In a once-sleepy little piedmont hamlet there lived a boy. A high school student by day and a dinner theater busboy by night, he was raised by wolves in the suburbs but had made his way to the “urban” areas with a map provided by the greatest high school English teacher ever, Linda Reynolds nee Moore. It was there he found kinship with all sorts of interesting individuals not found in his suburban den. He met for the first time in his life what he would later learn were working-class creatives but at the time he simply considered working-class heroes and that they were something to be.
You see, he wasn’t aware that there were legitimate careers to be had in the arts. He was halfway through high school and already destined for failure academically and hence professionally when he “discovered” this. His words of course but by discovered he meant that he’d finally heard what people all around him had been saying for years, so this grim “destiny” was pretty squarely on his shoulders:
“I’ve had so many guardian demons and angels and help of all kinds from so many generous friends that it would be foolish for me to think or feel otherwise. And here’s a pro tip from someone who has done a lot of work: it’s not your parent’s fault and if it is then you have to let that go. Who you are is your own doing but this is great because that means you can change it too. Start from there if you’re gonna start from anywhere.”
At least that’s what how he explained it to me. I didn’t write it down or anything.
But this isn’t an advice column and I’m not a licensed anything1 so let’s get back to the main trail up there at the top of this gulch.
Much better.
The postcard pictured above reminded him of so many great things about his time at the Cafe & Then Some. He was lucky enough to walk in there and be welcomed like family at an age where who he was becoming and who he wanted to be were finally starting to becoming clear as they do for a lot of people in their mid to late teens. He couldn’t have been happier for the input this place and the people in it were having as the forge in him finally began to cool and set into the things he was going to care about for the rest of his life.
It should not be forgotten that he also had two very important female companions (girlfriends in title but so much more than that in reality) that believed in him and forced him out of his doldrums and away from his fears. There’s nothing quite like a muse with administrative skills and a purpose.
And if his English teacher was his creative mother, his writing teacher, George Singleton, was his creative father. Both helped him see that his point of view was worth sharing and that his incessant need to create things with words was a legitimate calling and worth fighting for. Add in Bill and Susan Smith from the Cafe as grandparents and Brad Carr and Tony Williams from his record store days as uncles and the And Then Some playwright and director Ron Whisenant as his mentor and he had everything he needed to write the great American novel at the age of 18. He didn’t of course but that was mainly from not having anything to write that was worth reading. But he wrote anyway; poems, short stories, novels, plays, movies, songs, manifestoes, essays, long letters to friends. Hopes for the future. Fears from the past.
Eventually life began to happen to him and he began to amass experiences worth writing and reading about. He lost focus and became irrational and irate at times but he kept at it. For whatever that long game is worth, he played it.
Time will tell. It always does, whether we want it to or not.
He’s still writing today I’m told and has no immediate plans for cessation.
Save the (usually) renewed Fishing & Small Aquatic Vessel licenses.