ozma914 | Entries tagged with slightly off the mark

I finally finished the Still Slightly Off the Mark manuscript!

By which I mean it's ready for Emily to review, find all the mistakes, and send it back to me for rewrites.

But that's the way we do things in the Hunter household. With these other writing projects we're working on, my final polishing of this was when I could get to it, usually during breaks. That's why there would be food on the pages, if there were pages. (Not to worry, I covered the keyboard.)

It clocks in at just under 60,000 words in nineteen chapters, and has about twenty illustrations, which is a fancy word meaning "pictures". An illustrated manuscript--it's like I dragged myself into the 21st Century, or something.

It looks like we'll be able to get it out before Christmas, despite the previously mentioned other projects we're working on. Until then the working full title is either:

Still Slightly Off the Mark

A Celebration of Silliness

or more likely

Still Slightly Off the Mark:

Why I Hate Cats, and Other Lies

What do you think? If neither of those work I was thinking of titling it Harry Potter and the Star Wars Avengers, but Emily thinks that might be just a wee bit misleading.

Find all of our books at:

http://markrhunter.com/

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

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After hitting 28,000 words on the first draft of my new novel, We Love Trouble, I'm calling a halt to it.

Temporarily! Come on, I'm not going to give up on a story that I've described as The Thin Man meets Scooby-Doo. I'm having way too much fun.

But Emily and I wanted to get our new humor book, Still Slightly Off the Mark, out before the Christmas season. It's been so long since I last went over the final draft that I assumed--correctly--that I'd find more mistakes. So, while Emily works on the cover, I've started a line edit.

Emily's trying for a cover that's similar to the one for the original Slightly Off the Mark, seen here. But not so similar people think it's the same book. A lot of juggling goes on in the writing business.

Then I'm going to finish the rough draft of We Love Trouble, and while that cools and awaits a second draft, I'll finally go back to pulling photos together for our Albion Fire Department photo book.

It's like cooking a meal with multiple dishes at the same time. You have to add the various ingredients at the right moment, have them cooking at the right temperature, and keep anything from burning. I've always been exceptionally bad at cooking multiple-dish meals, which is why I make sure my smoke detector batteries are good.

Hopefully I'll be better with the multiple book projects. Although, come to think of it, if I should hear back from an agent or publisher things will get even more complicated.

Remember, if you don't get it all done, tomorrow is another day. Assuming those are early morning clouds, and not a UFO approaching.

Don't forget to find us on social media, including:

Blogger: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

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I've finished the second draft of Still Slightly Off the Mark: The Prequel!

Subtitle: Why I hate Cats, and Other Lies. I figured if I put in the word "lies", it would attract political junkies, even though there's no politics in it.

No, I'm still not sure what the title will ultimately be, but I have finished picking and placing photos. I chose about two dozen to go into the book, but Emily might cut a few of those, after reviewing them and slapping me around a little. Thank goodness for editors.

I've also chosen a theme to hold the book together. It's: "making fun of me". Granted, that's what I was already doing, anyway. But I've found my writing has changed much in the almost twenty years since these columns were first written. Even after making major changes in them, they still often reflect a very different time, so I'm going to poke a little fun at that along the way.

If you can't make fun of yourself, how are you making it through life?

Here's a review of the original Slightly Off the Mark:

https://josbookreviews.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/slightly-off-the-mark-by-mark-r-hunter/

And where to find it for sale:

https://www.amazon.com/Slightly-off-Mark-Unpublished-Columns-ebook/dp/B00W68ZOKK

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25393086-slightly-off-the-mark

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So, while Emily was scanning photos for the new Albion Fire Department book, I finished up the first draft of Still Slightly Off the Mark: The Prequel.

(Keep in mind that, with first drafts, the title is just a suggestion.)

"That sounds a lot like one of your other books."

Of course, there will be changes. For one thing, I'm putting a few pictures into the book. Don't tell Emily, she's up to her arms in pictures for another book, and just might strangle me. That would increase sales, I suppose.

As I was looking over the draft, I also counted chapter lengths. I'm not OCD by any means, much, usually, but I like my chapters to be approximately the same length. There's no particular reason for that; in fact, chapters should be the length they are, along the lines of "start at the beginning, go on to the end, then stop".

But in this rough draft, my longest chapter is nineteen pages ... and my shortest is three.

Yeah, that's not gonna happen.

This is a humor book, and I think a humor book chapter should be no longer than, say, the average bathroom break. So I'm thinking of chopping up the longer chapters into short ones, which will probably leave me with around two dozen or so. What do you think? Do you prefer long or short chapters? And does it bother you if they vary greatly in one book?

And how much do you think it annoyed the dog to find himself holding a copy of the original Slightly Off the Mark? I mean, he got his picture on the cover, so who is he to complain?

http://markrhunter.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Mark-R-Hunter/e/B0058CL6OO

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Thanks to everyone who read, and especially commented on, my post on the 50 Authors From 50 States blog! As for the giveaway, I didn't have a hat, so I made each commenter a slip of paper and mixed them up in ... an extra large coffee cup.

A coworker, who was very happy there was no actual coffee in the cup, then pulled out the name of William Kendall, who wins a free book! And no, that's not as cool as a free car, but I don't sell cars.

As for those who read the blog, Annette Snyder sent me a list that shows 176 visitors from the USA. But here's a surprise: The next highest number of visitors were from Ireland! No, I don't know why. After that came France and Germany, then "Unknown Region", which I think is one of the former Soviet republics. On a related note, there were also visitors from Russia, as well as the Ukraine, United Kingdom, and--as might be expected--Canada.

Otherwise there's not much to report. Emily is busy scanning and adjusting photos for our Albion Fire Department photo book project, while I've been working on the rough draft of a humor collection, under the working title of Still Slightly Off the Mark. It will be based on humor columns I wrote for the newspaper between 2000 and 2002, and rereading them for revision has made me realize just how much has changed since then.

Spring is springing--more or less--and we got a chance last week to go to the drive-in theater that was the inspiration for Coming Attractions. Shazam, was it fun!

On a related note, Emily is back with her horses at the Pokagon State Park Saddle Barn, although until Memorial Day they're only open on weekends.

All signs of spring ... yay! Hope you all get a chance to get outside and enjoy it, when weather permits. And, for those of you in the upper Midwest and Plains States ... I'm so sorry.

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We had such a nice, warm winter going on there.

(Well ... "nice winter", is relative. But in northern Indiana, if the temperature stays above freezing for any amount of time between late December and the end of January, that's a nice winter.)

I wanted it to continue. I contacted my state representative and asked him to build a wall between us and Canada, to keep out those nasty polar vortexes. Look, I love Canada, but I understand why they call that country America's Hat: They have to wear hats up there to keep their ears from falling off. For nine months a year.

You have to respect people who get by even though they think North Dakota is a bit too warm for them.

Anyway, my state representative recently got a frostbit nose on the Pokagon State Park toboggan run, and was thus sympathetic. He threatened to shut down the state government unless they funded a Games Of Thrones style ice wall, until it was pointed out to him that keeping a polar vortex out would require a wall eighteen miles high ... and besides, Lake Michigan was a problem.

That guy has since moved to Boca Raton, which I discovered is in Florida. Traitor.

Just to make it clear, this is NOT Boca Raton.

So, with no approval for a wall, or my backup idea involving a line of several hundred thousand salamanders pointed north, winter came back.

(Imagine my embarrassment when I discovered salamanders had to be powered by something, which made the idea financially unsound. I thought they all just crawled to the state line and breathed warm air into the wind.)

