Scars

 Diane sent me these notes. She says "It took a quarantine to get me to the bottom of my to-do pile." And "Dave, I found some notes I took at the Eagan Church of Christ Retreat back in 2016.  Thought you would like to read them, because they are about you.  :)"

Here they are:

Mosaic Memoirs (about Dave May’s scars)

Dave has a scar on his left hand between his thumb and pointer finger.  I asked him about it in 2016 and this is what he told me.

“I was in the Marine Core Officer Training School.  It was in Quantico and I was about 22 years old.  We were doing war games.  I got in a hand-to-hand situation with a guy from the other team. And like an idiot, I was trying to take his rifle away from him and grabbed the wrong end.  He fired it.  It was a blank.”

As for the scar on his left inside wrist, he told me the following story.

“I was six or seven.  I had a glass in my hand and I fell.  I dropped the glass and Cecil got in trouble for that.  That’s what I remember about that.”

“You wanna hear about the scar on my butt?”

“I think I was younger than (pause) ten?  Joan Lyon was my best friend.  She had long red hair and we rode our bicycles around together.  There was a park south of Memphis with an elevated railroad track at the top of the hill.  We slid down the hill on our butts and when I got to the bottom of the hill I realized there was a tear in the jeans and my butt.”

Recorded by Diane May 

Cascade River

We have been going camping up north for twenty-seven years! Alex was a baby. We have not missed a year yet, though last year we rented a cabin. There are far too many great stories to tell them all here. Maybe there’s a book in there somewhere.

For most of those years Cascade River State Park was the destination. As time went on, I have accumulated several Cascade River t-shirts. This one was the first.

If you don’t know the area, as you travel north-east along the north shore of Lake Superior, every few miles you cross a river coming down from the direction of the boundary waters. The descent to the lake is fast, so there are a lot of waterfalls. The lake shore is rocky; the sea gulls are noisy and the water is bitter cold. David is the one most likely to swim in the chilly lake.

Judge C. R. Magney (1883 – 1962) was largely responsible for the creation of most of the state parks which line the lake where a lot of the rivers come in. One of the parks is named for him – the one with Devil’s Kettle Falls. The falls at the Devil’s Kettle split into two parts, one part going straight over and the other half going into a hole. There has been much discussion as to where the water goes after it falls into that hole. They talk of having put ping pong balls or dye into the hole to see where it comes out, but they haven’t found it yet. But we Floridians turned Minnesotans know the answer. It clearly must be the source of Wakulla Springs south of Tallahassee. The origins of that water have long been a mystery as well. There you go, one mystery solves the other.

The attraction of the north shore to our little group (sometimes twelve or more of us) is broad. We love the woods and the campfires and the lodge and the trails to see the aptly named cascades and the colorful park rangers and Matt’s and Alex’s guitars and even Rachel’s ukulele. And we also love the little town of Grand Marais with its rocky harbor and it Coast Guard station and the hike to Artist’s Point for our own Sunday morning worship service on the rocks and the World’s Best Donut Shop where our picture is on the wall with their coffee cup in Port au Prince and the fudge shop and the Java Moose and the Blue Water Café and Sven and Ole’s Pizza where everyone in the store joined us in singing Happy Birthday to Josiah and the art shops and book stores and the little place with the free sample of the coffee of the day. And I could go on and on. 

This year may be different. We are getting rid of our tent camping gear. We have gotten too old to handle it. The cabin we used last year is closed because of Covid-19. It could be the end of an era, but I am betting we find a way at some point to get back to Grand Marias. It is a part of who we are as a family.

The making of a Non-Wriiter

For a long time, I have dreamed of writing my first novel. Occasionally a fun piece of dialog will enter my mind and I will jot it down somewhere. But I have never found the plot.

I figured someone needed to get into trouble or needed to have a problem that would catch the reader’s attention. But it just would not materialize. I have some characters outlined, just the basics. But no plot.

I decided that, if I were having so much trouble with the novel, perhaps I could start a series of short stories. I could use the same characters from story to story but would not have to tie it all together as well – at least in the beginning. So, I googled “How to write a short story.” But there it was, there had to be a problem or mystery.

I even started trying to write my first short story the other day – got three paragraphs done. Paragraph 1 introduced the characters, paragraph 2 said there was a problem and paragraph 3 stated the problem. No use beating around the bush. But I quickly went back and deleted number 3. It was lame. Really lame.

I have read a lot of books, novels even. I have read a lot of genres: straight Sci Fi, dystopian post-apocalyptic, crime novels, lawyer novels (Grisham et.al.), all the stuff about the government agent whose agency turns against him and some weird stuff that defies categorization. And maybe that is my problem. All the imaginable problems have been done and I am not comfortable reusing a problem that has already been used by one of the storytelling masters like the secret agent whose agency turns against her.

So. I might keep working on a short story. Maybe one of my shower epiphanies will be just the ideal issue that needs to be addressed. In the mean time, I’ll blog on.