kee's blog

Now that my sister has free long distance phone service, she and I periodically indulge in sessions reliving our childhoods. Both of us sit at our computers...she with her headset and I with my speaker phone so that our hands are free...and we both call up Google satellite photos of childhood haunts.

We both entered the address of the house where Sis was born. The house is still there in the same configuration as it was sixty-five years ago, as is the detached garage that dad built. The rabbit hutches are gone, and so is the Chinkapin grove that towered over the old "chug-car," a Hudson Terraplane, that dad dragged out there for us kids to play on and in.

Sis has only vague memories of the place, so I pointed out such things as where she had been standing when dad took the photo of her holding the animal picture book from which she learned how to pronounce "Hi-po-pod-a-mus" and "Ri-naw-so-rus."

Behind her in the photo was a gigantic Cecil Brunner climbing rose bush where my buddies and I made a hideaway. We burrowed into the center and removed all the stickers; from there we could secretly watch the world go by.

Down through our parade of homes, we found them all still standing. The configuration of the neighborhoods had changed substantially. One place we have yet to find is the 1000-acre ranch we lived on when I was in the sixth grade. We can't remember the address or the rural roads used to get there.

We have also checked out the various schools we attended, places we vacationed...even old swimming holes. Each time we go on one of these tours, it brings back fond memories. There have been a few sad ones, but time has softened their impact.

Call a family member or a childhood friend and digitally hike along your personal memory trails. Google your childhood. It's a trip worth taking.

Four and a half decades ago,  my best friend was killed in an automobile accident. After Bob died, I drove his wife home from the hospital. Stacked on their kitchen table were gifts for their son's seventh birthday. She had the horrible task of saying, “Happy birthday, and, incidentally, your daddy's dead.”

Down through the years, I maintained contact with the pair. The mother is now gone. The son and I are separated by thousands of miles, but via modern electronics we still communicate. Through the decades, the son keeps asking the same question, “Have you any new Bob stories?” Whenever I think of something, I write out the story and email it to him. These are all kept as sacred relics.

Histories are important elements in maintaining the integrity of family groups Their stories should be recorded in something more lasting than fleeting human memories. This can be done in many ways. Journaling is a popular method of family records-keeping. Simple recording of dates and events in a spiral notebook or three-ring binder helps.

When I started writing a novel, which was set in Korea at about the same time as I was there, I remembered that my mother had given me a shoe box full of my letters from Korea. I dug out the letters and spent several evenings reviewing my past. (My, I was an arrogant young whelp!) However, those letters brought back a flood of memories, that had escaped from me over the years. I am certain those revived memories substantially contributed to the success of the book.

My mother also saved ten years of letters from my sojourn to Mexico. When I get around to placing the site of a novel south of the border, I will have a vast quantity of background material available to me.

In a number of families I have known, there is one member, who is the designated family historian. Information of value to the group is shuttled to him or her for preservation.

Another family has a designated recipe-keeper, so if you feel the want to bake grandma's fabulous Toll House cookies or cook Uncle Luigi’s cioppino, the recipes are available.

One method of records keeping that I have found useful is to corral, into three-ring binders, all those little bits and pieces of paper that are usually tossed into a drawer or box, where until they become so tattered and torn that they are ultimately thrown away. I have filled several binders with those little scraps, either taped or stapled to sheets of paper. If the piece itself is large enough, I punch holes in it for direct insertion into the binder.

Those volumes contain such items as my brother's obituary, birth announcements, vacation mementos, jotted- down ideas I've had and annual letters from family members reviewing their adventures and misadventures for the year. This is also where I write notes concerning things I have heard or seen that warrant recording for future use.

If I had started this binder system earlier, I probably would have had more stories to pass on to Bob’s son. Occasionally, something will jog the memory sufficiently to bring a Bob story to the surface.

This isn't as neat as if I had made either physical or electronic files, for the various categories of activities and faithfully kept everything current. However, I am not driven in that direction, so my binders work fine for me.

Those writers who are wiser and more experienced than I, have always told me of the hardships and difficulties involved in writing novels. Never being one that wishes to reinvents existing technology, I accepted their sage advice. I slogged my way through a couple of novels, where I sat before the computer and was creative. Over time the method produced results.

For years I have awakened in the middle of the night and I have spent endless hours worrying about inconsequential things. During one such sleepless period, I decided not to play that game any longer. I would devise a more pleasant way to spend my wakeful hours. I concocted the proposition that I went out to the back stoop to drink my morning coffee and discovered an alien spaceship sitting in my backyard. From then on, each time I awakened, I'd dredge up my storyline to occupy my overactive mind. Each night, I'd add to it. If things didn't fit quite right or a conflict developed, I'd go back to revisit the offending part to make adjustments. Night by night the story moved along.

Instead of resenting my wakeful moments, they became pleasureful interludes. When I was ready to go back to sleep, I did so. These episodes proved to be different than dreams. I have never been very successful in remembering dreams and if I do, they are rather confused, disjointed things. Since my spaceship deliberations took place in a wakeful state, I could remember them clearly the next day. When I awaken the each night, my mental cursor returns me to the place of the last consideration.

The exercise provided me with months of nocturnal pleasures. Ultimately, I arrived at a stage where the story seemed to be complete. The tale had been told. When I started the exercise, I had no further purpose in mind than to replace troublesome worries with more pleasant thoughts.

As I reviewed the results of those mental gymnastics, I realized that, with a few changes, I had a complete novel residing between my ears. All that was left to do was to squeeze it out of my mind, down my arms , through my finger tips and into a computer. Once the story was in the computer, I designed the cover and shipped Finders-Keepers off for publication.

After I finished Finders-Keepers, I need a new nocturnal diversion so I started Losers-Weepers, the sequel. Now, I have no need to devise specific projects for the dark hours. I pull up my current writing project and add to it so that the next day, it is no longer a problem of devising the next action, but putting a familiar story on the page. I have to add the “he saids” and “she saids,” but the next episode is all ready in mind.