So one day I went outside to do yard work while it was in the low 50s (Fahrenheit--let's not get silly). Two days later it was 22 degrees, and lake-effect snow--which my wall would have stopped--was causing vehicles to skid all over like a Disney On Ice version of "Cars".

Which ... come to think of it would be a brilliant show, and I'd pay to go, if I could get out of my driveway.

"Screw it, bring in the zamboni."

Anyway, for awhile there we were having decent (relatively) weather, while the south was getting clobbered with ice and snow. I feel for the south, but there's a certain irony there: For most of my life I've sworn every winter that by next winter I'd move away; but like an angry Democrat celebrity, I never do. Honestly, I really love Indiana the rest of the year, but is a northern Indiana winter worth that?

Plan B was to become a rich author and have a winter home, an idea I abandoned when I found out the average author earns under the poverty line.

When it snows in the south, the counties dig out their only snow plow (manufactured by Mack in 1959). Most adults stay in, most kids go out to throw snowballs, and people who have to drive somewhere crash. All of them. But there's a good side: southern snow rarely lasts long, and pretty soon they get nice and toasty warm again (relatively).

Without a wall. Or maybe with, because the upper Midwest functions as their winter barrier.

Our good luck is over now, and we can expect a few months of complete ick. I shall survive by staying home as much as possible, writing under a multi-spectrum lamp while wearing both long flannel underwear and a big fluffy robe, and several layers in between. It's not quite denial.

But it beats Boca Raton in the summer.

"What ... you don't like me?"

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I've finished going through all the CDs and drives I could find, looking for any picture that might be useful in our Albion Fire Department photo book project. (It's a book project about the Albion Fire Department … focusing on photos. Pretty self-explanatory, but I'll look for a catchier title.)

Every photo I found that had even an outside shot of being useful, I transferred to a file and then to a thumb drive. I was pretty loose in my definition of "useful", since Emily can do amazing things with mediocre pictures, of which I've taken many. Then I totaled them all up.

My file now has 7,792 items, taking up 34.4 gigabytes of space.

This does not include a whole box full of photos loaned to us by Phil and Cindy Jacob, many of which Emily is in the process of scanning into her computer. It doesn't include the boxes of prints I have, myself. It also doesn't include any pictures we may yet have loaned to us by anyone else; it's just the ones I had immediately available in electronic form.

So … I've got some sorting to do.

Hopefully we'll get many more good photos donated toward the project, so I don't have to mess with my mediocre ones at all. But I have to admit, I had a lot of fun going through all those files. I've pretty much mastered a complete lack of organization, so I had to go through all my boxes of CDs … music, pictures, backups, documents, everything. I kept saying, "Hey--I remember that!"

I also transferred, to a different file, hundreds of my old humor columns, dating back to between 2000-2004. Basically fourteen to eighteen year old columns, which means many of my readers have never seen them, and the rest have probably forgotten. A project for later this year: Adapt and assemble them into a new book, which I've tentatively titled "Still Slightly Off the Mark".

An easy project in theory, but I'll probably rewrite them, since I'm theoretically better for having a decade and a half more writing experience. What do you think? Do we all need a laugh?

I think so, too.

Old photos--or in this case, video scans--do my heart good.

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I haven’t written about politics for some time, mostly because of certain keywords that permeate modern discourse: “Hateful”; “vindictive”; “mean”; “hypocritical” … okay, some of them aren't so new. Also, certain trigger words that cause those reactions, such as "politics", and "Have a nice day".

(By the way, "Have a nice day" is going to be my reply to any particularly wrathful comments to this post. It's time to steer away from useless shouting.)

Still, I do have a history of making predictions, so here’s what I think is going to happen over the next few years. Just to be clear, my Presidential prediction success rate is running at about 50%.

There's a chapter on politics in this book. But the rest of it's pretty good.

The Democrats will win control of the House of Representatives. This one’s crazy easy: The party opposing the sitting President almost always makes gains during off-year elections. The Dems also have their usual advantage of a fawning mainstream media, so I’m pretty confident of this one. We also had more than one “October Surprise”, and all of them screamed “go blue”.

The Republicans will maintain control of the Senate, although just barely. This will result in a scenario in which half of Congress actively does everything in their power to keep President Trump from doing anything, including picking out ties, having brunch, or watching the Superbowl. As far as actual work getting done, things won’t look much different.

Keep in mind that over the last several decades Democrats controlled Congress much more often than Republicans did, which helps explain why they’ve been so irate the last couple of years. I understand: I’d prefer to be in charge, too.

I could be wrong on all of this; conservatives are just as fired up right now as liberals are, but they feel saying so often leads to them being personally attacked, so many are keeping a low profile. On a related note, remember when we could disagree and still be nice to each other? No? Well, I was younger, then.

What I can guarantee is that political ads will continue to be more and more vicious, which is also a pretty easy call. In my area they’ve given up on words like “misleading” and gone straight to calling each other liars. We’re getting closer and closer to political campaigns looking like the Red Wedding in “Game of Thrones”. I predict that by early 2020, ads will start with wishes that opponents campaign in Iowa without their overcoats. They'll end with suggestions that the other guy get tarred (with toxic sludge) and feathered (with arrows).

Can't we all just get along? No? Okay.

It’s no great leap to say all this animosity and lack of general niceness is connected. We probably won’t get back to any form of civility until someone from outside the country attacks America again, or a comet takes out New Jersey, and possibly not then.

By the way, I predict the 2020 Presidential campaign will begin December 2^nd, 2018. The fact that more and more Americans are becoming infuriated by the extended campaign seasons hasn’t gotten through to politicians any more than anything else has.

In 2020 the Presidential election will be won by Democrat Kamala Harris, after the other Democrats maim each other into bloody pulps in the primaries. She’ll have a majority of a few million and barely squeak by in the electoral college, which supporters will declare a landslide. I don’t know much about Harris, but she’s from California, so she’ll have her home state locked up. Her mother is Indian and her father Jamaican, which means any criticism of her can be stomped down with cries of “racist!” I’ve read up on Harris a little and I’m not overly impressed, but I suspect she really doesn’t give a darn what I think.

President Trump, taking his cue from the Democrats after the 2016 election, will pout.

Other predictions for the next few years:

A terrible storm will cause damage somewhere.

A politician will fall out of grace because of something that ends with “gate”.

Entertainment award shows will continue to ditch celebrating entertainment in favor of being political.

Some cool new technology will sweep the world.

A major business will go bankrupt.

Oh: And the American economy will turn down, headed toward a recession by the end of 2019, and be in full recession sometime in 2020. Our economy goes in cycles, and we’ve been riding a wave for too long—the wave is overdue to crash. I’m just the messenger.

Of course, by the time most of that happens you’ll have forgotten I wrote this, so right or wrong, I’m safe.

Thus, I've earned the right to complain.

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Four years ago I wrote my regular newspaper humor column about Independence Day history, which few people read because it was about history. Ironically, about two months later my regular newspaper column became history, but that's another story.
As I said in the opening to our book "Hoosier Hysterical", history would be a lot more fun if it was made ... well ... fun. So I had fun with this, which has been changed slightly because I'm four years older.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

Ever since Christopher Columbus first landed in the New World and hid all the Viking artifacts, America has been a land of opportunity, independence, and smallpox.

Eventually the British colonists decided to go off and form their own country. (Except for Canadians, who were just too polite to leave.) Since our schools don’t teach enough history these days (there’s so much more of it now), I thought I’d give you a quick timeline of how we, the people, went from tea to coffee:

1756: The French and Indian War

This was probably the first World War. No, seriously: Over here we just mention the French and Indians, but the rest of the world called it the Seven Years War. It spread all over the globe, like a viral YouTube video, but with more cannon fire and disease. Nations involved included Austria, England, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Sweden. Oh, and the Indians.

