What the Future Holds?

I attended Author Rama at Martha Merrell's Books and Cuddles yesterday. Didn't sell a single book. That is to be expected when you pack a bunch of authors in a small space and what would be potential customers get wide eyed like they are looking at a mass gathering of insurance salesmen.
The highlight of the day for me was four young ( oh so very young) girls stopped at my table and told me they loved to write stories.
With the ability to create art with a mouse instead of the touch of an artist's hand to brush. Photos being developed inside a laptop by trial and error rather than within the mind and discerning eye of a photographer, I have developed a fear.
A fear that writing as we know it now might evolve into a series of menu selections on a purchased software package, stored on the clouds. A distillation of all the books that have already been written.
Some might say, what would you have us do Allan, go back to the ink pot and quill? Shall we give up auto-correction and look for an upright Royal with a two color ribbon.
Not in the least. I too prefer my delete key to a bottle of prematurely hardened white out.
The fear is that someday we will run out of little girls who pull the lollipop from the corner of their mouth to answer the question. "What do you write?"
"Oh just one of the stories that are always in my head."
No I didn't sell a single book, but I may have met the next Harper Lee or perhaps four future best sellers at one time.

A.    E. Ansorge                                                                           

THE BOTTLE OF PORT

                                     The call at 4 o’clock Sunday afternoon for some people would be an insult but as far as Eric was concerned a free meal with a different wine to accompany each course was nothing to sneeze at. The fact it was a formal dinner the next evening was a bit of an inconvenience, but such last-minute request to fill in weren’t unusual on his partner’s part. 

                                    The additional promise of a limo ride to the festivities convinced him to accept his business partner’s invitation without bothering to withhold a reply until his wife returned from the grocery. He knew Anita would understand after, all he had to work with Bill everyday.

                                    The four inches of snow that fell during the day of the dinner allowed the limo to slide sideways into the drive at exactly 5 o’clock. Eric and Anita crowded in with the three other couples already tucked warmly inside. The storm had left the streets practically devoid of all but the true traveling diehards many of whom had paid a great deal of money to attend the same charity function the limo was speeding to.

                                    The other passengers introduced themselves to Eric and Anita as they maintained firm grips on various parts of the cars interior while it careened through the city streets. More than one sigh signaled the passengers’  relief when the large car pulled to a sliding stop at the entrance of the community center and they were able to hustle to the safety of the main ball room.

                                    The hall was set with large round tables in the traditional white and red of Valentine’s Day of two nights to come.   Everyone was greeted by tuxedoed waiters with hors d’oeuvres and champagne.

                                    Chefs had gathered from the better restaurants in town to furnish the materials and time to create a seven-course feast that would probably never be equaled in the city again.  Hand-lettered menus and wine lists occupied each place setting, to be kept by the guest as a souvenir of this evening. It was obvious to all that those who decided not to brave the afternoon’s storm were indeed missing the opportunity of a lifetime.

                                    The master of ceremonies for the evening was doing his best to prime the crowd for the charity auction that was to follow dinner tempting the partygoers with peeks at gift certificates for restaurants and various selections of wine donated by vendors to the same establishments. The high point of the auction turned out to be several dinners prepared by various chefs, for the highest bidder’s guests, in his or her own home.

                                    As the evening wore down, one of the hosts, a local radio personality noticed there were a number of bottles of wine were left over because people had failed to travel out in the questionable weather to fill their well-paid-for chairs. He restarted the auction to sell the bottles to the highest bidders. Bidding started slowly many of the guests feeling they had spent enough money for admission and the items they had already bought.

                                    Anita sent an elbow into Eric’s ribs and whispered, “Start this thing.”

                                    Eric and Anita were the last couple dropped off by the limo after a slower but no less terrifying ride home. Anita cradled a 25-year-old bottle of port in her arms. Its only bidder Eric, had paid more for it than their first house payment.

                                    Eric had offered to share it with those at their table. Everyone insisted they were too full, it was too late, and they had to get up early. The bottle found a place in the small wine rack on Anita’s kitchen counter. Nether she or Eric considered opening it, it was so expensive. Without saying so, they had agreed it would be opened for some special occasion in the future.

                                    The new house had room for a wine cellar in the basement, and the bottle rested there as time passed.

                                    Holidays came and went; children were born, graduated, and graduated again. Weddings followed and one dissolved, but none of these days seemed to rise high enough to warrant taking the bottle from its resting place.

                                    Both children, Laurel and Tony, found lives of their own and moved accordingly. Affluence crept into the lives of their parents who burned a mortgage, and purchased a warm winter home to retreat to in eventual retirement.

