January 2022
Let’s get the story straight.
I’ve told family, friends, co-workers, maybe anyone who would listen, parts or all of these stories since the events described happened.
Oral histories have a way of inflating or deleting the “facts,” which is really my memory against yours. Writing these stories down helps me solidify the events as well as add details that place the details in their time and place. Commiting these stories to printed words also frees up my internal hard drive between my ears so I can have space for new memories, especially before any natural decay deletes these.
I think this was also true of my dad.
I am inspired by the collection of essays my dad wrote between about 2009 and 2012, when he was about 20 years older than I am at this writing. I surprised him in 2013 with a printed collection of 30+ stories, entitled “Essays,” which I edited to some degree, adding family pictures and other clarifying images, not unlike the formal skills I learned at Lewis & Clark College as a history major. I guess the degree fit me and my life!
An early reaction to one of the following essays reminded me that it’s not enough to lay out the who, what and when, it’s important to know the why and how. This goes back to my early jornalism training.
When my mom began writing her journals in 1965, she wrote a “Preface to the Reader” giving permission to examine her writing and added, “I only ask that you read it with full understanding of how, why and when, I have written it.” I think that sums up my feeling as well.
Local poet Kim Stafford, whose father William Stafford was a contemporary of dad’s at Lewis & Clark, once said, “Writing is arranging words to be a gift to the reader.” What follows is my gift.
To be a writer, you have to write. To be an historian, you have tell the stories. (In marketing parlance, facts tell, but stories sell.)
Is this a prelude to more writing?? Perhaps. There are a few story ideas I’ve outlined, but so far that’s all. I am rather proud of a “bad beginnings” story opener, inspired by a literary contest about the worst openings to a novel: For Jack Carlton, ex-Navy Seal, ex-boxer, ex-hotel doorman, ex-bug exterminator, ex-smoke jumper, ex-husband (ex-father!), life was nothing more than another pull on life’s slot machine of tragedies.
As for you, the aforementioned audience, I apologize if my accounts in any way slight you or color your character or memory; my intent is to only tell a story without any vindictiveness and from my perspective, without an axe or pencil to grind. If you feel I’ve left something important out of my story, you are free to write your own stories and amend the history.