Back then, any woman with white hair was an auntie, but no one could tell me how we were related. My dad said she came from my mom’s side, and my mom said she came from my dad’s. My parents rarely agreed about anything.
—-Renée Jessica Tan, Auntie Cheeks
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas
Read it here:
from Flash Fiction Online
“I am so glad you were able to come, Bertie,” she said. “The air will do you so much good. Far better for you than spending your time in stuffy London night clubs.”
“Oh, ah!” I said.
“You will meet some pleasant people, too. I want to introduce you to a Miss Hemmingway and her brother, who have become great friends of mine. I am sure you will like Miss Hemmingway. A nice, quiet, girl, so different from so many of the bold girls one meets in London nowadays. Her brother is curate at Chipley-in-the-Glen in Dorsetshire. He tells me they are connected with the Kent Hemmingways. A very good family. She is a charming girl.”
I had a grim foreboding of an awful doom. All this boosting was so unlike Aunt Agatha, who normally is one of the most celebrated right and left hand knockers in London Society. I felt a clammy suspicion. And by Jove, I was right.
“Aline Hemmingway,” said Aunt Agatha, “is just the girl I should like to see you marry, Bertie. You ought to be thinking of getting married. Marriage might make something of you. And I could not wish you a better wife than dear Aline. She would be such a good influence in your life.”
“Here, I say!” I said, chilled to the marrow.
—-P. G. Wodehouse, Aunt Agatha Makes a Bloomer
Crystal Beach, Texas
These are tough times – in addition to the usual hell we all live in there is the lockdown (although I still get to [have to] go to work every day) and the political situation (no matter what side you are on there is the unavoidable feeling that everything is coming apart at the seams) to deal with. Yesterday, it was getting to be too much for me.
Then I stumbled across an article from the BBC about a writer that “wrote the most perfect sentences” and I could not help but take a look. It was referring to P. G. Wodehouse – a very famous author that I had stumbled across before. Decades and decades ago I had read how crackerjack Wodehouse was, specifically the stories around the butler, Jeeves. This was long enough ago that the internet existed but did not have the breadth of content that it does now. I took a look at a couple of Wodehouse tomes at the local library.
And was not impressed. I was very disappointed. It was so twee, so British, so dry… I read here and there and put it up. I never returned to the author (and the butler) – there are so many other books out there (and so little time).
Today, of course, the internet has vomited itself out across the vast virtual wasteland and everything you could imagine (and so so much that you could never have imagined, not in a million years) is out there in the ether. Specifically, there is Project Gutenberg.
And Project Gutenberg has a healthy selection of out-of-copyright Wodehouse – quite a bit of which contains the magic name “Jeeves.” I downloaded a promising-looking text file, manipulated it (removed line breaks, changed the font to Arial 12) to make it readable and saved it as a PDF. I started in, not expecting much.
What the hell was I thinking all that time ago? This shit is hilarious. A smile spread across my face as I read story after story. It erased my Covid-19 funk, chased the riot-stained clouds away, and I was happy again. Now, I keep that PDF (or others) with me all the time and when I feel the “Mean Reds” coming on I pull it up and read a few pages. Then I smile.
I guess I was simply turned off by the British upper-crust veneer and setting. But there is so much more. The point-of-view character (I can’t call him the hero – maybe not even the protagonist) is young, rich, aristocratic, lazy, and a total idiot. The only bit of wisdom knocking around in his empty skull is that his butler Jeeves is the only thing that allows him to stumble through life halfway successfully. He knows it and so does Jeeves. And Jeeves is a genius. Jeeves knows everybody and everything and exactly what he is doing at every minute of every day.
The stories are all sort of the same: Bertie gets in some awful jam because of his stupidity, sloth, and cowardice until, when all hope is lost, Jeeves swoops in, sets things right, and then you realize the butler had it all under control all along.
Fun. But the best part is the language. Wodehouse is the master if the sardonic quip, the convoluted insult, the silly simile, the dry observation and, especially the unexpected metaphor. It is comic poetry. It really is.
