Yet another book list...

A 50’s pore-opener for Mike and me…

Two years ago, a Los Angeles friend and I decided to trade a list of our ten favorite books. Both of us are (were, was, in his case, sadly) inveterate readers. Such a list proved impossible for both of us so we made the list a bit longer; fifteen. Then, thirty. Then endless. We never traded the lists, but having known Michael for most of my life, I’m quite sure we shared many of the same books on our endless lists. I know one that was on there, Catcher in the Rye, as we both read that one early in high school, the same copy, and discussed it for weeks afterward. It was the beginning of our rebelhood. If not the inaugural moment, at least the validation of our feelings at that age.

But, what got me started here was a question from someone else; what are the most important books you’ve read, in terms of influencing your being, not your writing? It was an interview question but one I’d not heard before.

Advanced visualizing taught here…

Those few books are Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Maxwell Maltz’ Psycho Cybernetics, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, and Malcom X’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

These were all books I read in my twenties, trying to get a grasp on where I was in the scheme of things, if there was, indeed, such a scheme. Then, again, in my middle years for much the same reason. Then, in my later years. Maybe again someday.

To oversimplify, Hill helped me get somewhere in business and in my ad years. Maltz helped me face up to home truths and overcome obstacles. Frankl’s amazing philosophy is so aspirational, so inspirational, it’s transcendent. And Malcolm X’s words show what authentic dignity and shedding bullshit is all about. All well worth reading.

Did they make me a saint? Hardly. As soon as I’d set a book down I’d go off and decimate a tenet or two. Then maybe try again to, at least, imitate the processes that I admired. And in so doing, some of it rubbed off on me. For awhile.

I offer those for anyone who questions or is on a quest. Couldn’t hoit, as the standup guy used to say.

And here’s a portion of that endless list that Mike and I were going to trade. A portion. And these are just favorites. The poetry collections and nonfiction—those are other lists.

The Cadence of Grass, Thomas McGuane (and everything else he ever wrote)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John LeCarre (and everything else he ever wrote)

Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy (and everything else he ever wrote)

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (and, yes, everything else)

Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (same for this guy)

 Eyeless in Gaza, Aldous Huxley

 Los Alamos, Joseph Kanon

The Ultimate Good Luck, Richard Ford (and everything else he ever wrote)

The Comedians, Graham Greene

 Democracy, Joan Didion (and everything else she ever wrote)

 Yonder Stands Your Orphan, Barry Hannah (same)

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

 Dog of the South, Charles Portis

 Blind Corral, Ralph Beer

 Women and Thomas Harrow, J.P. Marquand (and everything else)

The Moviegoer, Walker Percy (and all his others)

 Crow Fair, Thomas McGuane

 The Last Thing He Wanted, Joan Didion

 All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy

 The Arrangement, Elia Kazan

 Dispatches, Michael Herr

The Last gentleman, Walker Percy

 Ninety-Two in the Shade, Thomas McGuane

 The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, Bob Shacochis (and all his others)

 Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey

 Zeroville, Steve Erickson (most everything else, too)

 Naked Lunch, William Burroughs

 Bats Out Of Hell, Barry Hannah

 On The Road, Jack Kerouac

Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck

Winter's Bone, Daniel Woodrell (ALL his others)

Tenth of December, George Saunders

 For Whom The Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway (all the rest)

 The Pugilist At Rest, Thom Jones

 Montana, 1948: A Novel, Larry Watson

 The Last Picture Show, Larry McMurtrey

 Boys and Girls Together, William Goldman

 My Dark Places, James Ellroy

 The Last Cattle Drive, Robert Day

 The Road Home, Jim Harrison

 The Magus, John Fowles

 The Second Happiest Day, John Phillips

East of Eden, John Steinbeck

 Chilly Scenes of Winter, Ann Beattie

 In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

 Rabbit, Run, John Updike

 Rubicon Beach, Steve Erickson

The Beautiful and the Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Motel Chronicles, Sam Shepard

Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion

Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, Evan Connell

The Good Lieutenant, Whitney Terrell

 The Laughter of Strangers, Michael Seidlinger

 Nebraska: Stories, Ron Hansen (most of the others)

 Let Me Be Frank With You, Richard Ford

 The Counselor (screenplay) Cormac McCarthy

 And many more, thank God. Books, man. What marvelous things.

