I think
I really just wanted to be a reader, but since that is not exactly a
profession, I figured I needed to be a writer.
Reading
was a profession for my great-grandfather, John White McFarland. He lied about
his age to join the federal navy in the civil war. He was on a boat on the Ohio
River. I don’t think he was wounded, but got a disease. At any rate, he was
disabled and they didn’t expect him to live, so he was granted a pension for
life. He lived to be about 98, I think it was. So while he was technically a
farmer, he was really a reader. He would walk from Oakland City to Princeton,
or other places, to borrow books from individuals. There was a doctor in
Princeton who had an extensive library. My great-grandfather would borrow a
book, read it as he walked home, stay up all night reading by candle light, or
perhaps they had kerosene lanterns then, and then read as he walked it back the
next day. It was a point of honor with him that a borrowed book was returned
the next day.
I loved
reading as a child. I also loved books, the actual bound volumes. I also loved
comic books. Anything with a story, but seeing books, holding them, possessing
them, all that was important to me. We didn’t have money for books, though, or
much of anything else, so I learned that even though I could not possess the
book, I could borrow the book and possess the story.
One
summer I was in a reading program at the branch library on Washington St in
Indianapolis. It was just catty-corner down the alley to my school, Lucretia
Mott PS # 3. Kids had to read a book and then tell the story to the librarians
to prove they had read it. Usually it was pro-forma, just enough to prove you
had done it. They always made me tell the whole story, though, even called the
other librarians over to listen. I could tell they were pleased, because they
smiled a lot, but I was also afraid they didn’t trust me. It never occurred to
me that they thought the way I told the story was cute.
I’m
still trying to tell the story, well enough that they’ll call others over to
listen, well enough that they’ll think I’m cute.
John Robert McFarland
Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be
published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.
My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in early 2015.
In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: I like to sit in coffee shops
and fantasize about being a writer. Perhaps actually writing would add something
to the fantasy.
I tweet as yooper1721.
MY OTHER BOOKS:
NOW THAT I HAVE
CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and
Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese
translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it
“The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”
AN ORDINARY MAN
[HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent
with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for
killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full
circle…
THE STRANGE
CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a
preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really
a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know,
I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of
questioning the call.
WHEN FATHER RODE
THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0
