All posts by olmstead

Decatur Clary, Florida Panhandle, Fools, Georgia, Trains

Decatur is back

It is hard to get back to life after a heart-breaking, gut-wrenching tragedy. Dark thoughts have prevented me from writing because every time I start to I write the word ‘why’ and then stop. Imponderable and unanswerable, that simple question is impossible to get around. Only time can wear it down to a size I can maneuver around.

Still waiting for her ship to come in.
Still waiting for her ship to come in.

And then I see these young fools …
When you’re at a railroad crossing and the bar comes down with all the lights blinking, most folks would take note and become more alert to their surroundings. When they see the bright headlight coming down the track and hear the blaring air horn, most people will pay attention and move away from the train tracks. Most folk would.
But when three young men, accompanied by three young ladies of a rather silly disposition, encounter the same set of circumstances, this somehow triggers the idea that playing chicken with a train will improve their chance of having sex with one of the young ladies.
It isn’t long before one fool steps over to the others side of the bar, tentatively at first, then more confidently when he realizes the train isn’t going to leave the track to get him. He breaks into a shuffling dance and clowns for the squealing young women.
You know where this is going, just like I knew where it was going. Once the first fool returns to the safe side of the barricade, grinning sheepishly, a second fool decides he is not going to be upstaged and crosses over to do his own dance.
I have lived in this neighborhood for many years and in my youth I would use the train tracks for a straighter, less congested, path across town than the roads and sidewalks provided. In my excursions it was not uncommon, at least once a month, to come across an animal that had lost its race with the train. There was not as much blood as I expected, even when the animal had been bisected across the juicy midsection. I suspect it is because the train wheels pinch the edges closed as it slices through. The coolest one I ever saw was a possum that had been decapitated right behind the ears, his head on one side of the rail and his body on the other.
I wondered how long their game of dare would last before someone put a foot amiss and lost his toes. I resolved to laugh heartily and walk away.
The third fool was not about to be outdone by any other fool. Instead of a silly dance, he begins touching the train as it goes by at about 20 miles per hour.
“Here we go,” I said to Georgia. “The only thing missing is a beer and a ‘y’all watch this’.”
Fool number three starts acting like he is going to swing up on the rail car, until he catches a handrail wrong and finds out that 20 MPH can hurt. He hops back, shaking his hand. He says something to the girls and the other fools egg him on, probably secretly hoping he will screw up and make their actions appear clever in comparison.
At this point, I must confess my shame: I am sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I shouted out “Idiot!” But in my defense, I wasn’t the only one yelling. Our young fools had attracted other mature attention and they were expressing themselves too.
Young fool number three did not respond well to the teasing from his friends. He says something challenging to one of the other young fools and turns with a determined look on his face just as the last car of the train goes through the crossing. Disappointed and relieved, fool number three returns to his friends bragging about what he would have done, but, judging by the girls’ reactions to him, I suspect they were keeping him around strictly for his entertainment value and he was not getting laid tonight.
It’s like the old fellow said: we don’t need more laws against idiots; we just need to pull off the warning labels and let the problem sort itself out.

Decatur Clary

What am I doing here?

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Okay, so I wrote these books, three of them. What am I going to do with them? Publish them my wife says. Easier said than done, it turns out.

I have an English degree from a good university, but still can’t spell for spit (see?). If I had stuck to writing out of college, I would have paid my dues writing crap I hated and built up a portfolio of work and achievements. That would have been the easy way, but I never could see past today.

Instead, I went to work to feed my family, owning my own business for twenty years before walking away from it with my sanity intact and little else. For reference, I had just finished the first draft of ‘No Free Air’. It took almost nine years to get back to it.

I told myself I would not publish anything until I had completed three novels, to prove to myself that I was serious about another career change. For seven years now I have shut myself away for an hour or two every night and four to six hours every weekend and worked on my books. Why? Hell if I know.

Writing is like an illness with me, a subconscious itch that grows and builds inside my mind until it festers, unless released. The people in my stories are as real to me as the ones I have to work with every day, more real in some cases, because I know more about my characters. The stories have become memories from the repetition of rewriting. I have sat here, staring at a single sentence for minutes while I try to get it to sound right or I have typed as fast as my fingers would move to keep up with the flow of words coming from my brain. It has been the best of times and the worst of times, the agony and the ecstasy, and my struggle, with apologies to Charles Dickens, Irving Stone and Adolf Hitler.

Once I had written three novels, mostly (because you never really stop rewriting a book), I faced the dilemma of: what to do with them now? The Internet is filled with warnings and horror stories of the trouble that awaits the inexperienced writer, along with list upon list of agents, publishers and clearing houses. I found people making money off authors, not just vanity publishing, but contests, classes and volumes of advice for sale or rent. W.T.F.? I don’t have time for this.

E-publishing was the answer. Decatur Clary books are now proudly available at Smashwords: Decatur Clary, a literary sampler (Free E-book), No Free Air , The Lady Lu , and 7 Crows, A Secret .

When you buy a Decatur Clary book, you know you are getting the finest product, hand crafted and fermented over years to bring out the full flavor of the words. Meticulously edited by the lovely Mary Clary, who also took time out from her restoration of Civil War photographs to create the covers. I think they’re beautiful, but I acknowledge a prejudice.

Please take time to read the samples at Smashwords and tell your friends about Decatur Clary’s work. Every purchase is deeply appreciated and feeds the dream.

Who knows, I might find more time to write this blog if I didn’t have the 8-5 taking up so much of my life. I would definitely put more time into my next novel, ‘Black Veil’. I’ll tell you more about that soon.

pets

R.I.P. Deets

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deets croppedR.I.P. Deets

I buried Deets this evening.

