Month: December 2022

A Few Friends

In the fall of 1989 when I first started teaching composition at Volunteer State Community College, Betty Nelson, one of the professors in my new department, had taped several cartoons and quotes to the door of her office. This was back when we were allowed to tape interesting tidbits to the door of our office.

One the cartoons I’ve always remembered showed a middle-aged man lying in a tattered recliner with a defeated look on his face. His wife, clearly frustrated with him, was standing in front of the recliner holding a letter that had just come for him in the mail. The caption to the cartoon was her saying, “Look, if you can’t handle the rejection, stop sending out that god-awful poem.”

The second piece from Betty’s door that caught my attention was a quote from Moliere, the French playwright: “Writing is a bit like prostitution. First you do it for love. Then you do it for a few friends. And, finally, you do it for money.”

I’ve remembered these two statements about writing for so many years because they capture my feelings about the process so well. I love writing, and I have written for much of my life–essays, fiction, the occasional poem and even the less occasional song.

But I’ve never seriously tried to publish. Partly, that’s because I don’t think I could handle the rejection. Also, I’ve always been put off by what I imagine to be the sheer amount of shameless self-promotion needed to be successful financially as a writer. I’ve always known that I’d make a crappy salesman. If I sold cars for Chevy, for instance, I’d probably pull potential customers aside and tell them in a whisper how great the Hondas were next door.

But also, doing anything for money turns that thing into a job. God bless the people who can deal with that–but it’s not for me. I want to write what I want to write because it interests or amuses me, and I hope that it will interest or amuse some of my friends as well. That’s enough. A few friends.

With that in mind, I am hereby announcing (shameless self-promotion) that I’m publishing a novel that I wrote a few years ago. My plan is to publish one chapter every Friday for the next 23 weeks on a platform called Substack.

Don’t worry. It’s free.

The novel, which I originally wrote from 2014 – 2018, is titled The Inner Workings of a Universe: A Love Story for the Aged. The story is about a retired farmer and his wife, Mike and Marilyn, who are trying to figure out what to do with the land they still own but no longer farm. Different characters, including their kids and neighboring farmers, all have different ideas. Mike resists them all.

The story is also about how hard it can be to give up those things we cling to long after we have any right to continue clinging. It’s also about what happens when your three-year old Ford F150 starts talking to you.

I am publishing this story on Substack rather than on our website, Lowerpondfarm, for a couple of reasons: first Substack has a cleaner appearance and will be easier to read; second, it’s a different kind of writing than I generally do on Lowerpondfarm, and I don’t want to clutter up people’s emails with postings they are not interested in.

Again, my plan is to publish one chapter a week, on Fridays. I’m only starting today (Monday) because it’s my birthday and it’s snowing, and the first two chapters are short.

The link below will take you to Chapter One: Comfort Zone. If you want to subscribe, you can click the box in the upper-right corner and put in your email address. Then, you should get an email every week when I post the next chapter (there are 23 of them). You can read the story on a desktop computer, a tablet, or (if you have the eyes for it) your phone.

https://micknleb.substack.com/p/the-inner-workings-of-a-universe?sd=pf

Did I mention, it’s free?

Thanks,

Mick

How I’m Probably Gonna Die

This morning, I made the mistake of using a butter knife to retrieve a piece of toast from the depths of our toaster while Vanessa was in the kitchen. The mistake lies in the last part of that sentence–while Vanessa was in the kitchen.

Normally, when Vanessa is in the kitchen and I want to drag a piece of toast out of the toaster with my knife (or fork, whichever is handy), I make a big deal out of unplugging the toaster first. I reach behind the toaster–the plug is right there, easy to access–and clear my throat, “Harrumph! Harrumph!” which is code for “You don’t have to worry about me, Honey, I’m being safe!” Then, when I’m sure I have her attention, I pull out the plug and snag my toast.

This whole peacock display of safety slows down the toaster-to-mouth process by a mere six or seven seconds, so I should unplug the toaster every time I stick a shiny utensil into it, regardless of Vanessa’s location. But of course, I’m not doing it for safety’s sake. I’m doing it because I love Vanessa, and I don’t want her to worry.

I know that I’m not going to die from sticking a fork down the throat of a live toaster. I’ve done it my whole life and never felt so much as a tingle. Yes, I know that electricity courses through the elements inside the toaster–that’s how the thing works. But at 110 volts it’s not that much electricity, and I never, EVER attempt to retrieve toast while standing naked, up to my shins in a bathtub full of water. I mean, who wants soggy toast?

