OLIVETTI TYPEWRITERS AND DRINKING ADVENTURES

Just had to make this entry. I was going through some old files in a filing cabinet I hadn't looked at in decades. I found all these manuscripts that I typed on my old, wonderful Olivetti portable. I gave the typewriter to one of my hippy roomies when I left Dayton, Ohio to head to California. I was skipping out on the rent and gave him the typewriter as partial payment. Those were my drinking days. Such a transaction fits the type, eh?

I never made it to California. I thought my brother had a job for me with his pavement striping company out there. Turns out, he didn't own that company. He was selling drugs instead. His mother, my stepmother, informed me just as I was getting ready to drive away. So, instead, I drove South with a plan to find work on shrimp boats. Ended up in Mobile, Alabama. I almost achieved that goal, but that is another tale altogether that includes my six month marriage to a Southern gal which is another story. So many tales. 

Anyway, the Olivetti was a fine machine and typed very presentable manuscripts. I can date the manuscript to pre-1973. I would get sober in 1976, so I was well gone toward the end of my downward spiral. PS: I don't believe I ever sent this ms anywhere. Thinking I might dust it off and give it a whirl.

THE SILENT BOOMER RUNS AFOUL OF THE CRITIQUES

A friend of mine, Carl, told me it would happen, and it finally happened. I took a solid piece of writing, Pavlov's Other Dogs, to my writing group, and my female critiques didn't get it and didn't like it. It was working at so many levels, even I surprised myself when I rediscovered it amongst some old writings of mine. One woman did catch the correct feeling from the work. She said it was "disturbing" and that was exactly how it was meant to strike readers. So I succeeded in that.

Poor Pound Puppy

Basically, the tale dealt with discipline and abuse. It was about a housewife house breaking a mongrel mutt from the pound to the point that the dog was conditioned to believe (learned) that abuse was play. In the end the young dog was so berserk, she put him down. She drove him crazy. The sarcastic distance of the embittered narrator whose offhand remarks reveal a man damaged by abuse himself escaped his critics. They were disturbed that the narrator referred to the pound puppy as an "ex-con, so to speak". They wanted a sympathetic orphan dog and sympathetic and undamaged narrator. They wanted, I fear, a straightforward tale of maudlin woe that they could feel sorry about. In sum, they were more interested in the fate of the mongrel dog than they were about the son and stepson who the mother/stepmother had also "housebroken". She trained one with excessive and unlimited love and the other with stern discipline, and one became a drug addict while the other struggled with alcoholism, but all of that human knowledge is left out of the tale so that the tale doesn't become another "poor me" tale of human abuse. 

The tale no doubt has some flaws I cannot see because its beauty blinds me, but not one of the critiques gave the story an overall approval rating. Instead, to be kind, they stuck with small details. The negative effect of their comments was considerable upon this poor writer's spirit, no matter how mightily he wagged his tail. Two did ask if the young dog couldn't be made more sympathetic. One wanted the tale told from the dog's point of view. An interesting theory I did consider, but then I'd lose the ironic tone of the damaged narrator overarching the whole affair. In fact, I was not fully aware of his damaged spirit until the critics rubbed my nose in it. For that interesting information, I give the critiquing a hearty thumbs up.

We learn in spite of ourselves!

THE SILENT BOOMER READS ALOUD!

Two sketches of Carl in Mobile Alabama

I moved forward another step in my goal tonight of pulling myself out of obscurity and cowardice, reading four poems from my self-published books at an open mic event on St. John's Road, hosted by newly appointed Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna at Cover To Cover bookstore. Full house. Many readers and many good readers too. One young man, Matthew gave a spirited reading that entertained everyone. His first reading. 

I felt good about my performance and the poems I read. Let me repeat that the names of my two poetry books are Tenderfoot and Gray House By Cold Mountain and both are at Amazon.com or Authorhouse. I also summoned the courage to leave a packet of my two books, with a promotional letter and Silent Boomer business card in the afternoon at Cover To Cover books. Progress. First poem I read tonight follows:

EXPLORATION BY CANOE

The savages had left them.

By accident, by searching, hidden
in bushes, we found them—
canoes of animal skin.
Where water was stillest, we pushed in,
then worked out where it ran swiftest.
Someone had lost our maps—
by a not knowing, we got along.

This river we've not seen the end of

empties to a sea we've not tested,
a sea horizon we must think beyond—
over its edge another place to go or,
up, an endless black the stars gleam through
like small hopes we feel inside of us that say, 
Yes. Our boats are working out a long journey.
From this river, the sea's imagination away
and beyond that the endless black or…
over the edge in our animal skin canoes!

Thanks for reading!