Wodehouse’s writing – and especially the Jeeves stories – are all over the web. The stories are gathered together in several collections available on Project Gutenberg. The first one I downloaded was called The Inimitable Jeeves.
One story I particularly enjoyed was a struggle Bertie had with his horrible Aunt Agatha on a trip to France. She is trying to get him married and he is trying to slither away. It was published in a couple of different versions in a couple of different magazines of the day.
Read my favorite version here:
P.S. One thing about the story that I found odd was the moniker of the con man “Soapy Sid.” I was… not really watching… but I had something or another on the television and it spoke to me about a famous con man from the Old West named “Soapy Smith.” He was named that because he had a con game in Colorado involving money allegedly hidden in bars of soap.
He died a bit before the story and was very well known in his day – I imagine he is the inspiration for that strange name.
Actually, she is beheaded, her body thrown from the car and decapitated with such force that the head sails through the air and lands in a pile of pumpkins spilled out onto the road.
—-Francine Prose, Pumpkins
Reflecting Pool, City Hall, Dallas, Texas
In surfing around the internet and trying to learn/get inspiration on some flash fiction – I keep reading about the story Pumpkins, by Francine Prose. No wonder. It is crackerjack.
Read it here (Googledocs PDF):
Alvin York was a man that knew what he liked and what he liked was roasted potatoes.
—-Bill Chance, Tubers
No Fried Egg Today
by Bill Chance
Alvin York was a man that knew what he liked and what he liked was roasted potatoes. He had meticulously arranged his schedule so that he had a half-hour between the time the bus arrived at the station and the time the train left for his office in the city. He would buy a cardboard container of tiny round roasted taters from a squat man in a beret that had a cart next to the newsstand. He would also pick up that day’s newspaper from the stand and then read the editorial and sports pages while he ate his potatoes.
They were small and immature, the kind his mother had always referred to as new. Each one was bite-sized, tender, and sweet – a perfect morning snack. They were warm, but not so hot that you couldn’t pick them up with your fingers and eat them with ease.
The container was a sort of flat-bottomed cone, an ingenious folded design that the man in the beret would slide from a stack on top of his cart, open the lid, and then silently scoop out a serving of steaming spuds. Alvin even had a favorite table and chair, near the newsstand and facing the train platform, with the big art Deco clock in view also, so he could relax without fear of missing his ride. Some mornings, somebody else would be sitting at his table and that would put a frown on Alvin’s face, a frown slightly deeper than usual, as he was forced to search around for a different, inferior, perch.
Today, the station was very busy and crowded. Alvin worried about finding a proper spot. But as he stood outside the newsstand, next to the cart and the man with a beret, with his briefcase in one hand, his brand new newspaper under his arm, and his container of potatoes in the other, he saw a stranger rise from his favorite table and stride toward the platform.
“My lucky day,” Alvin said to himself as he moved in quickly, before anyone else could snag his seat.
The table was already covered in newspapers; obviously the previous sitter was an irresponsible litterer. Alvin sighed as he placed his food container on the table and arranged the bulky folded pages of newsprint in some sort of order, extracting his favorite sections in the battle.
When he finally brought the sports section below his eye level, Alvin jumped a bit when he saw that another man was occupying the chair opposite him… at his own table. He was bothered by the nerve of this person, obviously no more than another working commuter like himself, in his damp trench coat and briefcase, and his audacity at taking the chair without asking. There was no understanding the coarse effrontery of the population in these new days. Taking a seat without asking permission was a coarse and crude action of great brass, no matter how crowded the station or how occupied Alvin was arranging his paper.
Looking at the man, Alvin saw his container of roasted potatoes in the center of the table and that helped him feel a little better. He eagerly reached out and snatched a savory sphere off the top of the pile and popped it into his mouth.
He was surprised to see the man opposite not ignoring him as he ate and read, but staring at him with narrowed eyes – it was as if he took the potato eating as a personal affront. The man seemed suddenly silently angry. The man continued to stare at Alvin as he slowly reached out himself and ate one of the potatoes.