(Later on Prussia, not wanting to be confused with Russia, changed their name to Germany.)

Why does this involve American Independence, which came decades later? Because it cost the British government so much to defeat their enemies (and the Indians) that they began taxing the colonists to help pay for it. And yet they didn’t allow the colonies to raise their own armies, and there was that whole taxation without representation thing.

Oh, and one more thing: The whole world war began (well, mostly) because a young Virginia militia leader ambushed a French scouting party in the far west wilderness … near Pittsburgh. In later years, George Washington would be more careful to start battles after war was declared.

1770: The Boston Massacre:

No, it wasn’t a sporting event. It started when a group of colonists began throwing snowballs at a squad of British soldiers (In Boston. Sheesh.). That’s not so bad, is it? Then the colonists starting tossing sticks and stones, which, contrary to popular belief, can indeed break bones.

This is a perfect example of why you shouldn’t throw stuff at people with guns. Five colonists died and the soldiers were arrested, but they were mostly acquitted thanks to the crafty defense by a young lawyer names John Adams.

1773: The Boston Tea Party

Tired of high taxes, an unresponsive government, and Earl Gray, colonists (In Boston—sheesh) dressed up as Indians, sneaked aboard ships (In the harbor—sheesh), and tossed 342 chests of tea into the water. In today’s dollars, they turned Boston harbor into the world’s biggest cup, with $750,000 worth of tea. They were led, of course, by the famous Boston patriot Folger “Starbuck” Maxwell.

But why blame the Indians? They didn’t even drink tea.

1774: The First Continental Congress

They didn’t get much done. But in their defense, they were a Congress.

1775: Patrick Henry stirs the pot

With the grievances of the colonists ignored by a remote government—sort of like today, only without Facebook—a radical named Patrick Henry, upset because he had two first names and no last one, began making fiery speeches and resolutions.

The truth is, Henry was kind of a deadbeat. Worse, a lawyer. But man, he sure could talk good, and his actions helped ignite the American Revolution. You’ve probably heard the last line of his big speech, which was “Give me liberty or give me death!” Luckily, he got liberty.

1775: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.

He rode through the countryside yelling, “The British are coming!”

Sleepy residents yelled back, “Shut up, you fool! We are the British!”

Then he got arrested, probably for violating the noise ordinance, and the ride was completed by William Dawes. Unfortunately for Dawes, the name “Paul Revere” sounded better in poetry.

Also 1775 (busy year, there): The Battle of Lexington and Concord

Revere had discovered the British were marching by sea, which slowed them down considerably because the horses didn’t swim well. That gave the Minutemen almost a full two minutes. It was plenty of time to gather in Lexington, to protect stores of arms and gunpowder, and Concord, to protect the grapes.

1775 (saw that coming, didn’t you?): The Second Continental Congress

Didn’t get much done. They made up for it in 1776, though.

1775 or so: The Battle of Bunker Hill

It was actually fought on Breeds Hill.

177—wait for it—5: Patriots occupy Montreal, Canada

Things were looking up, up there. And that’s the last time things looked up for the Revolutionaries in the north, who discovered Canadian hospitality didn’t extend to invasion.

1776 (finally!) Egged on by the British, Cherokee Indians attack along the entire southern frontier

They were still upset about the whole Tea Party fraud. Also, they were mad about getting named for a country on the other side of the world.

June 7, 1776: Richard Henry Lee points out to the Continental Congress that they’ve been rebelling against the British for more than a year, and wouldn’t it be a good idea to actually declare themselves to be rebelling?

June 11: Five Congressmen are appointed to draft a Declaration of Independence. The other four talk Thomas Jefferson into doing the writing, pointing out that he’s the only one who’s invented a portable desk to use.

June 12-27: Jefferson writes a rough draft, only to receive a rejection letter from the committee.

July 1-4: The entire Congress rips apart the Declaration. (Not literally. Sheesh.) Jefferson quits writing and goes into politics.

July 2: Congress declares independence, just as the British fleet and army arrive to invade New York. Talk about timing. John Adams declares that July 2 will forever be celebrated as Independence Day.

July 4: Having already declared independence, Congress now adopts the Declaration of Independence, declaring something they’ve already declared. John Adams’ head explodes.

July 9: George Washington has the Declaration read before the American army. The soldiers nod politely and ask when they’re going to get paid.

There was much more to it, of course. In fact, you could say the American Revolution went on until the US Constitution was adopted in 1788, or even until we fought the second Revolutionary war in 1812, which might also be related to the real second World War.

Now, that’s a funny story.

Flags are cool. This one's at the Albion Fire Department, so it's also hot.

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I stumbled across this column from way back in 2011 (Note that I use my wife's maiden name) after reading some poems on a writer's site. I thought, "Hey--I can rhyme!" And then I decided to repost it, mostly because it's summer, and I have an editing job, and I can't be online much. And also because I'm curious for your reaction. Okay, so I can rhyme ... but am I any good?

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

My fiancée is taking a poetry class this year, so I, being a writer, decided to take a crack at writing poetry myself.

Why didn’t someone stop me?

Thank goodness I’m better at prose. Thank goodness Emily is better at poetry, or she’d be scoring a big fat goose egg, which rhymes with … I don’t know, something.

My understanding has always been that poetry is writing that’s short and structured and rhymes, while prose just rambles on, the way I do. However, it turns out that poetry doesn’t always rhyme, and some poems have gone on to book lengths. There are, in fact, many dozens of types of poetry, from Haiku to Jintishi. I thought Jintishi was a condition related to too much drinking, but no.

I myself have written several: There’s my Summer Sonnet, which managed to rhyme “sunblock” with “wet sock” (you have to read the whole thing, it makes sense in context). That was the first part of a trilogy that ended with “Winter Depression Elegy”. Then there’s my most famous work of all, “Ode to Odious Odors”, a salute to sweat.

It was only after I realized poems didn’t have to rhyme that I completed my ultimate work: “Rhymes With Orange”. I expected to replace Arthur F. Mapes as Indiana’s poet laureate, but got into trouble when my application poem rhymed “laureate” with “lariat”. As I hadn’t bothered with something that actually made logical sense, my choice left the Indiana Arts Commission hanging.

By the way, the current Indiana State Poet Laureate is Imma Eaton Krapf; I used Mapes’ name because he lived here in Noble County. By the end of this century Noble County will be known as a writer’s paradise, home of Mapes, Stratton-Porter, Hunter, and Emily Stroud. (Don’t worry Emily; it’s not necessarily in that order).

As part of striving toward famous authorhood (You’ve heard of Authorhood; he stole books from the rich and gave them to the poor), and in an attempt to be a well-rounded writer, I thought I’d take another stab at writing poetry, despite the begging and pleading of both colleagues and fans.

As it happens, I’ve been discussing with writer friends the issue of which is better: e-books or good old fashioned paper books. Poetry should deal with the challenges of life, right? Well, you’re not going to see me at a poetry slam, screaming about drug abuse while sipping five dollar coffee, but I know the sick feeling of pulling a paperback out of the bathtub water. So here, from a writer’s standpoint, is my salute to modern technology:

I thought that I would never see

a book that didn’t kill a tree.

With pages scented paper sweet;

Appetizing termite meat.

No foliage falls for greater cause

then giving pleasure when we pause

to take it easy, and get lost

in stories great, at discount cost.

