Tag Archives: fiction

Twenty Plus

Posted on by
2

One summer evening, our writers’ group meeting took place at Sally’s. She is a gourmet cook, as well as a published author, and her husband, Allen, is a master in the kitchen himself. He often prepares part of the meal served at our meetings in their home. He makes a heavenly guacamole and is willing to share his recipes. He is a real treasure for our little group. On this early evening, Allen prepared a grilled salad with his own recipe for homemade Caesar dressing. Sally made sourdough bread and a luscious three-tiered strawberry and cream dessert. Sally’s presentation of food is an art form. We look forward to her creations. She had stopped by the store for fresh strawberries and lettuce on her way home from work.

Linda and I arrived, plopped our notebooks and purses on the sofa, and went to the table. Jackie was already there.

While Allen and Sally put the finishing touches on the meal, we all chatted about our day. Then Sally told us she had a prompt for us. She and Allen exchanged amused looks, and she told us the story of the bag of lettuce she picked up at the market. Yes, the very lettuce that was part of our salad. Their story went like this:

Before Allen opened the package, he noticed money inside the bag.

“Sally”, he said, holding the bagged lettuce in the air. “Did you look at this lettuce before you bought it?”

“Duh, of course,” was her exasperated reply. “I always check for the freshest. Why? Are there brown leaves in it?”

“Not exactly, but there are some strange green things in it.”

“Bugs?” she asked as she stopped measuring the cream for whipping.

“No, more like dollars.”

“What are you talking about?” Sally turned to look closely at the bag. Sure enough, there were dollar bills in the sealed package of lettuce.

A squeal and “What the heck?” escaped her as she noticed in the sealed package of organic lettuce a twenty-dollar bill and six ones.

Thus, a prompt was born – Tell how the dollars got into the bag. After dinner, we grabbed our notebooks and began to write. (Needless to say, Sally washed the lettuce before making the salad.)

The story of Harmon Pettigrew developed as I wrote. During dessert, we shared our theories about the placement of the money. Harmon only had a couple of pages, and I knew he would need more to tell his whole story, so I continued to write after I got home. At the next meeting, I read Harmon’s story to the group.

The Almost True Story of Harmon Pettigrew and His Crop of “Lettuce”

You’ve heard of money being called lettuce.  Well, here is a true story validating the claim.

Once upon a time, around 2008, in a small town in California called Salinas, the salad bowl of America, a lettuce grower named Harmon Pettigrew decided to diversify. After the E. coli scare took his business down to practically nothing, he went into his basement and began to develop the seeds of a new enterprise. He retrieved the savings from the family bank account and worked day and night diligently for nearly two years to produce a new kind of lettuce seed, one that would ensure future profit no matter what blight might come upon the lettuce crop.

Harmon grew up on a small farm on the outskirts of Salinas. He worked in the fields harvesting lettuce from the time he was a sprout of five. His daddy taught him the fine points of how to plant Romaine and Butter lettuce from seed in shallow holes 8 inches apart in rows ten inches wide with twenty-four inches between rows. They used organic fungicides and fertilizers. Both his mother, Claudia, and his father, Earl, were flower children of the 60s. They believed world peace would eventually come about if the whole world ate organic. Harmon’s legal name was Harmony Light-of-the-World Pettigrew, but for obvious reasons, he shortened it when he was in high school. He had every intention of getting out of Salinas after high school graduation, but his father died from a heart attack the week after graduation, and his mom, who was losing her sight to a genetic disorder, needed him to keep the farm going.

Claudia prided herself on being self-sufficient but quickly realized some limitations as her eyesight made it harder to carry on the business side of the farm. That had been Earl’s job. Reading contracts and doing the accounting became challenging. She was still very capable of tending the gardens as well as house chores.

“I know you’ve been waiting to get out on your own and explore the world, Harmony, but I do need you to stay, if only for a year or two, and help stabilize the business and find a good manager for me. Dear boy, I want you to employ all your talents in ways that make you successful in life. If you could please delay for a short while, I promise I’ll save enough to give you a stake in your future.”