The issue here is that Vanessa sees my death lurking all around the property, lying in wait like a coiled viper under a flat rock that I’m grabbing for a flower bed, or a cold-blooded brown recluse sleeping on the backside of a rung half way up the ladder to the hayloft. Deep in the recesses of Vanessa’s mind, I think, there’s an image of me going about my business one moment, maybe even whistling, then suddenly something goes SNAP and I’m lying on the ground, going cold and stiff.

I have to take a moment to recognize that Vanessa’s fears don’t come out of nowhere. She did lose a young husband to disease a few years before we met, leaving her with three relatively young kids, medical bills, and a mountain of grief. So, I get it. I really do.

But I don’t feel it. Despite the fact that my 69th birthday is just a week from tomorrow, I’m only now beginning to feel mortal, mostly in my knees and breath. The particulars of my demise are still unimaginable to me.

But not to Vanessa. For her they are as real as the 24-hour forecast on the weather channel. Close enough, that is, that you should be prepared. Here are the three most likely scenarios of my demise in Vanessa’s mind:

Falling: Either out of the hayloft or off the roof. If it’s the hayloft, it’s because I get a sudden and severe bout of vertigo while I’m lowering a forty-pound bale of hay for the goats. This is unlikely, I argue, as I’ve never had vertigo before.

If it’s the roof, I slip or get a sudden and severe bout of vertigo while I’m standing at the very peak, up by the chimney, blowing off leaves. Then, I roll down the admittedly steep slope of the main house, across the relatively flat section over the porch, and fall three hundred feet into a pit of vipers, and while we’re at it, let’s toss in a lake of molten lava from an erupting volcano. Man, I’m a goner.

Chopping: This generally involves the chainsaw, and sometimes it involves the ladder, which brings in the element of falling as described above. In this case, however, I have to admit that Vanessa does have some historical support.

Before I tell this story, though, let me assert that, unlike the toaster, I do try to be careful with the chainsaw regardless of where Vanessa is located at the time.

We have a lot of giant, old trees on this property. One of them, an old oak tree that is half dead, was leaning over the fence separating the backyard from the barnyard. The tree had been there, fighting gravity for years. In fact, it was leaning before we built the fence underneath it. But it was never a problem, until about a year ago when gravity started getting the upper hand. The tree began sagging far enough that I couldn’t drive the tractor under it, and it was about to make contact with the top rail of the fence. I had to do something.

I got out the chainsaw, a ladder, and the tractor. I also asked Vanessa to be my spotter. “Your job,” I said, standing in the kitchen, right next to the toaster, “is to watch me cut down the main trunk with your finger poised over the call button for 911 in case things don’t go as planned.”

Then I got to work. Cutting off the little limbs at the tip of drooping tree was easy. Buzz. Buzz. Drop. Drop. Drag out of the way.

For the portion of the tree trunk hanging directly over the fence, I had an ingenious plan. I drove the tractor up to the fence, raised the scoop and slipped it between the fence and the tree trunk. Then I walked around to the other side of the fence, climbed up on the ladder, cut the trunk and let that section fall directly into the scoop. It was slick.

All that was left was the main portion of the trunk–about fifteen inches in diameter and ten feet long. That’s when Vanessa said, “Why don’t you call someone to come and do this? We can afford it.”

I looked at her like she had suddenly started speaking Russian. “Huh?” I asked. “Why? I mean, the chainsaw’s already warmed up. It’ll just take a minute.”

“Are you sure?” she implored. “Do you have to do this now?”

I looked at her slyly. “Just keep your phone handy.”

My main mistake, other than being too caught up in my earlier successes, was ladder placement. The chainsaw, as planned, cut through the tree trunk in under a minute. The tree trunk, weighing about a hundred pounds, fell immediately, and as it fell it rotated, hitting the forward legs of my step ladder.

I went flying one way, the chainsaw, still buzzing, went flying the other, and Vanessa, finger frozen over 911 , saw her worst nightmare unfolding in front of her.

Fortunately, I survived, landing on my right hip and shoulder, and spraining my wrist. My hip and shoulder were sore for a couple of days, but my wrist is still tender two weeks out. The ladder went to the recycling bin.

I’ve already written about the third way Vanessa figures I’ll kill myself, which is Werewolves in the Way Back. So, all I’ll do here is include a link that story, in case you’re interested.

https://lowerpondfarm.com/2018/12/24/the-way-back/

I still can’t imagine the scenario of my own apparently always imminent death. I’m just hoping my last words are not, “Hey Bubba! Waaaa….”