've chosen to do.

So what we do is search for any glimmer, for a word or two from someone else, anyone else, who does or has done this to tell us to keep on keeping on. My wife, Kristy, created the Facebook page for Lee Smith simply because she's a huge fan of the writer and wanted to garner as much exposure for her as possible. At a recent reading at Davis-Kidd Booksellers, Kristy told Ms. Smith this and she was so grateful that she asked us to stick around afterward to chat. Upon hearing that I write, she encouraged me to stay with it. And, in a recent e-mail exchange with Kristy, Smith wrote: " ... and now I am thrilled to learn that your husband Richard has won the Memphis Magazine contest - this is a very big deal! - and I cannot wait to read his story." Lee Smith wrote that. In addition to On Agate Hill, Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History and Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, among so many others, she wrote I cannot wait to read his story. And that, of course, leaves me with only one thought: What if she reads it and hates it? Because that's who we are and that's how we think.

I've spoken with some fellow writers recently about reading each others' working manuscripts. This is part of a dance that's done, this sniffing around each other to see if we're receptive or not. It's a difficult thing, asking someone, friend or family member, to read something for the first time. Remember that, any of you who have been asked to read a short story or novel. It is no different (maybe a little different) than asking you to babysit our infant. Treat it with care, read it as quickly as possible and offer feedback. And, make sure the first part of that feedback is "It's good!" because anything less will probably send the nascent writer into a coma.

Thank you for reading today, I hope this post is good. I should re-read it ... maybe even delete parts ... or, maybe, the whole damn thing if it's no good ...

It's a Small Town, Hollywood

In writing a story on Thanksgiving traditions for The Commercial Appeal (Away from Thanksgiving table, families, friends have fun, serve others in unique ways; Nov. 25), I interviewed Linda Goodwin-Parkinson about her family's tradition.

Thanksgiving of last year, she and her husband, John, hosted their family for a "breakfast dinner." The Parkinsons are vegans and the menu consisted of salad, vegan French toast casserole, potato spinach artichoke heart squares, tempeh sausage pastry puffs and an apple Bavarian torte. The kicker, though, is that all the guests had to dress in their pajamas.

In the course of speaking with Mrs. Goodwin-Parkinson, she mentioned her "daughters in L.A." several times and when it finally hit me, when I put two and two together, I asked what her daughter does. She asked me not to use it in the story, because she didn't want it to be about that, but that her daughter is the actress, Ginnifer Goodwin, known for her work in Walk the Line, Mona Lisa Smile, A Single Man and Big Love, among others.

It was a pleasure to speak with Mrs. Goodwin-Parkinson and to hear about her tradition and her family, just as it was with all of the families I interviewed. You never know just who you're speaking with or what the connection is in this town.

Urf! Redux

I've been toying for some time now with starting a new blog. I thought I'd like a place to talk about, well, me. Not what I'm wearing or might be eating for lunch, but about what I'm working on and thinking.

I talk to a lot of people during the course of a day, and write a fair amount of stories for various publications, and there are bits that won't fit into those stories - details and conversations and back stories. These bits are, invariably, what I tell friends when I'm discussing what I did that day. These bits need a home.

I'm also writing a lot of fiction and I'd like to discuss some of it, if not for you, then for posterity's sake for me. I won't talk specifically about plot or character, because those things shouldn't be discussed, rather, I'd like a place to talk about the process and how it works (or doesn't).

The main impediment to starting a new blog, it seems, has been the naming of that blog. There is a lot in a name, or should be. Urf! has been a great package, the perfect masthead under which to write about raising a family of four kids, and it has served me very well for many years. Urf! has been the place to document the fun and frustrations of fatherhood. But what to call a blog about the frustrations of writing and attempting to be published, all while still raising a family with four children in a house with three adults and six kids; the long-shot dreams of a career made in solitary among so much ... distraction?

And then it came to me: Urf! It's a word my daughter used to say when she was first attempting the childhood hurdles of shoe tying, sweater buttoning or toothpaste tube squeezing. At those times, when the want and need became more than she could bear, it was all she could muster. And it has become part of the lexicon around our home and, especially, at my desk. How often do I find myself searching for the perfect lede to a story or a metaphor or, simply, the right word, only to come up with urf.

So Urf! it has been and Urf! it shall remain. But be warned, Urf! has grown up. The themes here, the topics and the very language will be different. There will still be stories about the kids, I hope, but there will also be those bits from outside these walls, bits I bring in from the real world. If you've read in the past solely for funny stories about C, JP, S and GK, then I thank you. With all my heart I thank you. And if you don't think you want to hang around for what's next, then I understand. If you do, then I thank you even more, and promise to try and be as entertaining as possible.

Dr. H. Edward Garrett Jr.

In a recent story for The Commercial Appeal (Baptist's heart, lung transplant program marks 25 years of saving, improving lives; Nov. 21), I wrote about the heart and lung transplant program celebrating its 25^th year at Baptist Memorial Hospital, the people involved in making these miracles happen and those who benefit from it all.

For the piece I interviewed Teresa Dawson, cardiovascular line director for the program, and Renee Hatcher, nurse manager, at length. I also had the opportunity to speak with Brad Bradshaw, a patient who had a heart transplant in 2006. Mr. Bradshaw actually died three times and hearing his story will put all of our lives in perspective.

On a Tuesday afternoon, I was shown into an office in the Baptist Hospital doctor’s building to interview Dr. H. Edward Garrett Jr., head of the transplant program. The first thing that struck me was the size of the office. It wasn’t large and it certainly wasn’t opulent, stacked with papers on the credenza, a model of a heart and the requisite diplomas hung on the walls. I thought at the time that if I was responsible for taking a heart out of one human and putting it into another, I’d at least ask for a larger office.

We spoke about his past – born in Texas and moved at an early age to Memphis – his schooling and his father, Dr. Garrett the elder, a cardiovascular surgeon for Baptist who performed the world’s first successful coronary bypass. Dr. Garrett senior also assisted Junior on his first transplant at Baptist.

During the interview, one in which I got to hold a pump that can be inserted next to the heart to help do the work of the heart and prolong life until a suitable donor can be found (this pump looked like something I once installed in a malfunctioned dishwasher), Dr. Garrett told me a story that, unfortunately, didn't have a place in the final draft for the paper, of a transplant he worked on while he was doing his residency at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

“We had done a transplant in St. Louis and there had been a mistake at the hospital where the donor was and they had gotten the wrong blood type. We didn’t find out we had transplanted the wrong type into this patient until it was already done, so we had a very short time to try to find another heart. We found a heart in Montana, which was way away from where we could normally go to get a heart, so we got the Air Force to agree to fly it back for us. I went up and harvested the heart and handed it to this 18-year-old fighter pilot and he wouldn’t let me fly back with him, but he took off in front of us and we took off in a Lear Jet right behind him. That (Air Force) jet was so fast that he had gotten back to St. Louis, they had done the second transplant and the patient was already in the ICU before our Lear Jet landed. I think they got back in 20 minutes.”

It was a pleasure meeting Dr. Garrett and some of the people he works with daily as well as Mr. Bradshaw and hearing about his new lease on life and his outlook on life, on this second life he’s been given.

I hope I, nor any of my friends or family ever require this team’s services, but if the need does arise, it’s good to know that Memphis has such a program.

Terry Dunn (left), who got a new heart six years ago, was among 48 heart transplant recipients who attended the program's annual picnic at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis. Here, Dunn thanks program director Dr. H. Edward Garrett Jr. (Photo by Ben Fant)