The Barn Painters

Rainy Saturday, new paint job, right price. Feels good.

Out of state truck, Bailey straw cowboy hat, pulled into the driveway. He said, “I came to paint your barn.” How much, I ask. I was just beginning a walk and wanted to get to it. He states a price that isn’t too bad. I say let me think about it. Don’t think too long he says, I’m settin’ on forty gallons of red paint, Sherwin Williams. I’ll come back. Off he goes.

He comes back in two weeks. Then he states a lower, better price. Best price I ever heard for painting the barn. His card has a Tennessee phone number. I say do it. He brings another truck with a sprayer and a bunch of equipment, sends two guys with it and they go to scraping the barn, then spraying it. I pay the guy. I mention the garage needs paint, but will do it next year. He says he has enough paint left over to do it, same two guys scrape and spray it in a couple of hours. For another great price. Then they all go. Leaving me with two freshly painted red buildings and a good feeling about itinerant barn painters.

I’m only relating this because it was a helluva deal and a good job at a good price. I will gladly share this man’s phone number for next season. He does ranches in the Flint Hills, water towers, grain bins, barns. While his guys work, he drives other places, says, “I came to paint your barn.” A go-getter. One of his guys said he’d been with him for seventeen years. Small business at its hard-working best.

The Milk Carton Kids. Pretty good listening.

If that’s not very exciting (TLDR?) take a look to your lower left at the links (under the ITW logo). I add ‘em as I discover more. It started as a convenience for me, a gathering place for links in one chunk so I could leap to other favorites. I think you’ll dig some of them. Just hit one or two, see what comes up. I just went to No Depression and listened to a Milk Carton Kids song I probably wouldn’t have heard otherwise. Sort of quiet C&W song with real spare instrumentation. Nice.

Red. I like red.

As soon as I tighten up the SSL certificate and some other orphans on the site like SEO descriptions and the like that never got done, I’ll add in some fun things like interviews with poets, bikers, crazies, and book reviews you won’t get anywhere else. (Coming: “Blue Ruin Motherf***r by Fin Sorrel—I did one on his “Caramel Flood” book a couple of years ago.) There will be guest blogs, short films, writer tips, whatever comes up.

Ride along with me for awhile. You can have shotgun. We’ll get a couple sixpacks and drive around the town square with the radio up loud. (my sixpack will be RC) Thanks for reading. It’s so nice to have you to talk to.

Truthiness, Outright Lies and UPS.

(Postcard announcement of show)

(Trigger warning: home truths be here) Well, the show’s name is “Truthiness.” It’s at the Lois Lambert Gallery in Santa Monica, in L.A. My name is on the marquee, so to speak, along with twenty or more artists, and the thing will run until sometime in November. Truthiness is a word that’s been around since the nineteenth century, but a west coast hate night, I mean late night, talk show host claims he made it up. “I pulled it out of my keister,” he said. A lot of his material seems to emanate from that source, but I digress.

I was asked to have my piece at the gallery by September 4th and shipped it on August 29th. After crating it in half-inch plywood, with two-by-four cleats to hold it firmly in place, the Hilliard Gallery in KC shipped it. To damage the piece you’d have to work at it. Maybe toss it off a tall building. Or a moving UPS truck. The piece was bubble-wrapped inside all the armour, and we felt good about its chances. We underestimated United Parcel Service’s evil genius.

We knew it might be late, even though they told us it would arrive on the 4th. But we were way off on our lowered expectations. How’s never? It’s like the fine print said, “Is never good for you?” Because that’s when it got there.

“Uh oh, did that crate fall outa my truck?”