Harmon acquiesced to his mother’s plea.

Harmon Pettigrew was not a genius in the sense of book learning, although he went to Hartnell Community College in downtown Salinas, where he took introduction to business and introduction to computer classes. He found complex theory taxing, so he quit after the first semester and enrolled in night classes at Wayne’s College of Beauty just a few blocks from Hartnell. He figured he would acquire a backup skill in the event that a lettuce crop failed. Harmon was more of a hands-on type of learner. It was at Wayne’s where he discovered the concept of mixing chemicals and transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Mrs. Haven was one of his biggest achievements. A transformation from a seventy-year-old grieving widow to a seventy-year-old go-go girl took Harmon only a few months. He created unique hair and makeup applications with the help of chemistry and science that wowed not only the salon but the entire town. Mrs. Haven acquired a whole new outlook on life and was beset with proposals. Harmon became the favorite of the over-sixty crowd even though he only worked at Wayne’s part-time while maintaining and improving the farm. He was offered several opportunities to open his own salon, but he knew his true calling was agriculture, where he adapted his peculiar brand of genius.

After ten years of farming just as his father taught him, he decided to change the crop and grow money. He knew printing counterfeit money was illegal and would land him in jail. Using his beginning computer skills, he went online to research state and federal penalties attached to growing money and found there was no restriction, no penalty and, in fact, the concept was not even mentioned in law. He read about sheep being made in petri dishes from seed and even human babies being made in test tubes. He reasoned that if something as complicated as a baby could be made, why not money? Money is made from organic materials, so all he needed to do was take it down to basic elements and formulate a seed from which it could be reproduced.

Harmon had the perfect laboratory to work out his experiment in the basement of the family farmhouse. Earl, the hippy lettuce farmer, had grown pot as a side business. The basement was set up for growing plants.  The walls were lined with sixteen seventy-five-gallon aquariums and grow lights for each. When Earl passed away, the pot-growing business fell off. Claudia lost interest in the plants, and Harmon had never been a part of the operation. Now he had a use for the abandoned equipment.

With the aid of a few simple chemical compounds purchased at the local feed store and beauty supply and his community church teaching “…faith is the assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen” (Heb.11:1), Harmon labored to develop a seed that grew into money. He practiced with one-dollar bills, going through nearly four thousand dollars in ones, trying to reduce the money to its most basic form and then to seed.

One morning in early February, after trial and error, when he was near the end of his family fortune, he went down into the basement to check his plants. There, in the third aquarium from the east wall, he found a tightly curled one-dollar bill poking out of the soil. He almost fainted from surprise.  He was a man of faith, but it had been tested for so many months. He didn’t want to pluck it before its full growth, and he wasn’t sure if it was a single or if the seed would develop into a branched plant with many singles. He packed up twelve PB & J sandwiches and told his mom not to disturb him for the next few days while he stayed in the basement working on his new project. Claudia surmised he was starting up pot production again.

For five more days, he waited and watched, giving small amounts of plant food and water to the incubating plant as it grew and unfurled. In the early evening of the sixth day, Harmon noticed the dollar bill was beginning to wither, so he plucked it and laid it out under a clear glass plate. With a magnifying glass, he examined it both front and back, checking for any imperfections. The only thing he found was a tiny soil stain on the bottom left corner of the bill.  Other than that, it looked exactly like the one-dollar bill he had in his wallet.

For the next several months, he worked on developing five, ten and twenty-dollar bills, all the while planting and growing the lettuce crop in the field. He was able to recreate his success with one-dollar bills, but the fives and tens withered before they completely formed. The twenty-dollar bill seemed hardier but not as prolific as the ones. He successfully grew two thousand dollars within ten months and decided to take it to the bank for a final test.

Shifting his balance discretely from one leg to the other and twisting his clammy clasped fingers, Harmon asked, “Ms Hempshaw, could you please check one of the twenty-dollar bills? I have a feeling they may be counterfeit.” He breathed deeply to calm his rapid heart rate.

