A tour of the word factory

 

The desk and The Writer Gym

Guess there’s some kind of web meme going ’round, all us writer types are supposed to show off our offices.  John Hornor Jacobs started it. Yes, THE John Hornor Jacobs – author of the acclaimed SOUTHERN GODS, the soon-to-be-acclaimed THIS DARK EARTH,  an upcoming YA trilogy. The man has more book deals than Carters has liver pills. Don’t know what that means, exactly, my mom used to say it, but I took it to mean a lot. 

So then Peter Farris jumped on board, and then Keith Rawson got in on the act, and since I sorta needed a blog post anyway and was fresh out of ideas, this seemed like a swell way to waste your time.

So, the tour.  Here’s the whole set-up, desk to the right, my revolutionary bookshelf-cum-treadmill desk dead ahead.  Gonna rename that The Writer Gym (soon to be TM) and work out some kind of endorsement deal with some hot-looking hard-body writer, make me a fortune.  Hmmm . . . that leaves out Jacobs and Rawson, I don’t really know what Farris looks like.  Wait, I’ve got it!  Joelle Charbonneau! Let me make a note here . . .

OK, moving on.  This office dealio got me to realize that the room is an exercise in ancestor worship.  That desk and chair?  Those were my dads, and he had them pretty much as long as I can remember, at least since 1968 when we moved into the big house on Garfield.  Aside from being maybe the finest human being I’ve ever known, he also taught me my love of words. He raised me in a house lousy with books, all kinds of books – encyclopedia and atlases and dictionaries and big-ass coffee-table history timeline monstrosities and other reference-type stuff out the ying yang; lots of books on history, lots of biographies; a fair smattering of mysteries and thrillers; even his old Army Manual of Dermatology, in which I found this picture of a pair of gloved hands holding up a severed scrotum so crusty with assorted moist rot that it looked like something that had been left in the bottom of the vegetable drawer for a few years. Syphilis. That picture alone did more to establish a desire for sexual hygiene than any sex ed class could hope to. Probably why he left it laying around.

My Little Friends from the Old World

Back by the door, there’s an 18th century map of North America surrounded by my little friends. My late Aunt Mary Ellen and Uncle Bob were tireless collecters of Mexican folk art, and the masks are from their collection. Seem in pre-Columbian days, masks were a big deal in Aztec and other Toltec cultures, so when the missionaries showed up, they tried to piggy back on the trend by incorporating them into their passion plays and what not. The red guy on the right, that’s Old Scratch himself. Not sure what’s up with the rest of them.  The map was Bob’s – he loved maps. More fine people, also gone, but who, through their infectious enthusiam for, well, almost everything, were the coolest people a curious young lad could know.

Grandpa Bart's Persuader

Over on the bookcase, we’ve got Grandpa Bart’s billy club, official Chicago PD issue, and he carried that puppy through the Capone days right up until the early years of the Daley era.  I like to think there’s a story behind each ding and dent, and I would have loved to have heard them, but he died when I was in fourth grade. I remember a gentle man with white hair and a soft smile, and sometimes you hear a line or two of Yeats out of him.  Lots of hats up on top of the bookcases, too. My dad had the largest head in the western world, but he loved his hats. The ones I can wear without them falling down around my ears, I do.

Dad, didn't you already have a cigar this week?

My African Writing God, Billy

There’s the Daja, guarding the humidor. And we have my African Writing God, Billy Shakes-His-Speare-at-You -and-Says-Write, Goddamnit.

Day job, night job, same office

My squirrel and my Ogden seducer

We got some awards I won for writing about taxes and such like. That’s the day job, and this is also my day-job office, so some of the book piles are a little, well, diverse.  There’s the stand-up lamp, where I keep my recording gear for whenever Sabrina Ogden needs an aural fix, and where you’ll also find a stuffed squirrel, a Christmas present from one of my smart-ass nephews to commemorate the day a squirrel tied to kill my by jumping into the front tire of my bike. 

A few things you’ll usually find in my office – a bottle of Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper, my big-ass Tweety-Bird tea-cup, and my Billy Williams bobble head doll,  Sweet Swingin’ Billy, the hottest stick on the team when I was a lad, back when the Cubbies broke my heart in 1969. Broke it for the first time, I should say. They’ve made a habit of it. And, of course, Dante the Hound, my faithful companion through most of the day.    

Caffeine and Cubby, a still life

Dante, my faithful hound

OK, I showed you mine . . .