Alvin felt a strong sudden wave of heat course across his face. He was shocked, what kind of man steals another’s food? Alvin was not a greedy man, he considered himself benevolent and unselfish – but this was beyond the pale. Someone’s property is sacred, especially his food, especially his food during his morning commute. He did not know what to do. Looking at the other man’s eyes, he saw raw emotion but couldn’t really understand… was the man angry? But why should he be angry at Alvin? It was he who was the thief.
Should he say something? But what? His mind a buzzing hive Alvin decided against speaking up, he didn’t want to start a scene and had no idea how the stranger would react to such a provocation. There was really only one possible course of action.
Alvin ate another potato.
He stared at the man, wondering what he would do next. His eyes narrowed even further, his mouth set in a tense rictus, the skin on his face tight. Alvin gasped as the man reached out again for a potato and then seemed to have to use a great deal of willpower to relax his set jaw enough to get the food in past his teeth.
This continued, each man staring at the other, silent anger increasing, as they worked their way back and forth through the entire order of potatoes.
Finally, the man snatched the last one out, and with a wordless but audible irate grunt yanked the empty cardboard up and crumpled it in his fist. He stood quickly, spun on his heels, and marched stiffly to the nearest exit, disappearing into the street. He threw the crumpled container in a trash can as he left.
“Well I never!” Alvin finally shouted the moment he was sure the man was out of earshot. “The nerve! What is this world coming to?”
Looking up at the clock he saw it was only a few minutes until his train left. Still upset, he stood on shaking legs as he gathered the pile of newspapers together off the top of the table, arranging them so he could dump them in the recycle bin on the way to the train.
“Never was able to read my paper,” he whined out loud to nobody in particular, “My morning break ruined!”
Then, as he picked up the last section of newspaper, he looked down at the now bare table to see his container of potatoes, still resting where he had left it before sifting through the double set of newspapers. He had lost track. He must have covered them with the unused pile of newspaper. The container of potatoes that he had been eating had belonged to the other man.
Later that afternoon, as he was preparing for the trip home, he called his wife.
“I was going to heat up some chicken,” she said.
“Dear, I was thinking, why don’t we go out to that new Italian place down the block? I know you’ve wanted to try it out.”
“On a Wednesday?” his wife asked. She sounded incredulous.
“What the hell,” he said. “Let’s live a little.”
His wife was even more surprised when Alvin ordered a bottle of wine to go with the meal. They each had a glass and, over their salads Alvin spoke.
“I have a story to tell you, dear. It’s a good one.”
And he told her about the stranger and the potatoes. He had been thinking about it all day and looking forward to getting it off of his chest. He laughed at the end, and his wife let out a little chuckle, but then she suddenly looked thoughtful.
“What’s the matter?” Alvin asked.
“Well, I was thinking?”
“About what?”
“Right now, in another part of town somewhere, I’ll bet that man is telling the same story to his wife -the story about a stranger eating his potatoes.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“But it will be a different… he doesn’t know. He thinks you were stealing his potatoes. His story isn’t funny; I imagine he was terrified.”
“Yes, I guess he was.”
The old man felt at home in the gloaming. He leaned close to the window, the fresh air teasing his nose and the whiskers of his long, white beard. All day he felt the oppression of his old body, a weathered hull tired of the ocean’s endless lapping.
—-Jared Graham, The City of Things Finished
Sailboats on White Rock Lake, Dallas, TX
Read it here:
from The Citron Review
A rumor powerful and gentle, a rumor vast and faint; the rumor of trembling leaves, of stirring boughs, ran through the tangled depths of the forests, ran over the starry smoothness of the lagoon, and the water between the piles lapped the slimy timber once with a sudden splash. A breath of warm air touched the two men’s faces and passed on with a mournful sound – a breath loud and short like an uneasy sigh of the dreaming earth.
—- Joseph Conrad, The Lagoon
The land of lakes, volcanoes, and sun. A painting I bought on my last trip to Nicaragua.
I re-read The Secret Sharer the other night (haven’t we all read that in school?) and now I’m thinking of Nostromo – a novel I started once (inspired by the ship in the original Alien) but never finished. I want to finish it now.