The teller called the bank manager from his office to support her findings. “No, Harmon, it doesn’t appear to be counterfeit. Why did you suspect it?” asked Mr. Withers.

“It was part of a cash transaction for a truckload of cabbages. I’d never done business with the guy, and I wasn’t comfortable with him. I don’t often do cash transactions.”

“It’s fine. We will accept it for deposit,” Mr. Withers nodded.

Harmon exhaled a sigh of relief. His crop was now ready for planting.

His next hurdle was to plant his seeds outside to see how they would grow in his lettuce field. He picked a small field he could manage all by himself and told his mom he was planting a prototype new lettuce, and he didn’t want her or any of their seasonal crew to work in that field.  He placed a row of money between two rows of Romaine and watched it carefully. He planted the money seeds after the lettuce was nearly ready for harvest because money grew much faster, and he wanted it to be hidden by rows of fully leafed lettuce.

The day he was to harvest his crop, he fell very ill with a twenty-four-hour flu and had to stay in bed. His mother, to be helpful and without telling him, went to his private little field to harvest the lettuce for him. Claudia, now in her early sixties, was legally blind from the degenerative eye disease but still had enough sight to do basic farm chores and keep house. Because of her diminished sight, she didn’t notice the difference between green lettuce and green dollar bills. She picked all the rows, took the lettuce to the bagging shed, washed it, bagged and sealed it for shipping with the label – Pettigrew’s Organic Lettuce – Grown the Old-Fashioned Way.

          Mystery solved.

Sally’s comment: I would never have thought of the extent of detail, background, locations, and science that would go into using the money found in a lettuce bag as Diana. Diana took this unusual ‘find’ to a level that becomes almost, almost, believable.

•             This story is in our book, Telling Tales and Sharing Secrets.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Me

Posted on by
2

I became enamored with the book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach sometime in 1971. I was a young suburban mother of three living in Bellevue, Washington. In the book was wisdom about living your best life that inspired me. A couple of years later my friend Karla told me she read in the newspaper that Richard Bach was going to barnstorm in Issaquah later that week at the small skyport there. We decided to take our kids to see him. Karla’s son was three and so was mine, my two daughters were five and six. We went to a big open field with one runway and a barn to watch Richard Bach guide his biplane to a landing and get out to greet people. There were about twenty or so people there. He looked very spiffy in his jeans, white turtleneck shirt, white scarf, and leather jacket with windblown wavey hair and a mustache.

I wanted an autograph in the worst way but in my excitement, I forgot to bring the book with me. Richard offered to give short rides in his biplane for five dollars. Karla and I looked at each other and exclaimed “Let’s do it!” There were two or three people who flew before us, so we watched as he piloted his plane through various maneuvers. I kept an eye on her son while she took a ride, and she watched my three kiddos while I went up.

When it was my turn Richard asked if I had ever been in a biplane before. “No,” was my answer. “Have you ever been seasick or airsick?” Again “No”. Would you be afraid to be upside down?” My excitement climbed. “No”. “Ok then, we’ll have fun,” he said.

The ride was short and exhilarating. We did loop de loops, barrel rolls, and zig zags. I think my entire flight lasted fifteen minutes and my heart soared. When we were back on the ground, he hopped out of the plane and helped me down. He shook my hand, and I thanked him, utterly starstruck. Then I told him I read his book but forgot to bring it for an autograph. He reached into an inside pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a piece of blue paper. He tore it in half, took out a pen, drew a picture, and signed his name. “Here,” he said. “Paste this inside the cover of your book.”

I have read and reread most of his books. I think Illusions is my favorite although when I read another it becomes my favorite. These are a few of his quotes I love best.