A too hot day in summertime

is good enough excuse to climb

into a room, all air conditioned,

assuming readership position.

And winter’s even better, yet

to put aside a day, all set

to ignore the crappy cold and snow

for Kipling, King, or maybe Poe.

But oh, the times will change, they say,

if you’ve the means with which to pay,

and wonders come, by hook or crook

electronically – such as e-book.

What a great way to read a story!

Romance, Sci-fi, or something gory.

The e-book holds a million tomes

that otherwise you’d leave at home.

Much less space used! The paper saved!

No more do printing presses slave

to murder trees and spray out ink:

To get a book, just hit a link

On a little screen, electronic

that can bring your reading tonic

and sooth the soul that needs that book

on Kindle, iPad, or the Nook.

It’s so much better, wouldn’t you say?

Your whole library’s there, all day.

No bending covers – doing that

would break an e-reader’s back.

No new book smell. No bookmark need.

No buying something new to read

from that little bookstore down the block;

they’re out of business. Closed and locked.

No comfort in those overflowing

shelves of print, the joy of knowing

no death of any circuitry

nor slowly dying battery

will keep you from enjoying it

in dull lines, or a bathroom visit.

E-books? They’ll come along, apace.

As new things will, they’ll have their place.

If people read, no matter how

it makes this planet great, somehow.

But print will stay, for fools like me,

who know it’s worth replanting trees.

"Later it might be a book, but right now it's the bathroom."

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I totally loved my last car, so it’s ironic that it got totaled, which I didn’t love.

Normally I’m not one of those who falls madly in love with automobiles. They’re just something to get me from one place to another until they don’t anymore, which with my track record happens sooner, rather than later. My first car exploded; a wheel fell off my second; my third died at a rest stop outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee; my fourth froze solid on a snow swept rural road half a mile from the nearest phone.

And so on.

So when a car comes along that does me good, I appreciate it. So it was with my Ford Focus, which lasted over ten years despite … well, me. Yes, it had its problems, but it was as reliable as the American election cycle, and way more fun. It was easy to drive, had great brakes, accelerated me out of trouble more than once, and the back seat was kind of comfortable to sleep in as long you curled up. (That’s another story.)

Then, like a vampire, it was killed by sunlight.

Well, it was killed by another driver who was blinded by sunlight. To be honest, we grieved: because it was a great car, and because it was paid off. But life goes on, so my wife, who was laid up with a broken foot (see above about the blinded driver killing the car), started researching a replacement.

We wanted a domestic model, which is silly because these days half of American cars are built in other countries, and half of foreign cars are built in America. Still, I never forgot the time the transmission broke in my Renault Alliance (see car #3), and they had to order a new part—from France. I’ve bought American ever since (except for car# 8), which didn’t save me from the Chevy Chevette (see car #4).

We also wanted something that could transport both of us, plus our dog and the grand-twins. A 95 pound dog and two kids in one back seat adds up to someone being crushed.

We wanted something that would get us around a little better in an Indiana winter (see car # … well, all of them), but that would still get decent gas mileage. (Car #5 got awesome gas mileage, because engines don’t burn gas when they never start.) The answer: a mid-size SUV.

We picked out a Ford Escape before discovering that it was built on the same chassis as the … wait for it … Ford Focus. Maybe that’s part of the reason why we fell in love with the car. (Can I call an SUV a car? Too late.) It’s burgundy, although it has one of those non-color names, like pink grapefruit, or tangerine, or something else with vitamin C.

It's not made of rubies. That's my wife behind the wheel, and she's not made of money.

Oh, ruby red, that’s it. Where did I get food from? I’ve hated that trend ever since I accidentally ate a macaroni and cheese crayon.

There was one problem. (Well, two, as we had to start making car payments again.) Our old car was over ten years old, which in terms of today’s electronics meant it was about eighty.

Things had, to put it mildly, changed. And not because I’d never owned a sport utility vehicle. I don’t even like sports.

To this day I’m always a little surprised not to find preset buttons on my car radio. You know what I found when we got into a 2014 SUV? A TV screen. That’s sixties-era science fiction movie stuff.

“Look at this!” I said.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” the car replied.

Because you can talk to the car. And it can talk back. You can use it as a phone, or an internet hot spot. Also, you can use the car to get music and news from a satellite orbiting the Earth. In space.

Think about that.

When I was a kid, you could barely hear the radio station during a thunderstorm. We could pull in three AM stations: country, NPR, and WOWO radio 1190, which was the top 40 rock station. Now some guy was downloading all Beatles songs into a computer in London and beaming them to a satellite thirty thousand miles in space, which was then sending them straight to my friggin’ car.

I don’t care if you’re a millennial or not: If you stop to really think about this, how can you not be amazed? (In case you’re wondering, no, we didn’t continue the satellite service after the free trial was over. I wasn’t that amazed.)

You touched the screen to change radio stations. Then you touched it again to turn on the air conditioning. You can set a different temperature for each side of the car. You know what the air conditioning was on my first four cars? Rolling the windows down (with a hand crank) and driving real fast.

If it’s a nice day, we can now push a button and open the roof. Dude.

So we were test driving the Escape, and I put it in reverse, and the “environmental” information on the screen disappeared. Instead, I saw what was behind me. ON A TV SCREEN.

A little voice said, “What are you doing, Mark?”

“Um … I’m backing up.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. There’s a car three blocks away that will go by when you’re four feet onto the roadway. Please wait until it passes.”

“But … how do you know my name?”

“I knew it as soon as you sat down. Butt cheek recognition software.”

Okay, I might have been making up that last bit. But the seats are all electric, so who knows what they’re feeling?

Next thing you know, cars will be driving themselves.

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I’ve been going through all the boxes of old paperwork in my garage attic—there were a lot of them—and I stumbled across some of my old columns. How old? Well, so old they’ve never appeared online.

There was a time when stuff didn’t appear online. No, really.

Since time has been very short lately (see above note about going through stuff, and also recently born grandbaby), I’m posting this as my annual Christmas column, a little more faith based than my usual fare … and you’d have never known it wasn’t brand new if I hadn’t told you. Well, except it mentions my youngest daughter’s fascination with Sailor Moon, which dates back to the turn of the century.

I’m typing this in without reading it first … I wonder if it’s any good?

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

Twas’ the night before Christmas, and all through the house

No noise could be heard but the click of my mouse

As I searched on the net for some gifts I could use,

To keep the kids happy, and thus stop abuse.

The reason, for me, was that Christmas meant presents,

And a lack of the same could make my life unpleasant.

For I have two daughters, who I thought could be mean,

Because one still knows Santa, and the other’s a teen.

So I surfed on the net, and I found Sailor Moon

Comics, two dolls, and all things cartoon.

For the old: books, tapes, her piece of the pie,

And she wanted orange clothing—don’t’ ask me why.

So my credit card screamed as I roamed cyberspace,

Begging for mercy while I wore down its face.

My bank account suffered, collapsed, and then died.

No team from “ER” could keep it alive.

Headlong for bankruptcy, I found myself hurrying.

Yes, I was broke, but I wasn’t worrying.

After all, I was experiencing the joy of giving,

And that seemed to me the way to be living.

Then in my computer I heard such a clatter,

I thought it was crashing! Almost emptied my bladder.

A new icon appeared on my desktop display:

“Press here for Santa—now, don’t delay!”

With a trembling hand I ran virus scans first,

But it said “nothing detected” so it wasn’t the worst.

I couldn’t resist; the button I pushed,

And suddenly Santa appeared with a “whoosh”.

Although no longer fat, he still had that grin.

“My wife gets the credit for the shape that I’m in.