I had requested step-of-the-way tracking, and began to get odd messages well after the 4th had come and gone. The first one said the trailer had been rerouted and/or late in leaving the warehouse. That came up a couple of times. Then the message began to deteriorate into language like “Exception on your delivery.”  There was no explanation so I called and that was said to mean anything from “misplaced” to “don’t know.” Or truthiness from the UPS playbook which probably says “Money coming in, okay, money going out, bad. Admit nothing.”

Then the messages changed to “Refused at delivery point.” A baldfaced (boldfaced?) lie. They had lapsed into political-speak. I’m not sure but I think Congress has a lower trust level than UPS in the last poll. It was not refused at the Lambert Gallery.

After days of this kind of slippery stuff, they seemed to admit they had lost it. But they also held on to “refused” as a safer place for them to report from.

Then, believe it or not they used “Exception” again as a fallback and stuck to that awhile. Then two sources said it was shipped back to KC because it was (A) refused and/or (B) damaged.

So, John, can you interpret how I feel about this?

This was the first we’d heard that it was damaged. It arrived back in KC where they tried to charge shipping (again) but Bob from the Hilliard Gallery went to their KCK shipping point and removed the screws from the top. The crate had been shrink wrapped by them and that was a bit suspicious, even though they tried to explain it had gone out that way. Truthiness. Inside, it was loose. There was the sound of tinkling glass, The cleats were torqued and moved. Perhaps a D9 Caterpillar had run over it—or maybe the 85 lb. crate had been dropped on concrete from a trailer or forklift.

The same delivery person who’d written “refused” owned up to dropping off (poor choice of words?) several packages to the gallery on the day of...refusal. No signature from the refusee. Because, well, there was no opportunity to refuse it.

I still don’t have the package because it’s tied up in “paperwork” and claims. If I can repair it it will go back out to Los Angeles on a slow freight shipper I’ve used before. MoveIt.com successfully blanket-wrapped and palletized a dozen larger pieces for me for a solo show out there. And never once resorted to Truthiness. Maybe it will get there before the two-month show is over. Maybe not. By the way, click here for a look at the piece in question. The box to the right is a Seth Thomas clock on the other side, with a glass door. Uh, used to have a glass door.

Upended Stock Tanks, Empty Feeders.

All the wonderful horse friends have left Wise Acres. Amy, the last one to depart, was a Tim Trabon intervention, a companion for Harley who was bereft and needed some company. When Harley passed away (a week before Tim did) it signalled the emphatic end of an era. Freddie had bought him for me well over thirty years ago as a colt. His good friend Amy made it through the last awful winter, then gave up the ghost on her friend Harley’s grave. It was the last place she’d seen him, and she chose to graze there a lot. It’s where she died and is buried. Sweet and gentle, she was an Argentine Criollo, an agile polo pony in her previous life.

Then the rains came. The storm season. But the damned tornadoes are no longer a threat to the horses.

I had a big beautiful Appaloosa with rust spots who loved storms. In driving rain and hail he’d be out there grazing. I think it must have felt like a massage to him. He looked like a war horse, but what a gentle old soul. Dutch.

Tanks for the memories.

I turned the stock tanks over, no need for them anymore.The salt blocks have melted away. The barn swallows are the only inhabitants of the loafing shed all the horses had liked for shade and shelter. They gathered there and seemed to conspire, to plan. When the little guy comes out with the fly spray, you all surround him and I’ll walk in front of him—don’t let him go until he knuckle-rubs our backs, and scratches our bellies.

Blue, Roxy, Dutch, Jack Ford, Mighty Mouse, Red, Lopez, Harley and Amy. The denizens of Wise Acres. Before them, Percy, Senor, Bullseye, Mr. Walker, Belle, and a dozen others. All with distinct personalities. Marvelous creatures with dignity, humor, a bit of crankiness, and all incredibly giving when it came to that. Harley was an actor. Ears back when I’d feed him. I’d laugh and pull his ears and he’d say, sotto voce, stop that, you’ll ruin my pasture cred in front of the herd.

