Back from a trip to Oregon and California

Just returned from a wonderful trip to visit friends in Salem, Oregon, where we visited small towns, wineries, and went to a minor league baseball game in Salem.  We had terrific weather and a great time with good friends.  From there we rented a car and drove to Napa Valley where we stayed for three days in the wine country sampling delicious wines, eating out, and just relaxing.

A visit to San Francisco and Sunnyvale where Cindy's brother and wife live topped off our vacation.  We had a great lunch at the Cliff House on the Pacific Ocean.  What a treat that was.  The view of the ocean, waves crashing onto the rocks below, and surfers riding the breakers as they rolled toward the beach was outstanding.

We boarded a flight out of San Jose and flew back to Minneapolis Monday and drove home that evening, stopping only for a quick bite at Wendy's restaurant in Owatonna.

It was a restful, wonderful trip that allowed us to reconnect with friends and experience a beautiful drive through Oregon and northern California.

Now, it's back to work writing this week.  I don't know if I mentioned this in a previous post but I interviewed my older brother before we left on our trip about his Viet Nam War experiences.  We spent six and a half hours conversing and ended up with some great material to include in the new book-Brothers.

the neighborhood

He walked the railroad tracks until reaching the dirt road running along the western edge of the golf course.  While walking the road, he passed the open dump that anyone was free to visit, dump their refuse or  pick through the junk left by others.  He paused and scanned it methodically to see if there was anything he might want to scavenge.  Spying nothing, he turned and continued his walk home, paralleling the railroad tracks until the county road intersected them.  He then switched to the railroad tracks, finally reaching the Hula’s rambler two hundred yards further down and below the tracks.  

Jack, Kellan, Sydney and the Klipper kids were playing kick the can in the acre and a half yard filled with oak trees.  Screaming voices and laughter filtered up to where he stood, bringing a smile to Gabe’s face.  The others didn’t notice him as he sneaked his way down the embankment through the thick brush.  He timed his burst from the weeds, almost reaching top speed as he hit the yard and kicked the can towards the square-shaped concrete covering of the well.  The can hit the concrete, careening off and flying a couple of feet into the air and onto the other side of it. It continued to roll on the ground toward the Klipper’s house, losing its impetus until it came to a halt under John Klipper’s lawn chair.  

John Klipper was the no nonsense father of the three boys and four girls who made up the rest of the Klipper family.  He was raising the children alone after the death of their mother three years earlier.  

Mr. Klipper was smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper as he sat comfortably in his chair on the concrete patio.  When the can had finally come to a clattering stop under his chair, he put down his paper on the small table next to him and took another drag from his Marlboro.  The cigarette dangled from his mouth as he leaned over and picked up the can to examine it.  The children were all deathly silent as they stood and watched him turn his head one way and then the other while he stared at the can.  For God’s sakes, it was just a can they collectively thought.  What could he possibly be looking at and trying to figure out.  

After what seemed like an eternity, he ever so slowly placed the can on it’s side on the ground, stood up like a stretching lion and faced the kids.  Everyone of the kids stood horrified as they wondered what he was going to say or do to all of them.

John Klipper stood for another moment staring at them until a smile broke out across his face and he drew his left foot back and exploded it forward into the can, sending it over all of their heads back towards the railroad tracks.  

Totally shocked, the children didn’t move a muscle until Mr. Klipper, with the cigarette still dangling from the corner of his lips, said, “Well, what are you waiting for?  Go for it!”  He then sat back down, picked up his newspaper and resumed reading.  Shouts and screams erupted into the air as everyone rushed to the can. 

More about Gabe from "Brothers".

“I, I, thought you were somebody else,” Gabe said.  The bum stood silent, not saying anything for a while.  He noticed the man looked old-maybe thirty.  Even in the darkened interior of the fort he could see the bum’s skin looked dirty.  The pants were worn out at the knees and his jacket was almost in shreds.  As Gabe took a step backward, the bum followed with a step forward of his own.  He slammed the club into his hand smoothly, silkily.  There was no doubt in Gabe’s mind the man was threatening him.   

“This is my brothers’ and my fort,” Gabe stammered as he decided to stand his ground.  The man stopped slamming the club in his hand and stared at Gabe for a few seconds before he said anything.

