Just A Rock

I was eleven, still four months from twelve. I was short for eleven, still waiting for the growth spurt that never came. But I was a gung-ho Boy Scout and had already earned my First Class rank, three steps up the ladder in less than a year. And now I was at Camp Tonkawa for a week. No low level advancement classes for first year Scouts for me. I was ready for merit badges classes, and that was a big deal to this eleven year old.

I also had been through all the Red Cross swimming classes at the neighborhood public swimming pool, but wasn’t old enough to take the Lifesaving class. So guess what merit badge class I signed up for at my first summer camp.

All of us who wanted to take the Life Saving Merit Badge class had to demonstrate our swimming skills and stamina to the waterfront staff. I did that, swimming across that cold dammed-up spring maybe a thousand times before they consented to let me in the lifesaving class.

The first class was the next morning and I was pumped. There were a dozen or so of us, all older and taller than me. So what. I was at home in the water, like a frog, and eager to get it on.

I was the first one chosen to do the initial drill to again show that we had the right stuff.  The day before we just swam to show we were good in the water. Today we had to swim with a rock on our hip. A simulated, unconscious person, as it were. Not a fighting, thrashing panicking person who would try to climb all over us, just a dead weight rock. No problem, it was just a rock.

The rock looked big, but I had swagger. I got in the water and stood next to the rock wall that lined the bank and had been built by the CCC some twenty-five years earlier, and made the spring such a fine well-defined swimming place.

I took the big rock in both hands, finding it heavier than I thought it would be, and shoved off.  I got the rock settled on one hip and used scissor kicks to keep going towards the middle of the springs. I had to use one hand to keep the big rock in place, so I did an improvised one-armed sidestroke to keep my head and shoulders up. I still had swagger, and said a little mantra, “It’s just a rock, just a rock.”

Halfway across the call came to stop and drop the rock. I did and it sank. Like a rock. I tread water and nodded when the Merit Badge Instructor from Hell yelled at me to go down after it and bring it back.

I nodded and did a fine fishy sort of arching dive and swam right down to the rock. I picked it up and pushed upwards, but didn’t go far. I let go of the rock and came up for air. Three times I did that. My kicks weren’t enough to propel me and the rock to the surface.

The orc on the bank yelled again for me get the rock and finish. I yelled back that I was trying to do that. He yelled that if I didn’t get the rock off the bottom and bring it to him, I was out of the class. I tried once more with no more success.

I swam to shore, got my towel and was told that was it for me. Maybe next year I’d be bigger and stronger. I nodded and made the long walk back to my tent on the other side of camp.

No one else was there, everyone being off to their own first morning of classes. I shut the tent flaps, lay down on my cot and cried like a kid. The swagger was on the bottom of the spring with that just-a-rock. No mom or dad, no big brother, not even the scoutmaster to console me. Just me and my shame and anger at my failure. It sucked, and the memory of it still sucks. It was a long day.

The next morning I started a different merit badge class, Nature, I think it was. When I turned fourteen I enrolled in a Red Cross Lifesaving Class at the YMCA. I was still the shortest student and probably the youngest, but I passed the big test after the series of Saturday classes. No rocks, though.

Where’s the tie-in of this little pity party tale from my childhood to the Civil War novels I’m writing half a century later? Only that I was at Camp Tonkawa, and an unnamed Tonkawa Indian brave is one of the first characters who John McBee meets in the Tangled Honor. Can’t say they become friends, but they have a brief relationship. I must have blotted out the memory of the just-a-rock story when I was writing that part of Tangled Honor, or I would have killed off that Tonkawa sonofabitch.  Writers can get even with bad memories that way.

Camp Tonkawa is no longer a Boy Scout camp, it’s now a privately-owned RV camp and the dammed-up spring swimming pool is still in use. The photo is from the RV camp website and is the very spot of my come-uppin’s that June morning in 1961. If you look closely, about half way out you can detect the just-a-rock on the bottom. Well, not really. But I can still see it down there, up close and personal.

 

 

Five Shades of Gray

I’ve decided I’m barking up the wrong tree if I want to be a best-selling author. This morning I read that the novel Fifty Shades of Gray, which was initially independently published as a Print-On-Demand paperback, has sold more copies via Amazon in England than have all of Rowling’s Harry Potter series combined. That’s about 60 million books. That’s amazing.

 

So, I’m considering pulling Tangled Honor from Amazon, renaming it Five Shades of Gray, and spicing up the cover with images of ropes and padded handcuffs.

Here’s my thinking: the five primary characters in my book are all connected in some fashion, and one of them is a real stinker who likes tying women to the bed and having his way. I’ve not actually read Fifty Shades of Gray, or seen the new movie, but from what I read about it, my stinker is right in line with the plot of Fifty Shades.  So why are my Amazon sales some 59.9999 million behind Fifty Shades of Gray’s sales?

