Extraordinary Stories From Everyday People (and me)

Les Clark

Description

If you baked a cake from scratch, you'd find a recipe and follow directions. I didn't do that. I reached blindfolded into my mental pantry, saw and wrote, interviewed and memorialized, had an idea and, you know. It's about funny kids and brave veterans, bad situations and redemption, on the right track and off the rails, some fiction but mostly truth. It's my cake; have a slice.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781506905440
• Langue: English

Extrait

Extraordinary Stories fromEveryday People (and me)

Rants, Raves and Reflections


by
Les Clark
ExtraordinaryStories From Everyday People (and me)
Copyright©2017 Les Clark

ISBN 978-1506-905-43-3 PRINT
ISBN 978-1506-905-44-0 EBOOK

LCCN 2017962743

December 2017

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com



ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .
Formy grandmother,
Jenny.
Shetaught me the beauty and depth of the written word.
T able of Contents

TheIntroduction . 1
From the Author 3

Just Every Day People . 5
SayWhat? . 7
Conversations from the . 8
Back Seat 8
The Menu & The Cast 10
The Things People Say . 11
“Ah” Reckon . 13
And The Answer Is? . 14
Charge! 16
“Out of the Mouths of Babes” . 18

PETS . 20
Little Girl 21
Good Dog . 23
Snowball & The Paper Drive . 24

WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TOME? . 26
“Gee, Sir….” . 27
Mornings . 29
Roots, Branches and Limbo . 30
Kid Games . 32
“It’s A Clean Machine” . 35
Ode to Food . 36
Sports and I – What a Joke! 38
Y Me? . 40

FICTION .. 41
Lost in the Mist 42
Bag of Eggs . 44
Photo Bomb (His Version) 45
Photo Bomb (Her Version) 47

INTERVIEWS . 49
Scott & Christina . 50
Bertha . 52
Peter 54
Doris . 56
Natalie and Martin . 58
The Man with the Rake . 60
“Bubbe” . 62

VETERAN VIGNETTES . 64
MY MIND IS NOT IN THE FAST LANE! 71
My Mind is not in theFast Lane! 72
EGBDF & FACE . 74
The Inclined Plane . 76
Pierce This! 77
Pet Peeves . 78
Life’s Mysteries . 80
Well, I Never… ... 81
GET THIS! 83
What a Molten Development! 85

THIS IS SOME SERIOUS SHIT . 87
“That’s All Folks” . 88
It’s Not a Harpoon . 89
Mile 4 . 90
Jobs . 92
Memorial Day-2017 . 95
Mount Auburn Cemetery . 96
Volunteering . 97
“She Done Me Wrong” . 100

PROLOGUE . 101
Chapter One . 102
Chapter Two . 102
Chapter Three . 102
Chapter Four 103
Chapter Five . 103
Chapter Six . 103
Chapter Seven . 104
Chapter Eight 104
Epilogue . 105

THE BACKWORD .. 106
THE POEM .. 107
Loneliness . 108

Acknowledgements . 109
The Introduction



I’ve been told editors like Courier as atypeface because it looks like a typewriter. I’ve always been a fan of TimesRoman . I likes me a nice serif. Look it up. So, everything is in TimesNew Roman. And intros in Arial . I like Stencil but it has its place.
I have been writing all my life; creditmy grandmother for that.
When Jenny was healthy and younger andalive, she made trips to Los Angeles, visiting daughter Mickey and family,(recent escapees from Brockton, Massachusetts, home of Rocky Marciano) andtrips to Florida, just to avoid New England winters.
She would write in long hand, “How areyou, I am fine,” and I would write back (using my best Palmer method) “I’mfine, how are you?” Mundane and boring but to a preteen, a personal letter wasa joy. I loved my grandmother. She taught me how and what to write.
Over the years, I either edited or beena contributor to many anonymous newsletters. I still have some copies. To bore youreaders further, hear they are in chronological order:

THE INTERCOM – A mimeographed,strike-over, error filled newsletter of Boston Squadron, Civil Air Patrol. Iwould draw the outline of some current Air Force jet on the cover and a bunchof us cadets would type carelessly on whatever typewriter was available. Welearned to love the smell of correction fluid. Health problems? We didn’t worryabout no stinkin’ health problems.

THE ARTISAN – In my senior yearof high school, I was volunteered to be the editor of the school magazine. MyEnglish teacher was the supreme high commander of editing. I write about himlater in this book. A print house in Watertown MA set all the type on aMergenthaler hot metal machine, a huge thunderous smelly piece of technologysince passed into history. Hot lead, what could go wrong? The printer producedthe galleys and I would cut and paste, with scissors and glue, the articles andads into our format. We have it so easy now with CAP. I wrote humor pieces andsome awful science fiction. As my grandson would say years later, cacapoopoo .My English class editor and advisor had more politically incorrect things tosay. You could do that back then.

