Musings Of A New Southern Man

I am in one of those necessary lulls in the development of a novel, that time when I give copies of my precious work to beta readers and wait for responses. My current major project is called The Old Man From Denmark , and I have eight friends reading the first draft. It is hard for those who have never ventured into preparing a work of literature to comprehend the value of these readers. I will try to put it into perspective. I chose these readers for their various strengths. One is an editor of extreme skill who can catch minuscule mistakes that most people would overlook. One is a younger person with a strong interest in literature, and his interests run toward works that are off the beaten path and are more popular for younger readers. Another has a great skill of seeing the larger picture of what I am trying to achieve, but has a good eye for details that don't quite fit or need refinement. Four of them are women with varying interests and levels of expertise. One is a membe...

I don't like to be a public speaker, but my job this week was easy. I got to tell people who knew my father as a great guy stories about how great he was. I decided to tell about character traits that were obvious in Eldon Metteer's life, and where I believe he gained those attributes. I started in his birthplace, Antelope, Oregon. Yes, Antelope is as small as it sounds. Let your mind work as you hear these facts. Antelope is on the dry side of Oregon, but there is adequate grass for a few cattle ranches and many more sheep ranches. It is about ten miles from a wide spot in the road called Bakeoven, but you have to travel a long way to find another town of even moderate size. The town has dirt streets that become mud streets when it rains. There are only a few hundred people who live there. The commerce is done mainly by people who cater to the ranchers, or provide goods for those heading east to Oregon's gold country. It is the kind of place that has a kid named Cabbage ...

I caught my first glimpse of my old hometown of The Dalles, Oregon, while part of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was on the radio. I just crested the hill on the road from Dufur, and there like a jumbled collection of building blocks was the town. That might seem to be an incongruous combination to some, but it makes sense to me. The Dalles and its environs, complete with combines going through wheat fields as I drove by, deserves a classical introduction. I believe Ludwig would understand. This was more than a visit for old times' sake. I was staying with old friend Steve Garrett and his wife. Steve and I go back to our youth baseball days. Steve was a pitcher and I was the catcher on the Commercial Babe Ruth team. Yes, a few years have gone by, but a friendship endures. It helps that both of us have literary aspirations. But my big hopes for the visit centered on my experiences at a local pizza parlor. I had a reading in a back room at Spooky's. It was lined up by a part ...

Hey, it was tough for me to leave Eugene. It has been my hometown for more years than any other place I've lived. There are great memories, both pleasant and bitter, from my time there. I was a college student there, living a student's life. I was a journalist for 16 years at the Register-Guard, and I worked my butt off to give readers a well-edited, timely edition when they picked up their newspapers in the morning. The digital push was just beginning, so my experience with that was zero. There were things that softened the blow. I made the drive up the McKenzie River, which is one of the gorgeous trips in America. I went over the pass by Hoodoo and dropped down into Sisters, which is a lovely Western-themed town. Well, it's lovely when the tourists aren't clogging the streets, which was the case as I passed through. I then showed up in Bend, which was my family's hometown from 1981-85. It was a jewel back then, and it has grown and become even more alluring. The...