Tag: Creative Writing

Hot Rods to Hell

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Despite the hellish Arizona heat (which has had me in a funk) and the general absence of much-needed monsoon rains this summer (more on that later), there is something stunning and cinematic about living in the desert southwest. Big skies. Jagged mountains. Spiky saguaros. Red rocks. Dazzling sunsets.

I realize I may get a few eye rolls here from a pragmatist. Or someone who’s lived in the Valley of the Sun for his or her entire life. But remember. I’m coming at this from the perspective of having spent thirty-plus years of my life in relative flatness. Namely, northern Illinois, where you can drive for miles and know you’ll never see a rise in the grade of the road.

Evidently, I’m not alone in recognizing the allure of a western landscape. Case in point: Hot Rods to Hell. It’s a rollicking road trip film about a middle-aged couple, who decide to leave behind the civilization of the east for an overdue escape to the desert in the west.

As the 1967 flick begins, traveling salesman Tom is recovering from a car accident that has injured his spine. Fortunately, he survives mostly intact. But he’s left with jittery nerves and a chronic back ailment. Tom and his wife, Peg, decide the best antidote is to leave their Boston home. They opt to spend their later years operating a motel in the California desert. They figure it will be a quieter existence and the dry heat will be good for Tom’s back.

It all makes sense, right? But they encounter a few problems on their way west. Tom (played by a haggard Dana Andrews, who’s nearing the end of his rope and career) and Peg (portrayed by a frantic Jeanne Crain, who must have needed the money desperately) are derailed on their journey by a band of teenage hoodlums.

The carousing kids crave controversy, drag racing and Tina. She’s Tom’s and Peg’s shapely, seventeen-year-old daughter. The terrible teens become fixated on the idea of trying to drive Tom and his family off the road. Apparently, just for the thrill of it and the chance for a rendezvous with Tina.

It would be criminal of me to spoil the ending of this overwrought, drive-in disaster, because it is a super-suspenseful spectacle that devolves into scene upon scene of jaw-dropping, delicious, B-movie mania. However, be forewarned. This desert debacle includes a cameo appearance by Mickey Rooney, Jr., and his band, (yes, Mickey had a son … and his son had a band) performing poorly in a seedy club that just happens to be on the premises of the motel, where Tom and Peg will soon become landlords.

At any rate, if you follow my stories, you know that, beyond the fact that my husband’s name also is Tom, there actually is a thread of thematic truth to be salvaged here. (Even though, my Tom doesn’t have a back problem or a nervous disorder; we have no plans to buy or manage a motel hideaway; we don’t have a teenage daughter; my name isn’t Peg; and I my friends tell me I look nothing like Jeanne Crain.)

When Tom and I packed up our car and traveled west in July 2017, my surprise heart attack in St. Louis nearly ran us off the road like a pack of hell-bent, drag-racing teens frantic for on An Unobstructed View. But, like Tom and Peg, we survived the experience. Now in my wide-eyed sixties, I write poetry. I dodge crazy Arizona drivers. I tell screwball slice-of-life stories. I bask in the dry heat. I swim outdoors to keep my heart pumping.

And, when torrential rains boil over the mountain peaks and spill into the valley, I savor the monsoon storms. Like the one that blew in last night unexpectedly. Blowing dust and bending palm trees. Igniting the atmosphere. Lighting up the sky. Dumping an inch of rain on the parched Phoenix area. Reminding me as I drove home through the shadowy Papago buttes that these “bonus” years in the desert southwest after that fateful road trip are an ever-evolving chapter in a story that’s far from flat.

 

 

 

This Bowl of Life

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Over the past four months, I’ve shared stories about life at a community gym in Scottsdale, known as Club SAR. My husband and I work out there frequently.

In May, I wrote about my altercation with a bully there. It shook me to the core, but I resolved To Stand Tall. I haven’t encountered any problems since.

In June, The Gym Reaper appeared and prompted me to write about her. Fortunately, she left without me or any other victims (that I know of).