Laying the club on the dirt floor and changing his attitude completely, the bum said, “Well, I didn’t know that.  If I had, I would never have disembarked from my train and utilized your ‘fort’ to cook my supper.  Please, if you will allow me, I will finish my dinner, clean up, and then be on my way.”  He looked expectantly at Gabe, searching for his permission.

“I, uh, think that would be okay,” Gabe finally, grudgingly muttered.  Feeling like he was now in control, he added, “If you want, you can stay here the night.  I think my mom said it was supposed to rain later on and it doesn’t look like you have anyplace to stay…later… I mean.”  

A smile broke across the bums unshaven face as he sat down on one of the many half logs the brothers had dragged into the fort.  “I appreciate that…”  Gabe remained standing as the two of them stared at each other.  “Would you like some beans?  It looks like they’re boiling now,” said the bum.

Gabe hesitated, thought of declining and leaving, but instead said, “Yeah…I’m kind of hungry.”  The bum grabbed a wooden plate, dished a couple of scoops of beans onto it, and handed the plate along with a spoon to Gabe.  Gabe accepted it and began eating as he sat upon another nearby half-log.  The bum began eating the rest of the beans out of the pot.  They regarded each other silently for a while as they downed spoonfuls of beans.

Finally, the bum said, “What’s your name?”

Between spoonfuls of beans, Gabe muttered his name, and then he paused and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Paul.”  The bum put an enormous spoonful into his mouth and resumed chewing.  More silence ensued, broken only by the animal sounds of masticating and swallowing.  As he finished and placed the empty pot on the ground near the fire pit, the bum looked around before saying, “You made a nice place here.  Anybody traveling across the country could have an easy time of it holing up for a while in your fort.  How long did it take you to finish it?”

“My brothers and I took a couple of days to get it mostly the way we wanted it, and then we gradually added some things…like the logs we’re sitting on.”

“Comfortable, better than the flatbed of a train.  I’ll say that,” said Paul.  He let his eyes travel around the interior, whistled, and slapped his hands on his thighs as he rose up from the log.  Quickly, Gabe moved back a little, startled by the crack of the man’s hands against his pants and the swiftness of the man as he got up.  “It’s ok, just getting up and stretching.  I’m not going to hurt you, Gabe.  People might call a person like me a bum, but, they don’t really know what I’m about.  Why I travel the way I do or why I…find myself in this kind of lifestyle.”

Gabe finished his plate of beans.  “Well, I, uh, should get going.  It’s okay if you stay here tonight, Paul, but my brothers and I were going to camp out here tomorrow night and I’d appreciate it if you were gone by then.”  The bum regarded him warily for a few moments with a slightly twisted turn to his lips.

“That’s fine, Gabe.  I’ll be gone in the morning-probably a train passing through then and I know where they slow down enough to jump on.  You don’t have to worry.  I’ll be gone.”  Gabe started to back out of the entrance, which was only ten feet behind him, but reconsidered and turned to walk straight out when he realized the bum might think he was afraid of him and feared an attack.  

“Gabe!”  Gabe quickly turned around to face the bum.  “Thanks for letting me stay here.  I appreciate it.”

Gabe smiled.  “No problem,” he said, and then he left.

He walked the railroad tracks until reaching the dirt road running along the western edge of the golf course.  While walking by, he passed the open dump anyone was free to visit, dump their refuse, or go through everyone else’s junk that had been dumped into the large, open pit.

Brother Gabe

Gabe cracked a smile and said, “Keep watching me and you’ll learn more, sonny.”  Jack shook his head and laughed a little, launching a wad of spittle across the narrow stream created by the spring.  A contest immediately began, to see who could spit the farthest.  Demonstrating that he wasn’t completely grown up, Gabe joined in, winning the contest by a couple of feet.

The boys resumed work on a fort they had begun several days before.  They had to put the finishing touches on the stick roof they had meticulously woven together with twine from home and smaller diameter vines they had hacked from the trees.  This was just one of many forts they had constructed over the past few years.  The grand castle of all their forts rested about a mile north of their house; a hundred yards to the east of the railroad tracks and a hundred yards north of the third hole of the golf course.  

A large, old elm tree had fallen over, creating a natural cave-like area beneath it.  There was enough room for an adult to stand up inside and branches covered the sides.  The brothers had filled in the sparsely covered sides of the natural fort with sticks they had gathered from the ground and branches they cut from saplings, completing the most beautiful structure they had ever had the fortune to discover, improve, and use. 