“When you have come to the edge of all the light you have
And step into the darkness of the unknown
Believe that one of the two will happen to you
Either you’ll find something solid to stand on
Or you’ll be taught how to fly!” ― Richard Bach

“No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it.” ― Richard Bach

“Remember where you came from, where you’re going, and why you created this mess you got yourself into in the first place.” ― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“You’re never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.” ― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.” ― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“You don’t love hatred and evil, of course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That’s what I mean by love. It’s fun, when you get the knack of it.” ― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

The Great Boston Tea Party as witnessed by a tea drinker (flash fiction*)

Posted on by
1

The date, December 16th. The dawn of a very cold day in Boston. A light snow had fallen during the night leaving the ground covered in a thin layer, and clouds of smoke spewed from chimneys adding more gray to the skies.

I’m out of tea for breakfast. I just want one lousy cup of tea and the tea box is empty. I cannot believe I didn’t get a tin the last time I was at the merchant.   I’ll go next door to Martha Mason. She always has an abundance of everything. She could be called a hoarder but I’d never say it to her face because she often has just what I need, like tea, and she is always willing to share. A beneficent hoarder.

I pull my woolen great coat on over my shabby linen dress and stuff two corn husks in the bottom of my shoes to keep out the wet.  I step outside my door. I’m grabbed from behind, suddenly engulfed in a mass of humans. No, they’re not human, they are Mohawk Indians. I’m bumped and shoved into the midst of their surging bodies. Indians! With tomahawks and painted faces. What are they doing in town? They are sweeping me along with them. Oh my god, I’ll be killed. Bitter panic rises from my stomach to my throat. I try to cry out, terror overwhelming my desire for tea. I can’t even scream.  I’m trying to stay upright amid the surging horde. I don’t want to be trampled. I almost lose my footing, but I’m bolstered by the crush of savages around me. I can smell the sweat of their leather-clad torsos. There must be over a hundred of them.  They are stealthy and silent except for their heavy breathing. As the tide of heaving bodies forces me along, I look into the face of the Indian to my right. Wait, that’s no Indian, it’s Mister Borwin, the tea merchant. 

“What are you doing?” my voice in shrill cry.

“Shhhh, quiet missy,” he says, “We’re almost there”. 

We traveled the eight blocks toward the harbor. I can see ships swaying at anchor. Suddenly whoops and yells erupt from the mob and they pick up speed as they dash aboard the ships. I’m pushed aside and land abruptly on my rump in a pile of snow. The “Indians” begin picking up one great crate after another, throwing them overboard into the harbor. I realize the crates they are throwing are full of tea. Tea! I raise myself up and jostle my way aboard the closest ship. As a crate is raised it breaks open. I grab two tins of tea and rush home for my breakfast cuppa.

*Flash fiction is a short short story with plot, action and characters, no more than a page in length.

Truth and Facts

Posted on by
Reply

Originally posted on A Way with Words blog

Today I read a moving blog post about a friendship. The author wrote about her friend with the truth of memory, not necessarily the facts.  Raising the Dead ‹ BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog ‹ Reader — WordPress.com.  I read another insightful blog post about current political turmoil in France. Out My Window ‹ Reader — WordPress.com. Somehow those two posts melded, although completely different in intent, and made me think about my reality and my memories.

To me facts are incontrovertible, they may be proven false later, but they are the concrete reality that can be proven at this point in time. Facts are objective, the absolute of what we know now through all our senses. Truth is subjective. It is the reality of facts filtered through our experience. We are all human and, as humans, subject to our own prejudices and emotional knowledge. Truth is facts of the heart, our day-to-day understanding of what is going on around us. As memoir writers it is important, on your journey to the truth, not to let facts be stumbling stones. While facts may be important they are not the sum total of the experience or the lessons you learn along the way.

I have a friend, a brilliant sculptor, who exhibits regularly at art shows around the country. I’ve watched her, in an hour or two, turn big lumps of clay into miniature animals – wolves, horses – so realistic that you expect them to move toward you at any moment. A magical experience. Many years ago, I traveled with her to an art exhibition in Montana that included her work. During our time there meeting artists and enjoying the art world, we had an on-and-off weeklong discussion on religion. What is the soul, what is spirit, can God be proven, etc? The discussion continued as we packed up and left Great Falls. I was driving her van. Somewhere along the highway, we passed a gas station where a large dog was sitting close to the edge of the road. We are both dog lovers.