In July, I observed tenderness and tenacity outside the boxing ring. Two men inspired me to write The Boxer and the Theatre of the Mind.

Now, in August, I have more to say. I have a deeper understanding of what this place represents for many of us who exercise there. Boxers in the ring. Rows of joggers on the treadmills. A steady stream of bodies lifting weights on a Saturday morning. A friendly and dedicated staff that greets us every day.

Clearly, it’s much more than the burning of calories that keeps all of us coming back. It’s the sense of community we feel … even love, perhaps … that gives us the hope we need to keep going. To keep fighting. To live another day.

This realization hit me as a friend left the ring and approached me. He smiled when he told me he’d found a new and better-paying job. That he was a recovering methadone addict. That he had once been homeless. That somehow he had climbed his way back. That the structure of boxing at Club SAR is an important part of his recovery. We hugged and I encouraged him to keep going. To keep telling his powerful story. Certainly, this is a community he desperately needs.

And he’s not alone. Another friend finished her circuit of weights and told me that her father’s health was failing. His long battle with multiple sclerosis had worn him down. She’s planning to fly across the country to visit him this coming week. This may be the last time she’ll see him. We traded contact information. Tom and I told her she should feel free to reach out to us at any time.

A third friend at Club SAR is working to rebuild his life after the devastation of an opioid addiction. His path to recovery has been long and arduous. But he’s making significant progress. He’s back at work now. He keeps fighting. Tom and I see him playing basketball and lifting weights on occasion. He’s joined us at our home a few times for dinner. We’re trying to make a positive difference in his life.

And then, of course, there’s me … a recovering heart trauma patient. I complete my cardio workout several times a week. Thankfully, the experience of my mild heart attack two-plus years ago has faded to a large degree. Life feels more normal now than it has for a long time. I think I’ve needed this community … this extended family … as much as the rest of the folks I’ve described above.

Sure, it’s up to each of us individually to overcome our own spiky problems. But we’re better off together. Taking care of our bodies. Our minds. Our spirits. Sharing our stories in this bowl of life.

 

Where Will the Staircase Lead?

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As a Midwestern kid of the 1960s, the last few weeks of summer never felt like an ending to me. Though the leaves on the trees would gradually yellow, turn brown and inevitably fall, the approach of September spelled a renewal of sorts. New possibilities. New hopes. New dreams. New beginnings. All of it hinged on the promise of a new school year.

Of course, I’m no youngster anymore. I’ve been out of school for decades. Technically, out of the workplace, too, since 2014. I’ve moved away from the hustle of Chicago and live a quieter life in Arizona. But, I’m no dinosaur. I’m fully aware of the troubling signs in our country and world (I’m leaving this vague purposely; you can define it however you wish), and yet I try to maintain a sense of optimism as we all prepare to turn the page to another season … another September.

Every time I sit down in front of my laptop to tell another story or write another poem, I feel a giddy sense of creative anticipation. My motivation is simple. It’s what I was meant to do. This life-affirming need to write runs through my blood. It’s spurred me to write and publish three books (something I couldn’t have foreseen five years ago). It keeps me learning, growing, exploring and seeking new ground. It keeps me relevant. It keeps me vital. It keeps me wondering. It keeps me asking personal questions such as these:

“What will the next semester (it’s my semester with my syllabus) bring?”

“Where do I want to devote my creative energies in the coming year?”

“Should I focus on developing a book of my poetry? Would anybody read it?”

“What about teaching a memoir-writing class?”

“Should I dive back into the fictionalized story I’ve begun to build?”

“Am I better served to continue telling my stories here?”

“No matter what I decide, what kinds of new friends will I meet along the way?”

“Is my writing making a positive difference in the lives of others?”

All of these thoughts have been racing through my mind as I read the stories of friends and acquaintances online. Emotional messages about defining moments as they send their children off to school. To begin first grade. To start the last year of high school. To drive or fly to that adventurous freshman year of college … away from home, away from mom and dad. To launch a new job and career as a school counselor (as my younger son just did) welcoming new challenges and fresh faces.

