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Friday, December 8, 2017

The Writer's Life 12/8 - Autographs

The weatherman said it would be cloudy with a high of only 40. I usually don't operate the floating book shop in such conditions, but with snow in the forecast for tomorrow I thought I'd give it a shot. It was the right move, although I didn't make a lot of money. The clouds were often thin enough to allow some warmth through them, so I was able to put in a regular session. My thanks to the woman who overpaid for a Che Guevara bio in Russian, and to the other who bought a compilation of mystery short stories.

I have 32 pages left to proof of the novel I will be self-publishing shortly. I anticipate submitting it to Create Space on Monday. The only thing that might delay it is an oddity I spotted in looking over the excerpt I posted below. There were three unusual punctuation marks separating words. I wonder if that will happen when I transfer the manuscript from Word to PDF. That would be a big problem, as the latter file will be read only, unable to be corrected. The reason such a problem may occur, I presume, is because the manuscript was scanned from a hard copy into my previous PC, and Word did not recognize many of the characters my old typewriter banged out. It took a lot of work to get it into shape. It's always something. Anyway, the following is one of the many reminiscences that characterize Present and Past. It was recounted to me in real life by the character name Laro, which is shortened from his real name:

Freddie chuckled as he scanned the menu.
"Wha’?" said Tony, smiling.
"The Yankee Bean Soup reminds me of something. I was at a game with Philly."
"Laro or Scungille?"
"Laro, the Yankee Clipper, who else? A customer gave me a couple of box seats near the Yankee dugout. Philly was in his glory. You should've seen him smiling. While we were sitting there watching BP, two teenage girls came down the aisle and started calling out to Bucky Dent."
"Who's that?"
"The shortstop back then. Anyway, they were wearing 'I Love Bucky' buttons and T-shirts. Dent saw them, came over, and gave them a ball each and autographed them. Meanwhile, Philly's standing there with this stunned look on his face. He was hurt, insulted that Dent didn't have anything for him. He was already tanked and the game was still a half-hour away. He looked at Dent with a seriousness you wouldn't believe, and said: 'Where's mine, Bucky?' And Dent looked at him as if he was nuts. And Philly said:  'D’they get sick every time the Yankees lose? D’they lose sleep over it like I do? I been a Yankee fan all my life. Don't I get anything?'"
"Get atta here," said Tony, eyes wide with mirth.
Freddie raised a hand and said: "I swear to...."  He caught himself, realizing it was Tony's phrase.
"What a moron. What'd the guy do?"
"He just walked away. I was dying trying not to laugh. Talk about the poor soul. It ruined his day. It must've been the only time in his life he didn't enjoy a Yankee game in person. And they lost too, so he was really depressed."
"He was always an idiot."


Vic's Sixth novel: http://tinyurl.com/zpuhucj 
Vic's Short Works: http://tinyurl.com/jy55pzc

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