The doc said lose weight or one day I’ll keel over,

So Mrs. Claus feeds me stuff that tastes just like clover.”

“You’re looking good, Santa,” I had to agree.

“And you’re in my computer—high tech now, I see.”

But something about my words made him frown:

“That’s why I’m here: You’ve got it all turned around.”

“But Santa,” I told him, “I’m into the spirit.

This stuff isn’t for me—I wouldn’t hear it!

I like buying for kids, it’s the spirit of giving;

Thinking not of yourself is the way to be living.”

He shook his head sadly. “You just don’t understand.

A big present exchange isn’t what should be planned.

What good does it do? What do your kids learn?

To get lots of things? To spend more than you earn?”

I sat there in shock—didn’t know what to say.

This didn’t sound like our Santa today.

“Why do you say this? You sound kind of blue.

Is material hoopla getting you, too?”

“It was different before,” Santa said with a frown.

“There wasn’t this focus on cost all around.

People were thankful, whatever they got;

Gifts came from the heart, that’s what they were taught.”

“Do you think what they want, or what you think is nice?

Do you buy best for each, or balance out price?

I know you like giving, but is that what they learn?

Or do they just know ‘get’ and you’ve money to burn?”

“All the gifts in the world don’t play a part

In the meaning of Christmas if He’s not in your heart.

And you know who He is! So get off your can.

If you can’t afford gifts make your kids understand.”

And then he was gone. He left no gifts from his sack.

But he did leave some interesting thoughts to take back

To consider for people who go fret and worry

About gifts and cards and the holiday hurry.

There’s nothing wrong with having a nice holiday

(At least until January’s bill paying day.)

But Santa’s not the Big Guy of the season, you see.

So relax and have fun … don’t just load up the tree.

Merry Christmas!

It's the Santa Mafia! And they're going to make you a present you can't refuse.

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It was a strange day, in that I did home maintenance work, but didn't get hurt.

Not exactly.

I closed all the storm windows, and replaced some screens. I still have creases in some of my finger bones from doing that in previous autumns.

I started up the furnace without so much as a single explosion. Our furnace uses hot water heat: Nice, even heating, without the pain and dust of blowers and ducts. However, it was constructed during the Nixon administration. Turning it off in the spring is kind of like a cliffhanger at the end of a TV season, when you're not sure if the show's going to be canceled.

I climbed on the roof to clean out a gutter, which drains water from the second floor, and eventually, onto my head. This requires me to stand on a rubber-coated flat portion of my roof. The last time I tried that when the roof was wet, I did an uncanny imitation of Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy's football, complete with "Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!"

All went boringly well, which I found very exciting.

To clean the other gutters I had to climb a ladder. As a firefighter of over three decades I have a great deal of experience climbing ladders. I've climbed ladders with fifty feet of fire hose draped over one shoulder, while carrying an ax in my other hand, with a forty pound air bank on my back, in zero visibility and zero degrees temperature. At no time on a fire scene have I ever had a mishap on a ladder. At home, while cleaning the gutters, I once had a twenty foot extension ladder fall on my ear.

The gutters are now clean. No life-threatening incidents ensued.

Honestly, I was beginning to despair of having anything to write about as I finished my fall prep work and went inside. There my wife asked me to get some frozen meat out of the garage freezer.

So I guess it's her fault.

My garage is presently junk central. I know what you're thinking, and no, yours isn't as bad as mine. It presently has in it three lawn mowers, due to past misadventures. There are also four giant cardboard boxes, the kind you put major kitchen appliances in, which we'd procured to build a fort for the grand-twins. There are several lawn-sized trash bags full of aluminum cans--we save them until we get over a hundred pounds, which gets us a better price at the recycling place. Out of room, I'd balanced one of them on my wheelbarrow. There are more tools than at Doc's Hardware, of the variety you'd usually find in a medieval torture chamber, and half of them are on the floor. There is 250 feet worth of extension cord and 50 feet of garden hose. For all that, I have never, ever fallen in my garage.

Until I had in my hand four packages of frozen meat, weighing perhaps fifteen pounds in all. For the record that included hamburger, sausage, chops, and steak.

I closed the freezer door, turned, and fell over.

It was pretty much as simple as that. Something got behind my feet, and that was that. On the way down my upper thighs hit a lawn mower, which made the rest of me go down that much harder. My head caved in a large wire animal cage which, I'm happy to point out, was unoccupied.

The good news is that the concrete floor broke the rest of my fall.

Then the huge cardboard box slowly tipped over directly toward me. It was full of bags of aluminum. Well, it was.

The whole thing was right out of a Home Alone movie.

So I lay there, taking inventory. Something (the mower's gas cap, I think) was jammed into my upper thigh. The bags had not broken open, so I hadn't suffocated in an avalanche of pop cans, and the bags were easily thrown aside. I was still holding three of the four frozen packages. The other problem was that, with my legs flung over the mower and my head jammed against the cage, I wasn't at all sure I would be able to get up.

I quickly formulated a plan. I would text to my wife: "Watson, come here; I want to see you". This was the first thing said by Bell on the first telephone call, and I figured she'd appreciate the humor. Too bad I'd left my phone inside.

So it took a little while to get off the floor, but eventually I did, and the rest is anticlimactic. Ibuprofen, muscle salve, literally rolling out of bed the next morning. If I had a buck for every time my back hurt, I'd buy a chiropracter. I still can't sit properly, as the gas cap seems to have actually bounced off my left upper femur.

The irony there is that I was assaulted by the same mower I wrote about a few months ago, the one I had so many problems with. Revenge?

Or just one final indignity?

That one.

This home "improvement" sent me into physical therapy.

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The actual theme of Fire Prevention Week for 2017 is Every Second Counts, Plan Two Ways Out. This is excellent advice, and you can find out more about it here: http://www.nfpa.org/public-education/campaigns/fire-prevention-week-2

However, I didn't plan two ways out, or even one way in, so I had nothing for Fire Prevention Week this year. Instead this is from the "Best of Slightly Off the Mark", which is a little silly because no newspaper is running Slightly Off the Mark at the moment. What isn't silly is fire prevention, which, you might be surprised to learn, is what Fire Prevention Week is about.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

The National Fire Prevention Association would like to point out that, if your smoke detector is not working, it won’t work.

Sure, it seems obvious. But it’s also obvious that if sprinkler systems aren’t installed they don’t put out fires, safety belts that don’t get used aren’t safe, and people who stay in Washington, D.C. turn into blithering idiots. And yet we defeat sprinkler laws, don’t belt up, and reelect blithering idiots, so sometimes the obvious needs saying.

This is why we have Fire Prevention Week, which is a week during which we try to stress preventing fires. Fire Prevention Week is always nearest October 9^th. That’s the historical date of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which took place in 1871, was indeed in Chicago, but really wasn’t all that great.

“Great” is a term used for fires that get so out of control that they get weeks named after them. The NFPA has devoted itself to keeping fires from turning great, and the best way to do that is to keep them from getting out of control. It’s counterintuitive, but they would not then be called “good”.

More important is to keep people from getting killed in a fire, which is the job of smoke alarms, which are just like smoke detectors except with fewer syllables. A working smoke alarm cuts the risk of dying in a fire in half. You don’t have to be Captain Obvious to see the value of that.

Here’s the fun part, though, and by “fun” I mean “tragic”: When talking smoke alarms, you always have to stick in the word “working”. In 23% of home fire deaths, there were smoke alarms—but they didn’t work. Why? Sometimes they were old or damaged, but usually the batteries were dead or missing.

“Honey, the batteries in the camera are dead.”