 

Maybe the important difference in Fifty Shades and Tangled Honor is that my stinker who likes kinky sex is only featured doing his kinky thing in one single chapter, not the whole book. Even then, I hope I wrote that chapter with appropriate restraint and discretion. I suppose I’ve effectively hidden the main selling point of my novel, instead of broadcasting it on the cover and in the plot from beginning to end.

 

Of course, I wouldn’t really do that, but the incredible financial success of Fifty Shades, book and movie, do give me pause to reflect on why a book by a beginning writer with that plot would strike a chord with so many readers. The book is not even really well written from the reviews I’ve seen, yet who can argue with sixty million sales.

 

I’d love to see Amazon’s records of the accounts that ordered Fifty Shades as an electronic download for a Kindle, IPad, or phone. With that many orders, I guess people in every demographic have bought copies: horny old men, as well as proper young women with a secret passion for a scary brand of sex. What do those record-setting sales say about our taste in books? It probably goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, and we should ask Eve and the snake. I bet they both know.

 

On to other things: Our house was chaotic all weekend with houseguests and out-of-towners here for the Saturday night wedding shower-party that our next-door neighbors held for our younger son and his fiancée.

 

I suppose that it’s the way of the world. I started dieting two weeks ago, so I won’t have to buy a new, bigger, suit for their April wedding, then we endure a three-day home invasion for a pre-wedding party for the same couple, and feast on pizza, BBQ, and Mexican food. Not to mention the sweets and wine at the party itself.  

I loved every minute and every bite of the whole weekend, but the scales are not my friend this Monday morning. Just what does a new suit cost these days?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canals and Eggs

When I was in my elementary school choir in the fifth grade, I remember singing:

 

Low bridge, everybody down,

Low bridge, ‘cause we’re coming to a town,

You’ll always know your neighbor, you’ll always know your pal

If you’ve ever navigated on the Erie Canal.

 

Little did I know back in 1957 that on a sunny Sunday afternoon in 2015 I’d be researching on a tiny magical TV screen, learning about canals and canal boats in the Shenandoah region of Virginia, and digging around to learn if an egg can be cooked in water that doesn’t reach boiling temperature.

 

Here in central Texas, canals are not even a dim historical memory. But in Virginia, I’ve learned that George Washington himself surveyed key canal routes. I learned that Washington and Lee College in Lexington changed its original name to “Washington College” in appreciation of a large financial donation Washington made to the school, funds that were profits from his investment in the canal industry.

 

Canals, up until about 1880, were the liquid “train tracks” for much of eastern America. Canal boats were first powered by men with long poles or oars, then much larger freight and passenger boats called packets were pulled by a team of mules or horses that walked the canal path next to the waterway.

 

The tie-in to my novel is again the town of Lexington, the place to which my characters in the McBee saga keep returning for one reason or another as the Civil War continues being fought across Virginia.

 

I’m reading the new biography of Stonewall Jackson, who was truly a fascinating man. I knew he had been a teacher at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington before the Civil War, and I’ve even visited his grave at the city cemetery in Lexington. The day my brother and I were there, half a dozen lemons had been tossed over the wrought iron fence surrounding his tombstone and lay scattered as bright yellow tributes to one of Jackson’s health and nutrition quirks.

 

What I didn’t know was that Jackson’s remains had been conveyed by train from Richmond to Lynchburg, south of Lexington, then loaded onto the ninety foot long, fourteen foot wide, iron-hulled “packet boat,” named the Marshall, and towed via canal to Lexington for Jackson’s second funeral and only internment. The Marshall was not a shabby freight boat, but carried passengers in its crafted mahogany cabin, as well as tons of cargo.

 

I’m learning as a fledgling novelist that half the challenge to a good plot is credibly getting your opposing characters into the same place where they can joust with each other, verbally or physically. I recognized that while Stonewall Jackson is not a living character in the McBee saga, his corpse’s ride on the canal boat could be just what I needed. What better than the crowded funeral procession of a famous man for my two primary antagonists, both testosterone laden characters who really, really don’t like each other, to cross paths in Lexington once again.  So, I’m thanking General Jackson for his unintended service to my plot, as I hum the tune to the Low Bridge song from my childhood.

 

As to the egg boiling research, I found a website that detailed a French (where else?) cooking method called something indecipherable, that over a period of forty minutes will soft-cook an egg in water of 130 degrees.

 

Why in the world does egg cooking matter to my Civil War plot? I can’t tell you yet. It’s a secret. And maybe I’m being too clever, but you’ll remember this forewarning when you read the scene in Redeeming Honor, the current McBee saga book in progress.