                                    There were celebrations of life’s events and survival of scrapes with mortality but none of these things seemed like the right occasion to open the bottle…….

****

                                    Laurel sat at the dinning room table, wading through endless papers written in legalese as Tony cradled glassware in yards of bubble wrap. The antiques had already been removed to an auction house. The Florida home was sold in total.

                                    After taking one last stroll through the basement, Tony returned to the dinning room. Laurel was putting the mound of paper work back into the fireproof box.

                                    “Do you like port, Laurel?”

                                    “No, too sweet for me.”

                                    “Me too. I don’t want this rolling around in the car and breaking on the drive home.”

                                    “Just dump it out; the cleaners will junk the empty. Hit the lights on your way out, will you?”

                                     

                       

HE'S OUT BACK

HE’S OUT BACK

            Depending on who you were listening to it had several names. Pa, my grandfather, called it “The Shop.” Dad always called it the “Old Machine Shed”. To my Mom it was “The Shed,” the one she grew up with, the one that was always there. To Grandma, who knew best, it was forever “Out Back.”

         From when I was little on it, was adventure. It was musty, with its dirt floor and silky cobwebs dangling from the beams. Sunlight streamed through dormer windows and glistened off particles of dust that wandered into its path.

         The odor of leather harnesses lingers. Rubbed with thick oil once a year, to keep them “soft against the hide.” Still ready, they hang from wooden pegs, even though the two greys that wore them had disappeared when I was very small. I hold fuzzy pictures of them in my memory. Tall like pillars, their lips wet, their massive, weighty bodies shifting side to side, impatient to be at their task. Pa talking to them like they were family. To him, I’m now sure, they were.

         Red rusted machinery  that looked like it had never seen paint occupied most of the space. A great deal of it was Grandma’s dowry, passed on to the young couple by her father and his brothers “to help the kids get started” when Pa bought the land on contract.

         I would sit on the cast-iron seats while Pa explained, step by step, how the machines and the mother and daughter horses who pulled them worked together. His voice softened when he spoke of the “girls”.

         On the outside, there are still some scattered spots of the red it used to be. The rest is so weathered paint would never stick to it anymore. When I ask him, Dad says, “It would be horrible expensive to get it back into shape and the doors aren’t big enough for the machines we use now. But she is sound and the roof holds it dry. Best to just leave it be.”

         I suppose someday economics will dictate the dowry will have to fall to the torch and leave the farm for good on the scrap dealer’s truck. The walls will weaken even more in time and have to come down. I know Dad could never do it. That job will probably be passed on to me after I finish my last year of Ag at the U and I come home for good to the house on the corner where Pa and Grandma lived.

         Today, I’m here to say a last good-bye to Gram and I guess to stare at the shed and remember. Times of long ago pass through my mind and I wonder if she is “Out Back”, finally together again with Pa.

A Peek Into The Life of Victor Verie

“Detective, if she leaves, I can’t go out of this house and neither can you. I suggest you think about that and the fact you have insulted a highly decorated investigator of MI6. She might have been able to help with more than housekeeping. You have just made a big mistake, fix it.”

“I think I can manage.”

“You are on leave, you are looking at the only cop in this room, and I don’t have to stay here. After what you had me pull today you think you’re going to get any more help downtown. You black mailed a cop into violating about 100 regs., you are dancing on water, the ice is gone pal.”

Life With Detective Verie

“What do you mean it was a whim. A whim is changing your order from a latte to a macchiato, this is a war crime.”

“Mother don’t exaggerate, it is a hair cut not a crime.”

“It is a crime, and I am a witness to it. You can’t be seen in public that way. People will think police officers are being attacked by the mad barber of fleet street.”

Nicole made a grab for her mother’s cell phone but was way too late. “Ramon sweetie, pencil, are you ready?”

Victor’s address was written on a pad in Ramon’s salon Bellus along with with a brief description of what tragedy has befallen Cynthia’s daughter.

“Yes, come right away darling. Don’t interrupt dear, now please bring that little man that fixes things with you. A leg has fallen off of a table. A wooden leg, why do you ask? Quit laughing Ramon this is not funny. Fifteen minutes, excellent dear, knew I could count you. Kisses.”

“What is going on down there?”

“Nothing important Victor. I’m afraid your table has had an injury. I have someone coming to take care of it. Shall we bring the paperwork upstairs in the mean time?”

“Yes, just forget that table it’s had a bad leg for years. Don’t lean on it and it will be fine.”...