He was also a joker. I’d be in his pasture intent on some chore, tightening some fence wire, and he’d come up behind me and tap me with his nose, causing me to jump, startled. He loved that. Any tools I would lay in the grass he’d pick up and run away with, hammer, pliers.

Anyway, end of an era, and a fine one at that. Before the latest and final loss, they had all taught me plenty. As I say in the upcoming book, Chickens One Day, Feathers The Next, their teaching methods were varied but fell mainly into one of two camps: The “Bad things happen fast” method, and the “Don’t do that again” method.  Often the two were combined.  I’ve been kicked, bitten, rolled on, dragged, chased, bucked off, run off with, tree branched and humiliated.  I always came back for more. “The Horse Worrier” in the afore-mentioned book will explain a whole lot about the G-equine epoch which started when I was a little kid in Tulsa, and then haunted me all my days. I did love me some fine, fine horses.

Town for sale. Cal-Nev-Ari, Nevada.

The cropduster I wrote into the book

I've never been there but I wrote about it in Ruined Days, a thriller that got good reviews and few sales. I was there in my mind. Felt the dust and grit whipped up by the wind, saw the lone biplane, a yellow cropduster, rocking on its wheels until the desert wind subsided. Tri-cornered colored flags fluttered and snapped at an abandoned fireworks stand, and a lone telephone booth stood in the cheatgrass fifty feet from the flagged lot in its own version of abandonment.

The doors squealed on rusty hinges when Travis, my protagonist, entered the booth, and wouldn't quite close but who could hear him anyway? He made a call in that wood and glass booth, read off some coordinates from the cell phone he took in with him. The glass on the phone booth windows was somewhat frosted from the constant barrage of wind-borne grit. A half hour later a Cessna landed on the makeshift runway, but that's another part of the story.

I noired the community down some--it's bustling compared to what I wrote about it, but I needed it to be a bit more desolate.

Town comes with casino, volunteer fire department

The town is real. In the book it was for sale for fifteen million dollars. It went to seventeen mil a few months after Ruined Days was published, and now it can be had for eight million. Its name (pronounced CalNevAir) derives from its location in Nevada close to the California and Arizona borders. A couple named Slim and Nancy Kidwell pioneered the place about fifty years ago, Slim passed on, and now Nancy is ready to sell. As a successful prospect you'd buy the town, airstrip, casino with slots, a diner and a bar. Listed is a motel and various other businesses including a convenience store.

Of the 350 residents, some are pilots who keep their planes in their driveways and taxi to the nearby airstrip.

When the Kidwells came not much existed but a dusty military airstrip. They had to haul water from the Colorado River. They planted barley, dug a well, got a land patent from the BLM and the town was born. None of that was easy. They were true pioneers, the last of the breed some say. If she sells Cal-Nev-Ari, she plans to stay. She's been there over fifty years, and likes the view, the vibe. And the town likes Nancy, from what I've read.

Book plug, of course

If you're interested, there are reasons to buy. It's a casino town with its own airstrip. There's a motel. The highway, US Route 95, connects to Las Vegas less than 70 miles away. It's on the market and the listing is here. If you buy it, tell 'em I get six percent for pointing you there. Nevada is the only state where prostitution is legal, but don't think Cal-Nev-Ari is ripe for a bunny ranch, as it's in Clark County where they're strictly prohibited. As of 2018, there's no income tax collected in Nevada. No corporate tax, no franchise tax, and no inventory tax. If I had eight mil, I'd be there. Writing and sculpting. I bet Freddie would even consider it. Great place for her jewelry and perhaps she'd learn to do a little cropdusting.

And it's sixty-eight degrees on this March third, compared to 20 in southeast Kansas. Maybe some of you well-heeled readers would like to go in with me. If you have a plane we could buzz over there.

This is as good a place as any to pitch Ruined Days, a pretty decent thriller. It can be accessed here.