“I’ll just take some out of the smoke detector. Don’t worry, I’ll remember to put them back.”

Sure you will. Stop at the dollar store and get more for the camera, you schmuck.

But even if the batteries stay in, there’s no guarantee they’re working. Batteries go dead from time to time, and dead batteries lead to dead people.

Thus the idea of changing them twice a year, when Daylight Savings Time comes and goes. Whine all you want about springing forward and falling back (and you will … you will), but it’s a great reminder to put in a good set of working batteries. If the old ones are still good and you’re particularly cheap, put those in your digital camera. Sure, there’s a chance they’ll go dead and you’ll miss catching that UFO hovering over your house ... but the little green men are going to steal your camera and make all the photos blurry anyway, so why bother?

In between changes, you should test your smoke alarm batteries every month. This is about the same rate at which a major celebrity gets arrested. If you’re really paranoid you can check them every few days, at the rate a minor celebrity gets arrested.

If the smoke alarm is more than ten years old, replace it. If you can’t remember how old it is, replace it. If you can’t remember how old you are, have someone else replace it. And yes, if it doesn’t work when you test it, replace it. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

There was a time when experts recommended installing a smoke alarm on each level of the home and outside each sleeping area. They now say to install one inside each bedroom, in addition to the others. By my estimation that would mean five smoke alarms in my house. If you count every room my dog sleeps in, that would mean nine smoke alarms, or more if you count each spot as a separate bedroom.

That may seem like a lot, but I’ve long had a suspicion that my dog smokes when we’re asleep. Have you ever seen hairballs burn? Not pretty.

Can’t afford a smoke alarm? Yes you can. You, put down that beer. You, put down that cigarette. You, put down that game controller. And you, put down that—oh, man. Dude, close your curtains! I can’t unsee that.

Yes, you can scrape up the money to save your life. I did a quick internet search, and found smoke alarms for sale ranging from twenty to less than five dollars. I wouldn’t necessarily go for the cheapest ones, but you can cover your entire home for less than the cost of that 32 inch flat screen TV you want to mount in your bathroom.

On a related note, you do not need a flat screen TV in your bathroom. We’ll talk electrical safety in a future column.

(Oh, and remember that sales of our book, Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights: A Century or So With the Albion Fire Department, go to the fire department's operational fund.)

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By now most people have probably figured out that an eclipse is coming this Monday, as it tends to do here in America every so often. Still, I'm not sure everyone's completely clear on all the details, so I thought I'd answer some common questions:

Q: Why does everybody have to scream at everyone about everything these days?

No, I mean about the eclipse.

Q: What the heck is this thing? Is this some holdover from the 2012 Apocalypse?

This is a reasonable question, since we're still waiting for the 2012 Apocalypse. An eclipse simply happens when the shadow from one body passes over another body. For instance, one day I was lying on a beach when movie maker Michael Moore moved by. Moore blocked out the sun and ruined my tan, thus saving me from skin disease. (He refused to give me an autograph, just because I asked him when his totality would be over.)

That's Michael, in the middle. Not so very big after all.

Q: Huh?

Moore is rather portly, although I've been gaining on him. If you're a liberal, feel free to insert Trump's name. Oh, you mean "huh" about totality? That's the area of the Earth's surface that's completely covered by the Moon's shadow, usually only for a minute or so. During totality is the only time--and I mean ONLY time--when you can safely look directly at an eclipse without eye protection. Unfortunately, the area of totality is only about 70 miles wide. For example, in northeast Indiana the eclipse will cover about 86% of the sun, so go buy those glasses.

Q: What will happen if I look at it without protection?

Have you ever watched that episode of the TV show Supernatural, when the psychic gets to look at the true face of an angel? It's like that. Nothing left but smoking eye sockets. And yeah, that looks cool for a second, but only to everyone else.

It's perfectly safe to look at the eclipse during totality. But if even a sliver of sun is showing before or after, POOF! Seeing eye dog time. (Or, you could maintain some vision but have "just" permanent damage.)

Q: What's so important about this eclipse?

Well, it's cool, even more cool than smoking eye sockets. Also, it's rare in that, for the first time in almost a century, it will traverse the entire U.S. from coast to coast, over fourteen states. That's happened only 15 times in the last 150 years.

I can block my house from here!

There are between two and five eclipses every year, but a total solar eclipse only happens every 18 months or so. Not only that, but when they do happen it's often in a place where most people don't see it, like over an ocean, or the Pacific northwest. According to this mathematical guy from Belgian, any certain spot on Earth will see a total eclipse once every 375 years. That's an average, and it's math, so I'm just taking his word for it.

This is the first time in 38 years that a total eclipse was visible anywhere in the continuous U.S. For perspective, at the time Jimmy Carter was President, and gas was 86 cents a gallon. St. Louis, which is in the path this time, last saw totality in 1442, when gasoline was even cheaper. Chicago, which saw one in 1806 but will miss this one, will next see totality in 2205, when fueling your flying car might be very expensive.

Scientists have determined there are two small areas of the country--one in northeast Colorado, and one near Lewellen, Nebraska--that haven't seen a total eclipse in over a thousand years. Talk about bad luck.

Q: So I'm guaranteed to get a good show?

Oh, heck no. See above joke about the Pacific northwest; the 1979 total eclipse over that area was largely unseen due to clouds and rain.

This isn't a Hollywood movie: Any number of things could spoil it, from bad weather to having Michael Moore stand in front of you. But I wouldn't sweat Michael (can I call him Michael?) who I've heard is looking after his health much better these days. No, the big question will be whether weather cooperates. My wife and I are heading into the path of totality, and I can pretty much guarantee a day-long driving rain, or possibly a hurricane, will hit central Missouri at about that time.

What I probably won't see

Q: What effects can we expect?

Fire and brimstone, dogs and cats sleeping together, total chaos, new super powers, pretty much the worst parts of the Bible. Wait, that was in the movies. Well, it'll get dark, 'cause--no sun. In the path of totality you'll see stars (or clouds), and you'll also be in for a rare treat of seeing the sun's atmosphere with the naked eye. One cool thing I noticed during a partial eclipse was that sunlight passing through the trees cast thousands of little crescent shaped shadows.

Some animals might be fooled into thinking it's twilight. In fact, eclipses have been known to thin out the local vampire population.

Geeks like me will geek out. People who don't understand, or don't care about, the difference between reality and Hollywood special effects might be disappointed.

Q: What are the greatest dangers?

As with many things in our modern society, the greatest danger might be driving. Officials expect major traffic jams as millions of people try to get into the path of totality. For those who don't make it on time or aren't expecting it, the danger is that they'll be driving down the road, trying to stare at the eclipse, only to ram someone who pulled over along the side of the road to watch the eclipse. Don't do either of those.

Otherwise, there's that smoking eye socket thing. Interestingly, during partial eclipses when the brightness doesn't seem too bad, infrared waves from the sun can still cause damage by overheating the eye, in a boiling egg kind of a way. Disturbed yet? Me, too.

Enjoy these eclipses while you can: The Moon's orbit is slowly getting larger, so the time will come when it will be too far away to completely cover the sun, meaning the end of total eclipses. Scientists predict this will happen in less than 600 million years, so go look while you still can.

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SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK
Weathering Indiana Festivals

In one of my books I included a photo of the Onion Days Festival, in Wolf Lake, Indiana. Never mind that it’s called Onion Days—that’s another story—but the photo was taken in the early 1900s, over a century ago.

Hey, I wrote the book; I never said I took the picture.