Now For Something Totally Different

Two weeks before we came to the SunShine State my friend, and full time Florida guy,Dick Stolper let me know he was having the batteries changed in our golf cart. (Down here it is the transportation of choice. Grocery store, restaurants, the hospital of course.) That done for a month now we have driven it everywhere. Yesterday it died at a stop sign a few miles from our place. I guessed it needed charging. A gracious couple offered us a tow using Miss Lizzie's leash as a rope. They brought us home and we pushed the offending vehicle into the garage. Half an hour after I had assumed my place at the keyboard, the house shook with a loud bang from the garage which was filled with smoke and an acrid sulfur smell from the $750 battery explosion.    I just love the unexpected, It's what makes getting up in the morning worthwhile. and costly to boot.

Crossin The LIne Of Flight

CHAPTER 1

            Nina tucked a number 2 pencil through the the holes in her her hairnet and grabbed the regular coffee carafe.

                        "Nina, what are you mumbling about?"

"I'll tell you, Shirley, there are few things in this world I really hate, but near the top of the list would have to be that over there."

            The eyes of Nina's fellow waitress followed the direction of the older lady's stare. "What over there, Nina?"

            "That rat pack of over-the-hill golfers talking to the charter boat captains, that's what. They are damn near whispering, and I can't make out a word they are saying."

            "Let me try; give me that coffeepot," said Shirley, reaching out with a nicotine-stained hand.

            After two hours of sopping up free refills, every member of the gathering covered his cup with a palm on seeing Shirley approaching the two tables they had pushed together. Her mission a failure, Shirley returned to her station behind the diner’s turquoise counter.

            Nina glared across the room at what she felt was a clandestine gathering. "Well done, sweetie; now the two of us have no idea what those louts are mumbling about."

            Nina was about to propose an alternate eavesdropping plan when she was distracted by an ambulance and two sheriff's squad cars, sirens wailing, entering the marina parking lot next door.

            "Mind the store, Shirley; this has got to be interesting." Looking back at her assistant, she applied all 105 pounds of her bulk to open the plate glass door of the diner, collecting Carl Fletcher and her boss Sharon Waters in the process.

            They brushed past her before she could ask if they knew what was going on. She wasn't certain, but it appeared that Sharon's makeup was streaking down her cheeks.

            Nina had reached the curb separating the marina and diner parking lots when the medical examiner's black van pulled into the marina’s lot and parked at the end of Pier 31. People—some, but not all, in uniforms—swarmed over the lot like it was an anthill. Several were stringing crime scene tape in an effort to keep out the curious.

            Sheriff's detective Michael McCaffery had his hand atop Maggie Fletcher's head as he guided her into the backseat of one of the squad cars. Teddy Berger, Carl's deckhand, appeared to be waiting to be loaded into the same car.

            Nina wondered if Carl knew they were hauling his mother off in a cop car. She caught a glimpse of Moss and Gibby taking in the action as they peeked around the corner of the boat repair shop.

            So engrossed were they that Nina's touch on Moss's arm sent him airborne. He landed on Gibby, his diminutive partner. Both ending in a heap at Nina's feet.

            "Get up, you two Looney Tunes, and tell me what is going on over there!"

            Gibby took in his usual gasp of air before attempting to make a statement of importance, but no sound escaped his trembling lips.

            Moss straightened his ever-present porkpie hat and intervened, "The way it looks, Carl's mom and that Teddy kid killed a bunch of people, including that Anderson couple that lived on the big sailboat."

            Gibby joined in. "They shot the mean guy, who we was paid to watch, with a bow and arrow, and then whoever else was on the boat with a gun, I think."

            "Maggie shot someone, are you sure? I don't think that's possible. Slap them around a little maybe but… Wait a minute, did you say, ‘bow and arrow?'"

            Moss gathered a little indignation, "I know an arrow when I see one. I did just what they say you should. I tripped Tad Anderson with Gibby's broom so he would stop and drop, you know. I would have gotten him to roll if it wasn't for that arrow sticking out of his back."

            A twitch started in the corner of Nina's right eye. She was doing a running inventory of where the diner's regulars would be at this time of day. Sharon and Carl were at the diner. Maggie and Teddy appeared to be headed to the sheriff's department under the direction of Michael. That would leave Meyer and his crew from the boat shop.

            "Is Tad Anderson dead, Moss?" The question went unanswered. Gibby and Moss had made a quiet retreat in an effort to avoid any more questions. Nina's eyes saw them slipping behind the boat shop, but her mind held an entirely different vision: Sharon's makeup. The wiry little lady turned on the heels of her sensible white shoes and broke out in a dead run for the diner.