James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 8, 2011
REFERENCE:
Real names are used in this exchange that might not resonate with the reader, but the essence of the exchange is common to us all. A subtle nuance in this writer’s note is that he didn’t feel comfortable at one local hangout compared to another because of implied caste, class distinction. Like the writer, I was born on the wrong side of the tracks and can empathize with him. Now, both of us are in our advanced years, but the sting of that distinction is still present in our prose. Often lower class survivors become writers of some distinction because they live in their souls, or to put it another way, there souls are very much alive in them.
JRF
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A WRITER WRITES:
Dear Dr. Jim –
I just read the comments written in one of your letters regarding the book "In The Shadow of the Court House." I never throw your notes or letters away until I do read them, it just takes a while to get to them.
Now that the Clinton Herald has cut (sliced) my hours I do have a little more time on my hands.
Coming from the other side of the tracks, below the 4th Street subway, I wasn't “in the shadow of the courthouse” very often except for a baseball game or football game (remember the no pads, no flags, just straight tackle stuff.
But I do remember the fun you all had near the courthouse as the fun we all had between South Clinton Park, Chancy Park, and the courthouse and even up to Lyons and Eagle Point Park.
During daylight hours there were games, at night perhaps a little rumble with no punches thrown (usually) just a lot of loud talk. I forgot, once in a while we Southenders even made it to Camanche.
Needless to say I recognize names and locations. You had your young Billy Collins and we had Robert "Ripper" Collins, his older brother, and names like Bill Calnan Jim Delaney, Bill Hullinger, etc. I felt I didn't belong to the Marcucci Soda Fountain set and so hung out at the Revere (Rastrelli's) Soda Fountain and Petersen's Roller Skating Rink.
I was a baseball fan, especially since dad had played semi-pro ball in Hannibal, Mo., my birthplace. Dad worked for the recreation department here in Clinton. I did not know for several years that the Recreation Department was also a WPA project.
Dad worked at Clinton and Southside parks and in summer handled the lights and bases at the softball field next to Riverview Stadium. In fact it was dad who named the Clinton Owls, and I was official scorer for almost 20 years for Clinton Baseball Club, Inc. That is not Riverview Stadium, nor Alliant Energy Field, but my ball yard.
Isn't it amazing how when you read something about someone else's hangouts you start thinking of your own and how great and peaceful life was "In the Good Old Days"?
Hope life is treating you and BB in a wonderful manner. Take care, drive carefully, love and prayers, and as my favorite funny-man used to say,
God bless.......
Gk
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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Dear GK,
What a lovely piece of nostalgia and remembrance. Yes, it was a delightful time to be alive. Our youth, its climate and culture, its veritable ambience was a time when we had not yet taken ourselves so seriously.
I wrote IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (2003) in memory of Bobby Witt and the generation that he headed, not only to illustrate that but also to provide a snapshot of an era.
Neighborhoods mattered in those days, and those names you mentioned are remembered, as are Ray Gilbert, Hans Andreson, Lefty Ward and Skinz (sp) Haddadd from Chancy Park, then there was Bill Eversole and his gang from Lyons.
As a fellow romantic, I think they were truly halcyon days. It saddens me that young people today don't experience such casual joy, alas, how could they as small town America is long gone.
We have lost our place and space in our quest to have more be more and dominate more. Like you, I am a reader and find it incredible and yes, regrettable that most writers have ignored those years during and immediately following WWII.
Baby boomer generation celebrities such as Des Moines, Iowa's own Bill Bryson have written interesting memoirs of their youth but there are not many -- of which I am aware -- of Depression generation writers.
Tom Brokaw, also a Midwesterner (South Dakota), was born in 1940 or of our generation, while Bryson was born in 1951, or a member of the spoil brat generation. His memoir I sense was quickly knocked out.
These two high achievers have written surprisingly bland memoirs, by that I mean they don't reveal their souls, which a Depression era kid could not avoid.
My purpose in saying this is that you should write your book just as if you were writing a letter to someone like me with real names and real places and real events as you recall them. You are a good writer, and have a sense of the nuances of the people you write about as your profiles illustrate -- you did one on a classmate of mine, Carole Gilbert
To write my book I had to take twelve trips back to Clinton with hundreds of interviews, constant hours with the microfiche at the Clinton library, perusing documents in the Clinton Historical Museum, and wandering around town to find landmarks that were quickly vanishing. I spent thirteen years collecting data committed to scores of notebooks, then wrote my book and reducing it to half its nearly 700 pages (single space).
I look back now, thinking how much better I could have written it today. But here is the irony, all five Catholic churches are gone, many of the other landmarks have been torn down, replaced by fast food franchises, so I was lucky to have written what I wrote when I did.
I'm telling you this for another reason. Time is of the essence, and none of us knows when we will run out of time.
From another perspective, I have been writing A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA for more than forty years. It wasn't until now that I could write an honest book about that period and that experience. It will offend many who think of me as that good Catholic boy IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE. I know it will be published, but I'm not sure in my lifetime. I say this because I am in my third rewrite of it, a volume of 653 pages and some 260,000 words, and that is after cutting scores of stories from it.
You are a writer. Who is a writer? A writer is a storyteller, pure and simple. But for a story to have traction it must first have traction with an audience of one, you. It must resonate with your soul irrespective of how the reader might see you writing it.
So, George, think about it, give it a go, and enjoy the ride not worrying about whether it will be published or not. It doesn't have to be perfect as perfect is the enemy of the good. And you are good.
Be always well,
Jim
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