Stories
02/07/13 05:11
I’ve been reading David Sedaris essays again. I received an autographed copy of “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls,” for my birthday. I had intended to save the book for reading on vacation, but in the busyness of last week, I decided the I needed the “mini vacation” of reading something silly in the midst of my work. Vacations afford more time for reading, so that would be a good time for a couple of novels and even a book of theology that are sitting ready to be read.
I don’t think that David Sedaris will go down in history as one of the great writers of our generation. His pieces are mostly fun and silly and make me laugh. There is nothing wrong with humor and there are some examples of humor that weather well through the years and have become classic. But, for the most part, “humor essays” is not one of the genres of classical literature. David Sedaris, however, seems to be able to earn a living writing and reading his humorous essays. He travels a lot and he makes a good impression on National Public Radio, where he gets a good deal of airplay these days.
It is interesting to me that someone can earn a living writing essays. I write an essay every day, but there are no books of my essays out there. And if there were, they wouldn’t exactly be best sellers. I’ve submitted a couple of essays to National Public Radio and to other venues, but I haven’t written any prizewinners yet. No one is clamoring to have me read my essays on the radio or anywhere else.
Of course it is silly to compare myself to David Sedaris. We’re not the same at all. He is a much more polished writer. He has a real gift for observing small details and weaving them into the stories in such a way that the story is spun into a yarn. And people love a good yarn.
Sedaris is an ardent diarist. He gives time to writing in a personal diary every day just I as write a blog every day. But he keeps his diaries to himself. Then he reads what he has written. From the details of the diaries, he mines and then refines the stories that he tells. In part his is successful because he is willing to read, edit and re-write. I’m not much for the re-writing part, so far. I have a book-length manuscript that has been sitting for most of a year waiting for me to write a second draft. I just can’t get myself motivated for that most important task of a successful writer. I tend to write an essay and then go on. I don’t sit around reading old blogs after they have been completed. There is probably a volume of essays in the blogs, but I’ve yet to pull it together.
But we had an event in our neighborhood yesterday that would be worthy of a humor essay if I knew how to write a humor essay. Our neighborhood is on a hill. There are plenty of stories of cars sliding out of driveways around here. Before we owned our home, a car that had been parked in our driveway got away and managed to careen through the neighbor’s yard, missing all of the trees and ending up in the kitchen of the home. It must have been a spectacular accident. Fortunately no one was hurt, but telling the story was high on the agenda of that neighbor when we moved into the house. We are very careful about setting parking brakes and making sure that they work in our house. Still, we did have a friend’s car slide down our driveway once. It was snowing and slippery and the car had warm tires from having been driven to our house. After it was parked the tires melted the snow and ice enough for the car to gently slide into the street. It didn’t run into anything, but it was a bit scary all the same. So that is the back story to yesterday’s adventure.
Down the street a couple of houses, a neighbor has purchased an old two-ton truck. It is a 1960’s vintage truck, with plenty of rust on the cab and old wooden sides on the box. The box is filled with a bunch of empty soda crates. It looks like the kind of thing that you bring home from an auction because you weren’t paying too much attention and you couldn’t believe would actually sell for such a low bid. At any rate, the truck has been sitting in the back yard for a couple of weeks. Our subdivision covenants don’t allow disabled vehicles. It think that the truck was driven to the parking place. The tires all hold air and the neighbor has been working on it during his free time over the past few weeks.
Yesterday, he was doing something with the truck, got finished, got out of the truck and locked the door. He was in his front yard when he noticed the truck in his back yard was moving. It rolled backwards out onto Sheridan Lake Road, which has a high berm as it enters a corner in his back yard. It looked for a minute like it might roll across the road to the ditch on the other side. That must have been scary for the owner who noticed it rolling. There is a lot of traffic on Sheridan Lake Road. He rushed for the truck, but with the doors locked, he couldn’t get into it. It slowed to a stop. He let out a sigh of relief and started to think about how he was going to get it off of the road, with locked doors and the like.
That is when it began to roll forward. And not just forward, but every bump caused the wheels to turn and the truck to head in a new direction. It took out a couple of trees planted alongside his fence, then took out the fence and did not stop. It careened through his back yard and out through the side of his fence. By this point, he was hanging on to the back of the truck, trying to stop it, but his weight was no deterrent for the heavy truck which continued alongside his house, across his front lawn, across the street and the neighbors lawn until it came to rest next to the neighbor’s house, smashing the front porch to splinters and lining its bumper up squarely with the basement wall which held and stopped the motion.
That’s where it was sitting when I came along. After ascertaining that no one was hurt and that the neighbors whose home had been hit were not at home at the time, we examined the damage a bit and decided that he’d need a sheriff’s report for all of the insurance paperwork. We briefly discussed using my pickup to tow the truck back to its parking place, but he was in no mood for any further risk and decided to get a tow truck to return it.