I interrupted our discussion with “What kind of dog was that?” as we zoomed by.

“Dog?” she replied, “What dog?”

“The one we just passed,” I answered.

“We didn’t pass a dog, we just went by a Circle K,” she said.

“Ah, you didn’t see the dog, but it was there.”

“You’re making it up to change the subject.”

At the next turnable place, I maneuvered the van across lanes of the lightly traveled highway in a most illegal U-turn and headed to the gas station possibly five miles back, hoping the dog hadn’t been run over or run away. Sure enough, the dog was still sitting by the road.

“There,” says I, “that dog.”

“Oh, I guess I didn’t see it. It looks like a shepherd mix to me.”

“And that was my point,” I said returning to our discussion about belief. “Your reality is that the dog didn’t exist because you didn’t experience it.  Your truth is different from my truth. My truth could be based on an illusion or on my five senses, but it is my truth. It is what I know to be true and the same goes for you. Had I not turned the van around, we would have totally different memories of the same experience.”

What would my essay be today if the dog left, disappearing around the side of the building or into its owner’s car? It would be of a dog I swear I saw but then disappeared and her story would be of a crazy friend who made a U-turn in the middle of a highway to show her a phantom dog. Both would be true.

I write fiction primarily. Fiction contains elements of a writer’s truth. To my many memoir writing friends I want to say, write YOUR truth. There are no video or audio recordings of your day-to-day activities or relationships and the memories they engender. Your memory IS the recording and it IS filtered through your experience. Write what is in your heart because that is the truth and that is more important and much more interesting than all the facts listed in order as years evolve. Don’t let the fears of others block your truth. They cannot convey your story and should not arbitrate it. They are bit players, you are the star. What you learned is of value to those who are not able to express their story in words. Your truth may inspire or may help someone, even in your family, understand their world better. Write your story as it is for you. Don’t wait to let someone else tell it because it will then only be your story filtered through their experience, their story of you. Be Brave.

Our book Telling Tales and Sharing Secrets includes essays from each author’s truth as well as fiction short stories and poetry.

Whose Ring Is It?

Posted on by
Reply

Originally posted on A Way with Words blog

Prompts: Whether you write fiction, non-fiction, or memoir, story is the important element.  Conveying facts through story is the best way to engage your readers. Feeding facts one after another will put a reader to sleep quicker than snow melts at the equator. Creating a story within the boundaries of a prompt (facts) trains your brain to be creative (narrative). This is an example of a quick write making a one-page story from a given set of “facts”.

Jackie’s Prompt: Write one or two pages and include words: pliable, awkward, distance, imagine, sensible. Start the story with: “I picked it up to have a better look and …”

These were the things that first came to my mind.

… I discovered it was alive

…it bit me

….it appeared to be a diamond ring

          I picked it up to have a better look and I probably would not have noticed it except for a brief parting of clouds, a peek-a-boo moment of sun.  The day was covered in a thick gray blanket to keep out all but the faintest daylight at three o’clock. In that moment there was a brilliant flash in the pile of yesterday’s leaves. Is it real? Of course not was the answer that came instantly to mind. How would a diamond ring be in my backyard buried in a pile of leaves that we raked yesterday? I shoved it into my pocket, vowing to check with my housemate. I knew for sure it could not belong to Collin, but it might have belonged to Ellen, his sister. She has a collection of jewelry to rival Musk’s collection of Tweets. Possibly it fell from his pocket as we did yard work. Why would he have it?  Yesterday had been so much fun. We laughed and plunged into piles of leaves like little children as we cleaned up the last of fall’s debris beneath the oak, maple, and sycamore trees that bordered our property. My job today was to bag up all the piles while Collin was gone. The trashman comes tomorrow.