 

 

 

 

Button, Buckle, and Tie

“Buttoning, buckling, and tying were the only ways for clothes to be fastened during the Civil War. Mr. Zip had not invented zippers and Mr.V el had not invented Velcro,” I said as I held up my long white wool flannel drawers so the kids could see them.

Last week I did an all-day program for the Fifth grade classes at the KIPP Aspire Academy in downtown San Antonio.  It was my fourth time to do the “show and tell” program, aided by a Power Point slide show. I think I do a good job and the students are always attentive and the teachers welcoming.

Philosophically, I’m not a fan of charter schools. Here in Texas, charter schools are privately-run schools funded with tax dollars. Parents apply for their children to attend, and they don’t pay any tuition. What I don’t like is that charter schools drain the pool of self-motivated kids and parents away from their neighborhood public schools, effectively skimming the cream off the top. Charter schools don’t have to serve kids with learning disabilities, and they are not subject to most of the burdensome state regulations under which public schools must operate.

Having made that personal observation, KIPP Aspire Academy is a great school. I love doing my Civil War soldier program there. The kids are wonderful. The school climate is positive and focused on academics and college preparation. Notice the school motto on the back of the school uniform t-shirt worn by many of the kids: No Shortcuts. No Excuses. You can’t make up a better motto than that for young’uns, or us old guys. Life should be heavily focused on personal accountability.

Besides talking about buckles, buttons, and tie strings (Historically, there was no Mr. Zip or Mr. Vel, but both zippers and Velcro were invented after the Civil War), I touch on uniforms, weapons, food, and medicine of the 1860’s.

For some reason, the kids love the square, off-white, hard as a rock, cracker commonly called hardtack. I rap it on the table and talk about how the soldiers with bad teeth had to soften it in grease or coffee or soup to eat it.

The bayonet is another favorite, even more than the musket itself. Knives of any shape are more macabre than guns. The prospect of being stabbed horrified the real Civil War soldiers, and it gets the attention of the kids. Then I show them how bayonets were used more benignly as candle holders to provide a night light to write letters or read, and how they were used as cooking skewers for meat or to cook dough wrapped around the long slim triangular blade

But what most fascinates the students is hearing about heating the pointy end of bayonets and bending the blades into a U-shape, a fishhook shape, in order to snag the coat collars of dead soldiers and drag the corpses to mass battlefield graves. That's ghoulish enough for even Twilight fans.

And of course, the amputations of legs and arms fit a fifth grader’s mindset, too. They love the imagery of piles of severed limbs at the field hospitals. I show them a real photo of a young man whose legs have been amputated at the knee and we talk about whether he was lucky or unlucky. Life in the 1800’s with no legs or arms would have been a dreadful daily trial, even worse than it is today for our soldiers who still suffer such wounds with the same horrifying consequence of amputation.

The KIPP Aspire Academy student body is almost all Hispanic kids, so I start with a terrific photo of a handsome young Hispanic lieutenant, Jose De La Garza, who joined the Confederate army in San Antonio, and served in Co. K of the Sixth Texas Infantry, the group of soldiers around which I wrote my first novel, Whittled Away. (And, yes, I show them my novel, and give a copy to their teacher as a proud author. I'm vain, too.)

I show them a period drawing of the Alamo on February 16, 1861. The drawing was an illustration in Harpers Weekly Magazine, published in New York City, and shows hundreds of armed men in the plaza with the iconic Alamo chapel backdrop. I tell the kids that was the day when the Civil War could well have started on the Alamo Plaza instead of far away at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. That story is the blog post topic for two weeks from now, so I’ll leave it until then. But I use it to show the kids that even though San Antonio was geographically on the western edge of the Confederacy, the city where they live played a part in the terrible war.

Back to the flannel drawers: I show the students how my reenacting winter underwear button up the front, buckle in the back to cinch the waist line to fit, and have drawstrings at the ankles to pull the legs tight to keep little critters like ticks and redbucks off the ankles. Button, buckle and tie. No zip. No rip.

Baby Jackson is doing fine after his first week at home. He’s only ten days old now, so he hasn’t yet asked me if I was a soldier in the Civil War. But I expect that’s coming in a few years, when he sees his dad’s old bedroom which now is home to bookcases full of Civil War books, Civil War paintings and reenacting photos on the walls, a closet full of smelly reenacting uniforms, and muskets leaning in the corner. I don’t know where he might get the idea his grey-bearded granddaddy was part of that war.

Jackson also joined us for our annual Super Bowl gathering. I was pulling for Seattle, but I guess it’s okay that a team called the “Patriots” won, since that was the name I chose for a kids’ soccer team I coached 25 years ago. Can you believe the Seahawk’s call to pass at the 1-yard line at the end of the game? Insane, if you ask me. Talk about personal accountability, whoever made that decision yesterday, is today living with the grim unexpected consequence of his actions.

Have a great week.