So we have a Joseph Conrad short story, The Lagoon, about death and love and courage… and the jungle.
Read it here:
From East of the Web
The landlord was resigned and philosophical, but corrected him: ‘They were not sausages. They were salamis.’
—- Lydia Davis, A Story of Stolen Salamis
Meat Case – Italian Sausage and more
Lydia Davis is a well-known and acknowledged master of writing short short fiction. She was writing these before Flash Fiction even existed.
Today we have five of her works, all crackerjack – the first one is a tale of stolen salamis. Read them all and learn.
Read it here:
From Five Dials
His misery is immense, beyond all bounds. If Iona’s heart were to burst and his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole world, it seems, but yet it is not seen. It has found a hiding-place in such an insignificant shell that one would not have found it with a candle by daylight. . . .
—–Anton Chekhov, Misery
Iron Horse, by Tom Askman
Plano, Texas
Read it here:
“She’s not my wife,” the man said, “She’s my aunt, and she likes you.”
—–Bill Chance, random file from my Alphasmart Neo
My Not-A-Purse. What is strange is that I found this image floating around on the internet – I don’t know where it originally came from. But if you look, there is an Alphasmart Neo sticking up in the bag. I can’t believe other people out there have Neos in their bags, exactly like mine.
Over the decades I have been on a quest for the perfect, distraction-free, portable writing machine.
I have experimented with netbooks, phones with bluetooth keyboards and tablets with wired keyboards (which actually works well – but not in the sun).
My Toshiba Netbook – rode my bike to a coffee shop.
Bluetooth Keyboard and my phone.
My android tablet and portable keyboard, I stopped my bike ride on the Bridge Park over the Trinity River to get some writing done.
My favorite (but long obsolete) solution, however, has always been the Alphasmart. It’s a portable keyboard, powered by double A batteries (which last years) with a tiny four line display. You type text into it and it keeps the text. To export, you USB the thing to your regular computer, hit SEND, and it retypes your text back into whatever program you want. Amazing and simple.
I used an Alphasmart 3000 for a couple years. I wasn’t happy with it – the keyboard was clunky and hard to type fast on. I replaced it with an upgraded version that had an excellent keyboard – the Neo – which was really good. I still have it – I lost one key somewhere, but it isn’t an important one. I need to dig that thing out and start carrying it again.
The medium used to generate words (handwriting, Alphasmart, tablet, phone laptop, desktop, digital or tape recorder, manual typewriter, Dragon naturally speaking) has a huge influence on how I write. I think I’m going to dig out the Alphasmart Neo and carry it again. Since you can only see four short lines (a tiny bit of text) at any one time, it helps to kill off your internal editor – you just move on. It does tend to produce small bits of jarring snippets of text, however. These, hopefully, can be expanded and re-used later.
I found some files on my computer from many years ago labled “AS1, AS2, AS3…” and so one. These were collections of stuff I had written on the Alphasmart Neo up to a decade ago.
Here’s one:
I was about to leave a run-down roadhouse in Bumfucker, Arkansas, when I offered two bottles of Budweiser to a local couple I had just met.
“One for you and one for your wife.”
“She’s not my wife,” the man said, “She’s my aunt, and she likes you.”
Later I was lying on a noisy mattress in the back of her trailer, thinking, there are other people in this room. But they were only cats.
I’m actually sort of excited about bringing my Alphasmart Neo back from the dead. If you want one – they are readily available used for 35 bucks or so from Ebay.
We left the shop; I gathered my hair in a bun. While it was just windy outside, the storm of thoughts in my mind was predesignating shocking guilt and shame. I swore to myself: ‘I will never let this happen again’.
—–Jevgenija Zukova, In A Shop
Shopping for vegetables, trying out samples.
There is that difficulty in deciding who is going to pick up the check, navigating the emotional ramifications in a cacophony of shopping noises. This was always a challenge – now, wearing a mask, with nobody within six feet – a nightmare.
Read it here:
Bill Chance 