THE LIGHT – Anothermimeographed newsletter of Temple Shalom Emeth in Burlington, MA. I wouldoutline another type of light (candle, light bulb, candelabra) as a testamentto the Eternal Light, the temple flame Judah Maccabee fought for. According tolegend, one day’s worth of oil lasted the week of fighting. It contained Templenews: births, deaths, holiday announcements, a message from the Rabbi. Shewould always remind us of our highest moral potential. Some paid her no heed. Iwas encouraged to leave out the juicy goings-on.

THE IMP – I worked for theQuality Manager at the now defunct Compugraphic Corporation; he kneweverything. You couldn’t know more than he. I was the foreman of IncomingInspection which he persisted in calling Purchased Material Inspection or PMI.I decided, because there was so much information my large crew of 35 needed toknow, that a newsletter was the right vehicle. I called it THE IMP . PMIbackwards. The inhouse print shop did the dummy and printed 50 copies. Becausethe company manufactured cold type printing computers, the precursors totoday’s desk top publishing, I had gone from prehistoric to supersonic quality.

LES CLARK’S TRIFOCAL – As my two kidsstarted doing and saying interesting things (just like yours) and me and my bigmouth needing an outlet where my opinions and observations would protect saidmouth, I started writing short pieces. I could take one of three differentviews: for, against or neutral. The Woburn (MA) Daily Times and the Burlington(MA) Times Union published a few; the Los Angeles Herald Examiner one. My workwas not as preserved as the Declaration of Independence.

AISLE 8 – For my seven-yearstint at a Home Depot, my first assignment was the Paint Department. After aninitial catastrophe putting green tint in with the brown tint and causing amajor interruption in the days production of quarts and gallons, I settled downto 30 months of mixer extraordinaire and the resident faux paint master.Ragging, dragging and bagging. No one does it anymore.
I suggested to my boss since the storehad so much going on, how about a newsletter. By now, I had a big desk topcomputer and color printer and Microsoft Publisher. For six months, I put outthe store newsletter covering awards, promotions and other newsy crap. I reallywanted to describe who had a dragon tattoo wrapped around her body or whycertain store managers had gotten fired, but I was advised gossip, trysts andassignations were off limits. But, we all knew.

JUST EVERYDAY PEOPLE

I know, the title is different now. Itwas L. Carley, the Assistant Children’s Librarian in my town, who suggested thechange.
Read the From the Author .

Les Clark
From the Author




My father was a whiz with two saws, acoping and a rusty cross cut, a wood-handled hammer, a manual drill with abulbous screwed-on end hiding a few well-worn drill bits and a can of shellac.One of my earliest apartment-dwelling memories was the bookcases he hadconstructed in the dimly lit cellar of our three-decker. They were tall brownthings with artistic scroll work cut into the sides, and plywood shelves jammedwith volumes.
He had to make these book cases becausehe was a member of the Book-Of-The-Month Club. The books came regularly andautomatically; I don’t think Dad ever called or wrote The Club to stop. For me,I got Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and My Friend Flicka. Oh,and Little Golden Books. Without a TV, we were all readers.
When I was just shy of three, my parentstaught me to read and write the alphabet. My printing today isn’t much betterand my cursive? It could stump the FBI’s handwriting experts.
By grade school, I was churning outcompositions putting my teachers to sleep. How did I spend my summer vacation?I sat around reading comic books and watching our new black and white TV, a crankyPhilharmonic, the one with the exclusive swivel stand. Who wants to read aboutthe Mickey Mouse club? Maybe Miss Wilson, the third-grade unmarried beauty. Shegave hugs. (It’s frowned on nowadays.) Certainly not the Caples sisters or MissCotton who tried in vain to impart the Palmer handwriting method. I got a D. In red. FBI, take note.
I think I wrote my first story as acadet in Civil Air Patrol. We had a mimeographed newsletter written by and forthe squadron called The Intercom ; strikeovers, crude drawings,meandering blathering filled its few pages. I became the Cadet Training Officerand wrote an editorial no one understood. I was a Neanderthal in a French cave.But, incomprehensible as it was, we loved it.
At Boston Technical High School, sincereduced to the rubble it deserved, I was Assistant Editor in my junior year andEditor in my Senior year. It was called The Artisan . A printer inWatertown (you know it as the town where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Marathonbomber, was caught) set the type. It was my job to make up the dummy. This wasway before desktop publishing. My English teacher was the real editor and mosteverything I turned in was met with “Clark! What is this?”
I still have all those Intercoms and Artisans . I should use them for kindling. If I had a fire pit.
It would be years before I attempted