 In the center of the fort, they had dug a three foot diameter by six-inch deep hole and lined it with rocks found nearby, and built small fires, cooking cans of beans and roasting hotdogs they had pilfered from home.

On one of the days when Gabe had gone to the fort alone, he surprised a shabbily dressed man cooking a pot of beans over their fire pit, his pot was hanging from the sticks the brothers had dug into the ground and bent over the fire ring.  Growing up by the railroad tracks, the brothers always referred to such men as bums, because that’s what their mother and father had called them.  Driftless men crossing the country on the rails, stopping for a day here and there for a little respite from riding the trains.

Gabe had noticed smoke rising from the fort as soon as he had stepped from the railroad tracks.  He carefully made his way down the twenty foot embankment, taking care not to create any noise.  His first thought was that he was going to surprise one of the other neighborhood kids messing around within he and his brothers’ fort and make him pay a physical price for it.  Sneaking quietly, Gabe inched his way to the entrance and then burst inside.  He stopped quickly when he realized it wasn’t any kid he confronted, but a grown man holding a menacing looking club in his hands.

“Well, you want a piece of this club or not?” the bum asked in a leathery voice.

Writers conference

I attended the 11th annual Writers Festival and Book Fair on Saturday, March 22, 2014 in Bloomington, Minnesota.  It was a great experience that lead off with Nancy Carlson as the keynote speaker.  Nancy has been a very successful publisher of children's books and is well known across the  U.S.
I attended the following sessions:

The Creative Process
Every good story contains a mystery
Short and Sweet: Learning to write succinctly
How to work with Editors, agents, publishers, and booksellers.

In addition to the sessions, exhibitors were pitching books, publishing outlets, copy editing, etc.

Every one of the sessions I attended was professionally presented, entertaining, and filled with excellent tips.  The presenters were available for questioning afterwards and very willing to help answer any questions we had.

As a side note, I bought a book from two, older gentlemen who had taught at Robbinsdale, Minnesota.  They are twins who grew up in a tenement flat in Yorkville on Manhattan's ethnic Upper East Side in the 1940's, 50's, and 60's.  They later moved to Minnesota and taught grades K-University for a combined 64 years and earned doctorate degrees.
The title of the book, Yorkville Twins, caught my eye immediately because I am the father of identical twin sons, soon to be 38 years old.  While chatting with them, we compared notes of the trials and tribulations of twins and the often love/hate relationship that exists.  They're  a couple of great guys, and after I'm through reading their book I'll give it to my twins to read.

It was worth the cost of attending ($79) and very easy to find, just off 35W at the Bloomington Theatre and Art Center.

The Book Club Murders

My latest novel is finally going to be available as an e-book on Amazon, Thursday, March 20, 2014.  By the end of the week it will be available in paperback form, also on Amazon.  It will be available in book stores such as Barnes and Noble and libraries in approximately two months.  The Kindle version will sell for $2.99 and the paperback will sell for $9.95.

I hope you enjoy the book, whichever version you choose to purchase, or pick it up from a library in a couple of months.

In the meantime I am continuing to write my fourth book, Brothers.

More from "Brothers"

Jack was eleven years old in late March of 1961 and the spring flood waters were beginning to rise along with the temperatures.  His brothers and he would clamber onto the railroad bridge, walk the narrow planks and look down at the rushing waters below.  He, along with every child along the river, loved this time of year.  It was exciting as he and his brothers made a game of climbing onto the girders below the bridge, find small niches to hang onto and ride them out as a train rumbled over the tracks above while the violent waters flowed below.  They crushed together and hung on with all their might as the bridge shook for several minutes until the train finally passed completely by, bringing a halt to the earthquake like scenario.  

It was their local version of riding a roller coaster-without the safeguards.  One slip, a loosened grip on the girder or another person, and they would be gone-probably found several miles downstream as blue and dead as any corpse.  But no one ever slipped.  No one ever let go of another.  They rode it out, enjoying every moment of the delicious terror engendered by their own actions.  It was glorious, foolish, against the wishes of their parents, and also unknown by anyone but themselves.

Jack, Gabe, and Kellan loved it more than anyone else it seemed, for the southern edition kids thought they were crazy river rats for doing it-and maybe they were.