There are also photos in Albion of what would one day become the Chain O’ Lakes Festival. Those pictures were taken some fifty or sixty years before there was a Chain O’ Lakes State Park … so if the street fair had been called that at the time it would be some pretty amazing precognition.

( While researching local history I was shown many photos of fairs, parades, and other gatherings from back a century or so: A late 1800s fair in downtown Kendallville, a 1914 wedding in the middle of Albion’s main intersection … to this day we’re still doing a lot of those same outdoor gatherings. (I assume they shut down traffic for that wedding, but maybe they had to use a team of wild horses to drag the groom in.) )

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SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

(Note: This was originally written on February 7^th and then misplaced, which isn’t the first time. It was the beginning of what was overall a nice February—for Indiana. You all know how things changed in March.)

Ah, spring.

Or, possibly, &$@# spring!

That’s the way it is, with springtime in Indiana. It’s feast or famine, a saying that goes well for farmers wondering if they’ll be able to get into their fields early, or ever.

I was reminded of spring just a few days after that stupid groundhog predicted six more weeks of winter, a prediction that’s essentially meaningless in Indiana. There are always six more weeks of winter—we just don’t know when. It could start next week. It could start next month. (Note: It did.) If you’re having a mild winter, like we had this year, a backlash is almost guaranteed. I’m worried about whether spring is going to be full of terms like “polar vortex”, “late winter snowstorm”, and “Is that groundhog still alive? Get my gun”.

On this particular day my wife and I got out of the car while shopping and simultaneously cocked our heads, which come to think of it probably looked pretty funny.

“Is that a bird?” I asked.

“That is a bird.”

“But that’s not a bird we usually hear in February.”

“No, it’s a spring bird.”

It was indeed a spring bird, one that was soon to be very, very unpleasantly surprised. On that particular day, the outdoor temperature hit the mid-forties. Two nights before it dipped into the teens. Two days later it hit sixty and we had thunderstorms, followed a few days after that by snow.

A typical March in Indiana, the only strange thing being that we heard the bird in early February. As you read this is should now be March, which means (if you live in the Midwest) you’re dressing in layers to combat both frostbite and heat stroke, possibly on the same day. But for February, that weather was actually pretty good.

February is usually easy to forecast. You have two choices: It’s cold and it’s going to snow, or it’s not going to snow but even colder. (Note: I said usually.) But spring—spring is different. Here’s a typical Midwest meteorologist in, say, mid-March:

“Looks like a blizzard headed our way, folks—oh, wait. The radar just updated, and the blizzard has been sucked up by a tornado! I think we’re going to see some serious snow drifts.”

We have something called March Madness, which most people think is about basketball playoffs. But in Indiana, March Madness translates to ice season: that time of the year when sleet and freezing rain fall as often as snow.

“Aren’t those icicles on the electric lines pretty—oh, the power’s out again.”

Occasionally we’ll have a dry spring, and instead of frozen precipitation you can see columns of smoke in every direction, often accompanied by sirens. This is called grass fire season, and generally comes just after March Madness. People realize they can finally walk outside without fifty pounds of outer clothing, and their first thought turns to the mess their lawns have become over winter.

“What shall we do with all these branches, leaves, weeds, and trash? Oh, I know—we’ll burn them! The ground is still wet; what could possibly go wrong?”

Pro tip: All that dead plant life around your fire is plenty dry, fella. The ground being wet simply means fire trucks can’t go off road to extinguish that wildland fire you just started. And then firefighters end up out there, ironically, trying to beat the heat with their own fifty pounds of outer clothing.

But it’s spring, so who knows? I’ve helped fight a few grass fires that I had to walk around snow drifts to reach. I’ve gone out on tornado watches in March. (Terrible idea, by the way—the basement’s way calmer.) I’ve shoveled snow in May. And all the while those poor, confused birds are flying around up there, trying to figure out whether they should be heading north or south.

They’d better decide fast, because if they head west they’ll run into a blizzard, and if they fly for the East Coast they’ll run into an even bigger blizzard.

So yeah, I’m worried about that bird. What is he living on, anyway? If he pecks the frozen ground for worms he’ll break his beak. The first bugs don’t come out until … well, about now, if you include mosquitoes.

In fact, it’s not uncommon in Indiana for the big piles of plowed snow to still be melting off in July. Sometimes, on the first really warm days, you can see kids skiing down snow mountains at Wal-Mart, then surfing on across the parking lot.

It’s why I often call Indiana the greatest place in the world, except during winter. Luckily, surviving winter is like surviving pain: Once it’s over, you tend to forget how bad it is. By the end of May you can put your snow shovel away (you might want to keep the gloves and wool hat out, just in case), and enjoy the outdoors, until it gets hot.

Maybe the hot is why we’re not all living in Florida.

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SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

Cheating on Indiana

I’ve had the strangest feeling lately that I’m cheating on Indiana.

As a writer, I mean—get out of the gutter. You see, my new novel is about to be published, and it’s set in Michigan. There’s nothing wrong with that. Lots of authors do this thing called using your imagination, in which their stories are set somewhere other than where they live. One of the best authors I know routinely sets her stories in California, even though she lives in Missouri. One of my favorite authors, L. Frank Baum, set most of his stories in places that don’t even exist.

But up until now, all my published works have been set in Indiana.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. In fact, when I first started writing, none of my stories were set in Indiana. When you’re a teenager—at least, an introverted, emo teenager like I was—all you care about is getting out. Half my stories were set in space. Half were set on a fictional fire department, somewhere generally to the west. The other half either took place in other areas of this planet, or started here and then journeyed away.

(What, that’s three halves? That’s why I took up writing: I suck at math.)

But things happen and, long story short, I stayed in Indiana. Why? Because it’s an awesome place, when it’s not winter. I also moved from science fiction and action to romantic comedy—see above about things happening.

Years ago I had a literary agent for a time, and of the three novels he looked at he thought the first one I wrote, Radio Red, was the best. It was set in an area of northwest Lower Michigan where my family vacationed at the time. Why? Because my in-laws had a cottage there, and I had … debt.

Michigan is almost as beautiful as Indiana, but even colder.

For whatever reason, Radio Red never sold. Maybe editors don’t like red—they’re always complaining about red ink. Instead the second one I wrote, Storm Chaser, sold first. It’s not only set in Indiana, but in my home county of Noble. I didn’t have to research a setting; there’s a fine line between brilliance and laziness.

I told my publisher that I was writing some short stories to help promote Storm Chaser. Showing awesome overconfidence in my ability to make them money, they said, “Great! Put them together, we’ll publish a collection.” All but two of the stories in Storm Chaser Shorts are set in Indiana.

Are you detecting a pattern? You should, because along came The No-Campfire Girls. Although inspired by a Missouri Girl Scout Camp, I set it in southern Indiana. Why? Because I stole some of the characters from another book of mine, an unpublished mystery set in, yes, southern Indiana. The rest of the characters I stole from Storm Chaser. Is it stealing when it’s from yourself? Or just another case of brilliant laziness? I’ve coined a new term.

The Storm Chaser sequel, (hey, it works for Hollywood) is The Notorious Ian Grant. Now, it’s not essential that a sequel be set in the same place as the original. But except for the main character, I didn’t have to invent new people or locations. Creating Ian Grant was exhausting all by itself; in Storm Chaser he’s mentioned in exactly one line, in which his sister calls him an “ingrate”. Great introduction, sis.

My first entry into non-fiction, Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights, can be described entirely by its subtitle: A Century or So With the Albion Fire Department. Granted, there are more than two dozen Albions in the United States; but come on—pay attention to the theme, here.