This is the good stuff of life. New beginnings. Moving along the unpredictable path. Educating ourselves. Broadening our horizons. Enjoying today, but also looking forward from time to time. Charting our creative journeys. Reminding ourselves of our gifts and how they can make a difference in the world. Imagining the possibilities as we climb ahead and wonder  … “Where will the staircase lead?”

Under the Eaves

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You greet me in the morning, flying under the eaves. Serene and steady. Zooming in for nearby nectar. Always aiming to adapt.

I see how you and your cautious cousins coexist. You skitter across pebbled paths. Nest atop spiky saguaros. Hoot through dusty darkness.

You are the best among us. Feathered and unfettered advocates for organic order. If only we could soar like you in this Sonoran life.

The Voice Outside

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This is a story of yin and yang. Restrained versus unrestrained. Where The Voice Inside (meek, demure, and hidden) miraculously coexists in counterbalance with the voice outside (loud, proud and unbridled) in Arizona’s wide open summery spaces.

***

I always hear him before I see him. Just as I did on Saturday morning. A monastic monk gone mad. Singing gibberish uncontrollably. Strolling in the park in a mental loop in his floppy straw hat. Flanked by his forever-forgiving Chihuahua companion.

He’s carefree and unflappable enough to envy and pity.  Lost and shielded by his atonal, bombastic sound effects that produce no real harm … only distance from the rest of us too leery to cross his path or break through his maniacal vibrations in the unforgiving heat.

To See It All Clearly

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I was wearing broken blended bifocals when my husband Tom and I arrived at our new home in Scottsdale, Arizona, on July 12, 2017. The frames had cracked in St. Louis during our July 6 cardiac ordeal there. Then, on the evening of July 10, as we prepared to check into our hotel room in Weatherford, Oklahoma, they proceeded to fall apart. The lenses landed on the counter in a clatter. I sighed and shrugged as Tom, the front desk attendant and I took turns taping the pieces back together.

Like the death of my smart phone heading south from Chicago to St. Louis earlier in our journey, it was just the latest mishap on our way west from one home to another … the latest coincidental casualty in the Bermuda Triangle of my mild heart attack (an oxymoron far less laughable than jumbo shrimp) on my sixtieth birthday in the city where I was born.

Fortunately, we arrived safely in Arizona less than a week after a cardiac swat team at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis removed the blockage in the left side of my heart and inserted two sparkling stents for good measure. By the middle of July, Tom and I found The Frame Doctor in Phoenix. For sixty bucks, he was able to salvage my lenses (they were undamaged) and insert them (a much less delicate procedure than the one with my back on a gurney back in St. Louis) into a new, somewhat stylish, set of frames that served me well in my first two years as an aspiring Sonoran Desert rat.

But I began to notice some changes in my vision recently. So, in July I visited my new ophthalmologist for an annual eye exam. He confirmed what I already knew. My vision had changed. He told me I needed a stronger prescription and a new pair of eyeglasses. I picked them up on Tuesday.

Perhaps it’s strangely poetic that the mangled glasses that got me here … the glasses that made it possible for me to write An Unobstructed View and tell my stories here about my first two years in Arizona … have now been retired. They have become my back ups. The more powerful ones you see above, straddling my latest book, have taken their place. I’m counting on them to do their job in my blended bifocal world. Propped on my nose, they will accompany me wherever I go.

I’ll need them to see it all clearly … every memorable and not-so-memorable moment, every stunning Scottsdale sunset and monsoon storm, every word I read and write on the road that is life’s journey.

 

 

 

 

So Many … So Much

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So many prickly problems … so many souls in pain.

So many sleepless nights … so many losses in vain.

So many fallen tears … so many wasted years.

So many bodies bleeding … so much ghastly grieving.

So much defiant distraction … so much compliant inaction.

So much to do for the many … so few who are willing to do.

So much for the sake of our children … if we don’t see it through.

The Gist of Past Augusts

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Securing pink and white hollyhocks that sagged across suburban lawns.

Devouring fresh melons and spitting out seeds at barefoot picnics.