Now there’s probably a humor essay in that story somewhere. But I’d have to take the time to write it. If I ever decide to do so, at least I’ve got a version of the notes written down.
The story, like many of mine, however, lacks detail.
I don’t think that David Sedaris will go down in history as one of the great writers of our generation. His pieces are mostly fun and silly and make me laugh. There is nothing wrong with humor and there are some examples of humor that weather well through the years and have become classic. But, for the most part, “humor essays” is not one of the genres of classical literature. David Sedaris, however, seems to be able to earn a living writing and reading his humorous essays. He travels a lot and he makes a good impression on National Public Radio, where he gets a good deal of airplay these days.
It is interesting to me that someone can earn a living writing essays. I write an essay every day, but there are no books of my essays out there. And if there were, they wouldn’t exactly be best sellers. I’ve submitted a couple of essays to National Public Radio and to other venues, but I haven’t written any prizewinners yet. No one is clamoring to have me read my essays on the radio or anywhere else.
Of course it is silly to compare myself to David Sedaris. We’re not the same at all. He is a much more polished writer. He has a real gift for observing small details and weaving them into the stories in such a way that the story is spun into a yarn. And people love a good yarn.
Sedaris is an ardent diarist. He gives time to writing in a personal diary every day just I as write a blog every day. But he keeps his diaries to himself. Then he reads what he has written. From the details of the diaries, he mines and then refines the stories that he tells. In part his is successful because he is willing to read, edit and re-write. I’m not much for the re-writing part, so far. I have a book-length manuscript that has been sitting for most of a year waiting for me to write a second draft. I just can’t get myself motivated for that most important task of a successful writer. I tend to write an essay and then go on. I don’t sit around reading old blogs after they have been completed. There is probably a volume of essays in the blogs, but I’ve yet to pull it together.
But we had an event in our neighborhood yesterday that would be worthy of a humor essay if I knew how to write a humor essay. Our neighborhood is on a hill. There are plenty of stories of cars sliding out of driveways around here. Before we owned our home, a car that had been parked in our driveway got away and managed to careen through the neighbor’s yard, missing all of the trees and ending up in the kitchen of the home. It must have been a spectacular accident. Fortunately no one was hurt, but telling the story was high on the agenda of that neighbor when we moved into the house. We are very careful about setting parking brakes and making sure that they work in our house. Still, we did have a friend’s car slide down our driveway once. It was snowing and slippery and the car had warm tires from having been driven to our house. After it was parked the tires melted the snow and ice enough for the car to gently slide into the street. It didn’t run into anything, but it was a bit scary all the same. So that is the back story to yesterday’s adventure.
Down the street a couple of houses, a neighbor has purchased an old two-ton truck. It is a 1960’s vintage truck, with plenty of rust on the cab and old wooden sides on the box. The box is filled with a bunch of empty soda crates. It looks like the kind of thing that you bring home from an auction because you weren’t paying too much attention and you couldn’t believe would actually sell for such a low bid. At any rate, the truck has been sitting in the back yard for a couple of weeks. Our subdivision covenants don’t allow disabled vehicles. It think that the truck was driven to the parking place. The tires all hold air and the neighbor has been working on it during his free time over the past few weeks.
Yesterday, he was doing something with the truck, got finished, got out of the truck and locked the door. He was in his front yard when he noticed the truck in his back yard was moving. It rolled backwards out onto Sheridan Lake Road, which has a high berm as it enters a corner in his back yard. It looked for a minute like it might roll across the road to the ditch on the other side. That must have been scary for the owner who noticed it rolling. There is a lot of traffic on Sheridan Lake Road. He rushed for the truck, but with the doors locked, he couldn’t get into it. It slowed to a stop. He let out a sigh of relief and started to think about how he was going to get it off of the road, with locked doors and the like.
That is when it began to roll forward. And not just forward, but every bump caused the wheels to turn and the truck to head in a new direction. It took out a couple of trees planted alongside his fence, then took out the fence and did not stop. It careened through his back yard and out through the side of his fence. By this point, he was hanging on to the back of the truck, trying to stop it, but his weight was no deterrent for the heavy truck which continued alongside his house, across his front lawn, across the street and the neighbors lawn until it came to rest next to the neighbor’s house, smashing the front porch to splinters and lining its bumper up squarely with the basement wall which held and stopped the motion.
That’s where it was sitting when I came along. After ascertaining that no one was hurt and that the neighbors whose home had been hit were not at home at the time, we examined the damage a bit and decided that he’d need a sheriff’s report for all of the insurance paperwork. We briefly discussed using my pickup to tow the truck back to its parking place, but he was in no mood for any further risk and decided to get a tow truck to return it.
Now there’s probably a humor essay in that story somewhere. But I’d have to take the time to write it. If I ever decide to do so, at least I’ve got a version of the notes written down.
The story, like many of mine, however, lacks detail.