My unpublished “Slightly Off the Mark” columns were collected into the imaginatively named Slightly Off the Mark: The Unpublished Columns. See what I did, there? You can argue this one, but many of the columns are about Indiana, and by gosh they were all written in Indiana by an Indianian, so there.

(Indianian? No wonder we call ourselves Hoosiers.)

After that was what I call my picture book: Images of America: Albion and Noble County. Kidding, I never called it that, but it’s historical images and fun stuff about Albion and Noble County. Which are in Indiana. Any questions? I didn’t think so.

Last year we released Hoosier Hysterical: How the West Became the Midwest Without Moving At All, and if I have to explain how that’s about Indiana … well, I just don’t.

(I also had a short story in Strange Portals and a humor piece in My Funny Valentine. I usually don’t count them as my wholly published work, but in this case what the heck—they’re both set in Indiana.)

So that’s … how many is that? Jeez, the other day I told someone I’m about to get my tenth book published, but if you don’t count the parenthesis above, Radio Red will only be my ninth. It gives me the warm and fuzzies, to say “only” nine. I’m on track to beat Isaac Asimov’s publishing record! Only 500 more books to go.

And now … well, Radio Red, like the Storm Chaser series, is set in a real place; but that place happens to be in Michigan. It’s been bought by Torrid Books, and has an official release date on March 7, and …

And I’m cheating on Indiana.

But I feel Hoosiers will forgive me. And if they don’t … well, then I can only imagine what they’ll think of my first spaceship story.

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There’s No Cure for Chicago Driving

This first appeared in the 4County Mall, in print and online:

http://www.4countymall.com/single-post/2016/09/10/No-Cure-for-Chicago-Driving

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

I thought I’d seen bad traffic. I thought I’d seen crazy drivers.

Then I went to Chicago.

I’m a small town boy. When I was younger, my idea of heavy traffic was Fort Wayne, which is about half an hour from my home. With a population of 250,000, Fort Wayne is the second largest city in Indiana, which isn’t saying much—but the fact that most of Indiana is not city is one of the things I like about it.

Years ago I drove to Atlanta, Georgia, and got a new definition of heavy traffic. We arrived during morning rush hour, an ironic term considering I could have walked over the jammed-up cars without ever touching the ground—and gotten there faster.

About ten years later, I had the occasion to drive U-Haul’s largest truck model through New York City, while towing a car on a trailer. It was two months after 9/11/01. Naturally, I got waved to the curb the police, who at that point were looking over every rental truck that came along.

The irony, though, is that the proximity to 9/11 actually made the experience easier. The cops were friendly, and other drivers gave us space—whether out of that temporary sense of brotherhood, or the fear that I might be carrying a load of ammonium nitrate, I couldn’t say.

Then there’s Indianapolis.

In all fairness, Indianapolis is the 14^th largest city in the U.S., and the second largest in the Midwest, so there’s bound to be traffic. But it’s also the Crossroads of America: Indiana has more interstate highway than any other state, and more converge on the capital than any other city. Whole families have been known to drive onto the 465 beltway, and never be seen again.

I used to think that was the worst this side of Los Angeles, a city I have no intention of every driving in.

But Indy’s only the second largest city in the Midwest. Then there’s Chicago.

My wife wanted to go see The Cure, which is an English rock band, or post-punk, or new wave, or possibly gothic rock. (I’m post-pun, myself.) It’s not normally my kind of music, but I like them okay … or at least I did, until they made me come to Chicago.

By the time we got to the concert venue in the shadow of downtown, I was clenched in a fetal position in my seat, eyes squeezed shut, whimpering and clutching at the dash. This was an especially bad thing because I was the driver.

But I don’t want you to think Chicago drivers are bad. That’s what I thought at first, until therapy for my PTSD. After several flashbacks, I realized the problem isn’t that they’re bad—it’s that they’re very, very good. Like, NASCAR good. It’s the only way to survive.

Yes, there are cars there; the camera couldn't capture anything going at that speed.

You see, Chicago traffic is the same bumper to bumper gridlock I found in Atlanta, except they don’t sit there unmoving—they continue driving as if they’re the only ones on the highway. Go watch a NASCAR race right after the start, before the first ten or twelve cars have crashed, when they’re all still jammed up and fighting for position. I’ll wait.

Yeah, it’s like that.

I saw drivers who knew their off ramp was coming, so they dove all the way over into the left lane to get ahead of other cars, then swerved across all three lanes of traffic, including that semi in the center lane that was blocking their view of anything in the right lane, and … right onto the off ramp, easy as a Blue Angels jet flight.

If someone ahead is going 60 and they’re going 90—they just keep on going. The guy in front will speed up, or get out of the way … or he won’t. Whatever. Orange cones aren’t a warning, they’re a challenge. There are signs that say: “Accident reporting lane ahead: If you get into a crash, for God’s sake, don’t stop at the scene.”

Where I come from, everyone wants a car. We passed Chicago’s train depots, where people without cars were relaxing in the knowledge that an hour waiting for a train beats two hours drinking yourself down from the edge after the evening drive home.

When the concert let out, we stayed in the auditorium until the only people left were sweeping up or throwing up. Then we went to the parking lot and sat in our car, shaking quietly, until the security guy pointed out we were the only people left and could he please go home now? He took the train. It was 1:30 a.m. when we finally took to the streets.

"Maybe we'll get lucky, and the zombie apocalypse will strike before we have to drive."

The traffic was exactly the same. It might as well have been 5 p.m. on a Friday.

We had to make a left turn to reach our off ramp, but there was a delay ahead and, if we went through the light, we’d end up stuck in the middle of the intersection. So we waited like we were supposed to, and a car load of laughing Chicagoans passed us on the right, cut off the oncoming traffic, and stopped in the middle of the intersection. Then a taxi passed them on the right, and they both stayed there, blocking the cars that had the green light, until eventually they could move on.

We almost abandoned the car right then and there. A few day’s walk home? Good exercise. But we eventually made it out of that insane city racetrack, vowing never to come back again even if Robert Smith personally invites us to play drums for The Cure.

And why did we decide to man up, brave the insanity, and drive on instead of walking?

Well, what are the chances of a pedestrian making it out alive?

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Holy cow, I just got notice of my deadline for the September addition of 4County Mall! The paper doesn’t publish in July and August, so it’s easy to get out of practice.

It’s been a big adjustment for me, going from writing a weekly column to a monthly one, even without the summer break. Deadlines can be a good thing. I wonder if I shouldn’t start writing humor again, say twice a month, on my own regular deadline? Then I could either have a few columns saved back in case of illness or other delay, or put the extra material into another Slightly Off the Mark book.

Or I could just dedicate myself to writing another thousand words of fiction on a weekly schedule. What would you do?

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Slightly Off the Mark

Hopefully the final draft's not too far Off the Mark

Juggling Book Projects Can Give You a Headache

Still Slightly Off the Mark, the Sequel Progresses ... and a review

Chapter length, and why it matters. Or doesn't.

Mixing Blog Winners In a Coffee Cup

Nice Winters, and Other Strange Concepts

So Many Photos, So Little time

Prediction: Politics Still Stinks

How The First World War Led To American Independence

Poetry Redux: I tackle poetry ... and get slammed

When Your Car Is Smarter Than You

T'was the Poem Before Christmas

Nice Fall, Have a Good Trip

Great Fires Aren't Good

Eclipse: It's Not Just a Twilight Novel

Weathering Indiana Festivals

Indiana Winters, or: Why Aren't We Living in Florida?

Cheating On Indiana

No Cure for Chicago Driving

Getting Back Off the Mark

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