          When I finished pushing leaves into twenty-four black garbage bags I went into the house for a cup of tea. The warmth of the kitchen melted icy fingers that had clamped onto my neck and shoulders in the late afternoon chill. I wrapped my hands around the hot cup letting the steam drift up into my face. I sat at the kitchen counter and pulled the ring from my pocket, a simple wide white gold band with an emerald cut diamond of several carats. It was striking.  Could it be real?

          I reached for my cell phone. Collin left early this morning for a business trip to Hopewell, a distance of about two hundred miles, so I didn’t expect him to be home tonight. I wanted to let him know I’d found the ring in case he was worried. I could not imagine why he’d have it, but I knew he’d be concerned if he discovered it missing.  He answered on the second ring.

          “Busy?” I asked

          “No, the meetings are over and I’m on my way to a hotel. It seemed more sensible to stay over than trying to get home tonight.”

          “Yeah, I figured that. Guess what? I found the ring.”

          “What ring?” He sounded hesitant.

          “Did you lose a ring in the backyard yesterday while we were raking?”

          “I didn’t have a ring.” His voice was gruff, his answer felt abrupt.

          “That’s strange. How would a ring get into our leaf pile?”  There was an awkward pause.

          “What kind of ring?” he asked.

          “It looks like a diamond.”

          “Do you think it’s real?”

          “Don’t know, I’m not an expert. It’s pretty and I’d say if it is real, it’s impressive.  I’ll put it in my jewelry box and you can check it out when you get home. We’ll figure it out. Seems strange though to have a ring randomly show up in the backyard.”

          “Don’t tell anybody about it. Okay?”

          I am usually very pliable when it comes to Collin’s requests. We’ve been best friends for more than a decade and suffered through each other’s ups and downs; his boyfriends, my boyfriends, his business ventures, my writing. Something in his voice sent an alert. My skin prickled.

          “What’s up, Collin?”

          “What’d you mean?”

          “Is it or is it not your ring?”

          “No, I told you. But just don’t make a big deal of it. We’ll talk when I get home. I’m leaving now. See you in about four hours.” He hung up the phone.

What do you know differently from the story’s beginning to the end? This is an example of turning facts into narrative.

Why I Write

Posted on by
Reply

First posted on A Way with Words December 5, 2022

It’s about Power.

As a writer of fiction, I can create a city, a village, a country, a world. I can fill it with characters that I love or love to hate. I can imbue them with a certain amount of free will and, if I don’t like how they use it, I have the power of the eraser or delete key. The characters I create may be human or they may be animals, even mechanical beings, or a combination of these.  I can ride down a country road feeling the fluid strength of the steed beneath me, enjoying the bucolic scene of field and meadow, knowing that around the next bend there is a plot twist that will change my story, transform the world. I can change the weather from stormy to sunny and back again. In short, I am god.  I can wander through forests of words and chop down the one I want to take to a sentence I’m constructing. I can plunge into oceans of emotions to catch the one that will give my character motivation to propel the story forward.

Similarly, when I write memoir or creative non-fiction, I take an event from the headlines or from memory and, while sticking to the reality of it, invent or reimagine dialogue I did not hear or do not remember. I give the incident a spin to emphasize the part I think is important or transformative. It is my story told my way. This kind of writing does require research to authenticate it. I enjoy research because it opens the discovery of things I did not know and enriches knowledge that I then mine for other stories.  I prefer fiction and poetry because I am not bounded by facts, annoying facts that constrict my imagination.

Writing is an inexpensive form of entertainment and also therapy. The cost of a pencil and paper can set me up for hours and hours of diversion. I disappear into a world I create. Sometimes it is hard for me to resurface, to attend to my daily tasks and the real-life characters, human and animal, who live with me. I am glassy-eyed and slightly incoherent for a time when I leave my writing desk depending on how long I have been immersed in writing. My dear husband can attest to the state of suspended animation that surrounds me. I gave up the idea of writing the great American novel by the time I was thirty. I write for myself because I love to play god.