Chasing patrolling peacocks to capture feathers for the trip home.

Cornering grasshoppers that jumped and landed from nowhere.

Dodging dragonflies that flitted, then perched in shallow waters.

Tiptoeing back to school over fading July-to-September bridges.

Discovering an old empty wagon laden with summer memories.

Confessions from 11,510 Feet

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For a few minutes last Sunday, I was up on the roof. No, I wasn’t cleaning the debris out of my gutters. My husband Tom and I, along with John and Sharon (two lifelong friends visiting from St. Louis), were on a two-day, Flagstaff sightseeing mission, seeking northern Arizona’s coolest and highest spots.

On a rare, seventy-degree-and-mostly-sunny afternoon, we boarded the Agassiz Chairlift (elevation 9,500 feet in the San Francisco Peaks) and rode above the tall pines another 2,000 feet to the top of the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort.

Of course, this excursion was just for summer thrills. There wasn’t any of the frozen white stuff in late July. In fact, if there had been snow, I would have been far away for two reasons:

#1 … Unlike our friends from St. Louis who learned to ski when they lived in Europe, I’m not a snow bunny. Though Tom and I are in good shape for guys in their sixties, neither of us has skied much. On a personal note, I don’t care to risk broken bones on slippery slopes. I’m not interested in more pain or tempting fate. I figure it’ll arrive soon enough without me paving the way for a new and expensive relationship with an orthopedic surgeon. Besides, I already have a cardiologist and wouldn’t want him to get jealous.

#2 … I’ve endured enough cold and snowy Chicago days and nights to last a lifetime. To be precise, thirty-seven winters back in the relative flatness of northeastern Illinois.  Think sub-zero temperatures and howling winds in December and January and repeated rounds of snow-blowing to clear your western-exposed driveway in February and you’ll have the right mental image.

In all seriousness, Tom and I enjoyed getting reacquainted with John and Sharon. It had been nearly five years since we’d seen them. And, naturally, both the chairlift ride and the mountain scenery in our home state were breathtaking.

Hmmm … now that I think about it, perhaps our Rocky Mountain experience and my choice of adjectives have more to do with the thinner air I felt pumping in and out of my lungs at a high altitude than the actual view.

Either way, you can be sure I followed the rules on this sign. I did no running on Sunday. Just some light walking and a little heavy breathing until it was time for us to board the chairlift for the return trip, descend the mountainside, and climb down from Arizona’s magnificent and majestic roof.

 

 

 

The World Was Our Oyster

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My mother, Helen F. Johnson (the F was for Ferrell), sent me more than a thousand letters during her lifetime from her home in St. Louis. After she died in January 2013, reading them gave me comfort and strength.

Each letter contained a treasure trove of information: personal anecdotes, parenting and investment advice, and countless words of love and encouragement. (They and my grandpa Ferrell’s farm-life diaries from North Carolina inspired me to write and publish my first memoir, From Fertile Ground. It’s a story about love, loss and leaving your mark on the world.)

Inside Helen’s letter dated April 1, 2002, was this photo of her with my dad, Walter Johnson. Someone captured this image in Texas seventy years ago today (July 26th, 1949) on my mother’s twenty-sixth birthday. How do I know for sure? Because Helen wrote about it in her letter. Here’s a snippet of what she told me that day.

“… Walt and me when we were young and happy and the world was our oyster. It was taken on my 26th birthday at Club Seven Oaks–off the highway about halfway between San Antonio, TX and Austin, TX. We had been married 10 months. We had 14 happy years before he had his heart attack that took all our lives through some difficult times … It helps me to look at us then and remember there were some good years. Few people live a life without difficulties–something we learn as we live and age.”

Today, on what would have been my mother’s ninety-sixth birthday, the best way I know of celebrating her life, wisdom, and passion for letter writing, is to share her story … really our story … with the world. To that end, on July 26, 27 and 28, you can download a free Kindle copy of From Fertile Ground on Amazon.  I feature many more of Helen’s letters in my book.