Two Dependable Crops

It was just supposed to be a short getaway from the city, five days to recover from the rigors of keeping the American economy thriving. We weren't expecting anything more exciting than a one-way conversation with an inbred small-town convenience store clerk. Wrong again.

I'd never believed in ghosts before but I do now. The bed and breakfast we stayed in the first night turned out to be haunted. Thankfully, this wasn't a mean ghost, just one who liked to tease. The door to the porch kept swinging open even though it was latched shut. It never opened when we were looking, but if my wife and I let our gaze slip it would open again. We soon got used to it and stopped being amazed. Then it would close and latch itself when we weren't looking.

The books in the room had not been in the possession of the original owners, they'd been bought used as evidenced by penciled fifty-cent and dollar prices in the front. One was a real estate prospectus from 1919 for the sale of sixty thousand acres in southern Alabama. Only eighty years had passed but the booklet seemed as if it were from another eon or maybe another planet. One picture showed a field of cotton which had apparently been cleared by the slash-and-burn technique that we now chastise developing countries for employing. Charred remains of trees poked out from the rows of white.

There was a photo of a field of corn next to one of a sharecropper family with eight kids. The caption read "Two Dependable Crops: Corn and Negroes." Eighty years ago some copywriter probably thought it was a catchy phrase; what passed for normal behavior in one generation is seen as an abomination by another. What are we doing that our children or grandchildren will recoil from in horror?

When I turned the page, I almost dropped the book.

"Pam....there's a picture of you in here."

She laughed at me and then turned pale as I handed it to her.

"No there isn't Nathan, but there is one of you."

When we both looked at the page, there were two people dressed in their Sunday best who didn't look anything like us at all.

We didn't sleep very well that night even though the ghost refrained from any high jinks. Maybe it got bored and went to play with guests down the hall.

As we drove out of town the next day, we talked about what had happened but couldn't decide whether we'd had a brush with the supernatural or had hallucinated, but either way, the odometer was running backwards until we reached the interstate.

© Copyright Erik Kosberg 1997, 2007

Cultural Capital of the World

It had been nearly ten years since I'd been to New York and this twelve hour trip to Manhattan might have to last another ten. I'd taken the bus into the Port Authority and walked down 42nd Street to the Public Library where Censorship Through the Ages was on exhibit. My parents hadn't taken me to 42nd when I was a kid, but I assume that it was as gaudy then as it is now--signs flashing GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS and BOYS, BOYS, BOYS and a street preacher with an antique megaphone shouting "Jesus sees you today and HE IS NOT PLEASED."

After the library, I'd planned to go to the Van Gogh show but had forgotten that museums are closed on mondays. Museums and barbershops.

Wandering aimlessly just south of the Empire State Building, I saw a woman in her late fifties (or was she really in her early forties and exhausted?) carring a shopping bag in each hand, sweating under the July sun. She stopped, put her bags at her feet, and stuck out her right palm. Most of the crowd milled past as if she didn't exist on this planet, let alone right in front of them, yet at least one other person saw her. He stuck a Visa Card in her outstretched hand and walked on. She stared at it with a faraway what the hell am I going to do with this? look and then slipped it into one of her bags, picked them both up, and continued on her way.

© Copyright Erik Kosberg 1997, 2007

Report on Citizen 257-63-22085

There wasn't anything that he wouldn't try at least once * except things that he was sure would kill him * it says here that he'd broken nearly every bone in his body at one time or another * and that he once started walking across the street without looking both ways like mom always said * and was almost flattened by a Rolls Royce sporting a My Other Car is a Yugo bumpersticker * he said that unique events gave him better ideas * that he was a writer * although I'll be damned if I can find any reference to anyone ever actually publishing his rantings * somehow this brush with death gave him the idea for a science fiction novel * artificial intelligence is widespread in machines of all types and in humans (as surgical implants and drugs) and that kind of crap * either a specific machine, or better yet, a program would be sentenced to death * the death threat to come from another machine/program, with the humans only vaguely aware of what was going on, if at all * sounds to me like a bad ripoff of the Rushdie affair * just like him to try to write a story about shit he didn't know the first thing about * but luckily before he could write it he was killed by a Yugo while trying to cut through traffic

© Copyright Erik Kosberg 1992, 2007

World's Most Incompetent Blogger?

I turned comments off while playing with the settings. Fine, they went off. I turned them back on while playing with the settings. Nothing happenened. Doh!

So many books, so little time.

Among book readers, I think that there are two basic types. Those who read one book at a time, straight through, and those who have several books going at the same time. Both are very valid ways to read, but I don't think that either type really understands how the other type can read that way. I'm the later type, usually working on three, four, or five books at a time, reading a couple of chapters in one at lunch, a few pages in another while in the bathroom, several paragraphs in another waiting for the microwave to go ding. Right now, I'm stretched thinner than usual, with nine books going simultaneously:

Treason's River by Edwin Thomas, the third book in "the reluctant adventures of Lieutenant Martin Jerrold" series. Sort of a cross between the Aubrey/Maturin series and the Flashman series. Sort of. Not really up to the standards of either of those, but kind of addictive anyway.

Marilyn Chase's The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in San Francisco. Just starting on this, only ten pages into it so far.

Fateless by Imre Kertesz. Kertesz won a Nobel in 2000; Fateless is a novel based on his real-life imprisonment in Auschwitz.

North Callahan's biography of Carl Sandburg. A bit dry, but okay.

Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, not really a nuts and bolts How to Write book, more of a Things to Think About Before You Start Writing book.

Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, more for a look at Paris in the twenties than because I particularly like Papa as a writer.

Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton. I'm about two-thirds done with it. Well worth checking out, even if you were never into Star Trek.

Peter Clark's Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, Not really a Things to Think About Before You Start Writing book, more of a nuts and bolts How to Write book.

Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game by George Vecsey. A wonderful little book. A must-read if you're a baseball fan.

The Man Who Buried Cars

Our neighborhood had its share of characters, probably no more or less than any other, but none of them was as fun to watch as the guy who lived in the big white house as the end of the cul-de-sac. My parents referred to him as Mister Mirovski but we all knew him as the man who buried cars.

He imagined himself to be a mechanically gifted fellow, so he bought junkers and worked on them evenings and weekends. He'd tinker with one for two or three months, occasionally coaxing it to sputter but never quite getting it to move from point A to point B. We never knew when his spirit would break, but we waited for that juncture with great anticipation.

Eventually, he'd admit defeat and bring out a shovel, pick a spot in his backyard and begin digging. We'd gather in Billy Vandergraff's yard and watch. We knew better than to try to get any closer--our one attempt had met with words that could cut through ten-foot-thick titanium steel walls. He'd dig like a man possessed. Depending on the size of the car it would take him either two or three days to dig a big enough hole, weather permitting. Then he'd put the car in neutral and shove it in. The holes were always the right size so that the cars were completely below ground level; this was no Cadillac Ranch. He'd shovel dirt on top and go off to read the want ads looking for a new prospect.

We wished that he'd erect grave markers (Chevy Coupe 1938-1969 RIP) but he never did.

© Copyright Erik Kosberg 1992, 2007

Just open a vein.

I've dinked around with blogging in the past. Had a blog once that was pretty much just links to other blogs and odd news stories. Then another blog that was political stuff. Oh so lame.

This new one will be mostly about writing and books. Probably a few days until I start adding content, will start with some of my old stuff found via archive.org and assorted ramblings.