He was 13 last July 4th and had been in failing health for the last week. He kept to his regular routine: dry kibble breakfast before going outside, morning spent on the back porch, afternoon spent in the center flowerbed of the front yard and then coming in for wet supper at night, only he stopped eating. He tried, but it was just too much. Finally, sometime this morning, he lay down beside the gas grill and passed over.

I am sad, and I will miss him, but 13 is an old age for a cat, and he never did anything he didn’t want to do, with the exception of getting his nuts cut, and he never went hungry, except when he disappeared for three weeks before miraculously reappearing. We could have taken him to a vet and maybe extended his life another year or two, but he would have hated the car ride and the vet would have terrified him. So I coaxed him to eat, and rubbed his head and told him that I loved him.

I remembered my uncle, a crusty old farmer, down on all fours with a can of store bought dog food trying to coax his old blue tick hound, Dixie, into eating. I thought it odd at the time, but I did the same thing when my first old dog died.

Why do we do it? Why do we entwine our live with creatures that have an even shorter life span than our own measly allotment? When I look at a puppy or a kitten now, I see a foreshadowing of their inevitable ending. The joy of a new pet is now weighed against the future pain of their passing. It hurts and it sucks.

Someone once said that we surround ourselves with creatures that have a shorter lifespan than our own to remind us of how short life really is and how we need to treasure every moment, but I don’t think that truly measures what pets bring to us.

Mark Twain said that time spent petting a cat was never wasted and I agree but would add that time spent playing with a dog is a childhood revisited. Every purr and every lick tells me that I am loved without condition and that is something we all need as much of as we can get. Pets are our children that never grow up until they grow old. They become part of our family, always happy to see us and sensing when we are upset. The small cost of their upkeep is far outweighed by pleasure of their company. And when the end does come, it teaches us valuable lessons that prepare us for the greater losses living inevitably brings.

So we shouldn’t think about the ending and we should concentrate on enjoying right now as much as possible. I still have Deeter’s brother, Kirby. I think I’ll go rub his punkin head.

Rest in Peace, Deeter cat, King of the Whole Front Yard.

Family, Writing

Little Brothers

Little brothers can be really annoying sometimes, especially when they don’t get their own way.

I was 26 months old the first time I met him. He was red, wrinkled, and slept a lot. Despite his angelic appearance, I sensed a potential for mischief in him.

Being a little brother myself, I knew older brothers were bigger, stronger, and dominant. Looking at the red raisinette cuddled in next to my mom where I used to lay, I resolved to be the best big brother to him that I could be and dominate him completely. As if he could read my thoughts, he opened sleepy eyes, and looked around before giving me what I later learned was his basic ‘oh yeah? Says you’ face. The grownups said it was gas and mama picked him up to burp, but I knew the gauntlet had been flung. So be it, thought I. Let the games begin.

There were no ‘games’, of course, beyond the usual cruelties brothers inflict on each other as they grow up, partially because he was mama’s last baby and partly because he was a likable little cuss. Sure he could be annoying sometimes, in ways I never understood, and 26 months age difference seems like a lot until you hit twenty and want to date an 18 year old woman, but he was also funny and not afraid to do something really stupid if he thought it might be amusing.

Somehow, he survived, and so did I. In our maturity we laugh about youthful differences that seemed so important at the time. I have become aware of how much of an impression a small act of kindness can make in a recipient’s life. Any kindnesses I may have accidentally performed have been repaid many times over. He has gone far and done well in this world, leaving a legacy of kindness and consideration behind him. Many people have better lives because of him.

As he begins his sixth decade on this earth my little brother is still going strong, better than ever since they re-plumbed his heart. He shows no signs of slowing down, so keep a sharp lookout in the skies and highways of South Florida. Best to just give him his way, he can be annoying when he doesn’t get it.

Happy birthday, little brother.

Decatur Clary, Florida Panhandle, Northwest Florida, Writing

Decatur Clary – a simple man in complicated times.

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Born into a family of storytellers, I learned early that the first liar doesn’t stand a chance and an entertaining fabrication was sometimes sufficient to distract an adult long enough for them to forget how mad they are.

I started writing at a young age, the alphabet mostly. Gradually, I learned to assemble words and form sentences, … somewhat. Imagine my joy upon discovering I could write my stories down! Consistent creative re-imaging was within my grasp.

I was toiling my life away, providing for my family and myself, until one day my wife asked me if I was ever going to do anything with all of my scribblings. I had never considered actually doing anything with them; outside of pleasuring myself and making her read them. Why don’t you publish some of them, she asked. D’ya think? I said. Yep, she said. So I did, and here we are. What do you think?

My stories are mostly about Florida, the way it probably never was, but the way I remember it. The characters are composites of people I have known or heard about, and the settings are familiar places in the Panhandle of Florida, the armpit of the South. Any truth is accidental and I disclaim any liability.

In my youth we traveled a lot, but we always came back to the Forgotten Coast. The tourism bureau doesn’t like to talk about it much, because of the heat, humidity and hurricanes that swirl up from the Gulf of Mexico and the mosquitoes, biting flies and gnats that swarm out of the swamps, across the sandy soil that supports scrub oak and pine forests and damned little else. If the truth were to be told, most of us prefer it that way, forgotten.

I like to listen to the small voices of everyday people because  there I find the common humanity that binds us together, no matter how strongly social loyalties pull us apart. This common humanity interests me because i have seen it appear in the most unexpected places and it always reminds me of how much alike we are.

I hope that you will find some enjoyment in my stories. I hope that someday soon I can quit my day job and write all the time. Wouldn’t it be a lovely world then? I think so.

-RDC