In dwelling, live close to the ground –Tao Teh Ching, Chapter 8
A little disclosure, embedded in reflection, something inevitable at this stage of things. Bear with me.
In 1975 we bought our first house, 1315 Jackson St., Tallahassee, Florida. I was just out of the army, and enrolled in the relatively new creative writing program at Florida State University, where I was completing the English degree I had left suspended in 1969. I knew I wanted to write, and was receiving some encouragement, spurred on by some early publications of poems, the first in the now long defunct Berkeley Samizdat Review, a leftist periodical in Berkeley, of course, and the second, in Harper’s Magazine. Some credibility. But I really wanted to do long fiction. I was encouraged first by my poetry professor, Van Brock, a gentle, extraordinary mentor and advocate, and then by the novelist Janet Burroway, who taught me something about honesty in prose, and who, very shortly, became a friend, and our very first baby-sitter.
We were living next door, in the bottom apartment of a small, two-story building at 1323 1/2 Jackson, when the house became available. It was owned by a recently divorced woman, whose father had built the place, and we got it for a song. It was a small, solid house constructed of brick, on two lots, with a detached garage, of the same brick. Two bedrooms, with bath between. We ripped up the old, soiled carpet and found wonderful pine flooring beneath. There was an old Sunbeam Alpine in the back yard, its engine missing. We sanded and finished the floors, removed the cover from the old fireplace and made it functional to augment the totally inadequate heat provided by an oil furnace outside the bathroom between the bedrooms. We Somehow got the Sunbeam towed, cleared the overgrowth on the large lot and put in a twenty by twenty foot garden. We got laying hens and built them a roost. There was a wild pear tree out back and two mature pecan trees. We had canned pears, vegetables from the garden, fresh eggs, and bushels of pecans. We cleaned out the garage, and it became a make-shift studio for writing and weekly music jams, with a rotating, rag-tag group of musicians. Dancers, actors, and other artist types found their way to our little house. Our son was born in 1976 and spent his first few years with live music and livelier chickens. Friends helped with everything. One brought firewood during a particularly cold winter; others helped with a new roof on the garage and with removing an old water heater and installing a new one. No money exchanged hands. We lived small, and very happily. Our needs were few; we didn’t buy what we couldn’t afford; and made do, developing a mind-set and life-style that has served us all these years. We washed dishes by hand and hung our wash on the line. One of the most beautiful images I retain is of rows of diapers, cloth, of course, blowing in the sunny breeze on the clothesline.
It was in this time that I made a decision that has had pretty significant ramifications. A graduate writing program, followed by an academic career, which would undoubtedly afford time for writing, was possible and, by most standards, the advisable way to go. I remember very clearly deciding not to go that route. I decided to go independently, without the very supportive structure of academia, and write as I could, supporting myself as I could, accepting the outcome. I would either make it, or I wouldn’t. Well, because I have not made a living as a writer, you know how that turned out. But in a very important way, and accepting that, whatever choices I made, the quality of the prose just might not have been enough, the fullness of our life is in great part dependent on the decisions we made in that first little house on Jackson Street.
We had two other houses between that one and The Little Hacienda, where we have been now for twenty-three years. Fifteen years in a lovely 3/2 from which we worked, participated in Little League baseball and other suburban activities. I wrote and published two novels from that house, but for me it wasn’t comfortable, which says more about me than where we were. I tried to put in a garden and chopped up all the underground tv cable. Things deteriorated from there.
When we found the old, dilapidated place on A1A across from the ocean that has become, through much hard work and love, The Little Hacienda, we found our slice of heaven that has allowed us to live simply and small, according to our predilection, and the consequent choices we made so long ago. Back then, on Jackson Street, we were just coming out of the 60s; the music, the fierce dedication to equality, optimism, fairness, hard work, simplicity, and love. We bought the ticket, climbed on board, and rode to here.
We still hang clothes to dry on the line; still do dishes by hand; and when I say we live small, it’s like living on a boat. Our kitchen is a galley; by all standards, the house is cramped. But we have an ocean at the door, and a lush hammock out back; when we wake at night, it is to the sound of waves breaking, and crickets in the eaves. We are living small, close to the ground, and there is plenty of time for writing what must be written.
The Skinny Island Post 
Thank you, my friend. I very much appreciate your kind words, as well.
I was friends with Eugene Allison, the director of Volusia County’s library services for a good many years. His friend was Bill Guy, the former fiction editor of Cosmopolitan magazine under Helen Gurley Brown, and the man who discovered the writer John D. MacDonald.
My brother and I used to have dinner with them quite a bit.
By this time, we had known each other for nearly twenty years.
One evening we were discussing writing, and I mentioned your next door writing group, to which I belonged.
“Sam Harrison,” said Gene, “the author who published WALLS OF BLUE COQUINA?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised, “the very one in the same. Have you read it?”
“It’s in the car,” said he, “I just finished it.”
“What did you think?,” I wanted to know.
“I liked it. It’s a quiet novel; one of the books that I look for when I want to read. I enjoy such books.”
Bill had a similar assessment of the book, a few weeks later. They both enjoyed your book.
They thought that you mattered, and they were some of the best company I have ever kept.
The world has changed so much from the time when we used to meet.
I think we were ‘period’ people who were simply awe-struck with the possibility of mass recognition, especially in a world where the state-of-the art was VCR tapes, typewriters, and the promise of a cordless telephone.
What we really wanted was the future.
The printed book that one carried about was the equivalent of the modern smartphone in status. Now, every book you have ever read is inside that same phone.
The prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
And in his own time.
As touching modern publishing, I fear that it is not what it once was.
I chanced upon a brand new hardbound Western the other day, and flipped through it.
There was a story about a fictional 1800’s bank robbery in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The bad guys ‘looked EAST out the window’ into the Badlands, where many criminals were known to hide. They escape there, to safety, the same day on horseback.
I have been to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I have also been to the Badlands, in South Dakota.
The Badlands are almost 300 miles WEST of Sioux Falls on I 90, at the other end of the state.
Had the bank that they had just robbed been as high as the Burj Kalifa, they still could not have seen the Badlands from Sioux Falls.
Especially not looking EAST.
That is the sort of garbage that got published in 2019. In hardbound.
Success is as dangerous as Failure!
Would love to see the Little Hacienda.
Shall I bring a box of Padron Anniversarios?
We really do need to get you two down here. And Yes! to the Padrons!
I’m reading this while bicycling I’m physical therapy. Here’s to the simple life. This takes me back to boat life. Sometimes difficult, often times missing my family but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Thanks for sharing, Sam. I look forward to reading more of your adventurous writing. xxoo
“Cousin Mary”
Hey, thanks cousin Mary! Glad you’re “on board.”
Lao Tzu might make a slightly different observation; whether you go up or down the ladder, your position is shaky. Success is as dangerous as failure. The Tao isn’t aware of its greatness; thus it is truly great.
I am nearly halfway through your book.
It has kept my interest completely.
That in itself is a monumental achievement. I have not read any fiction at all for over 23 years. I read period writings, revisionist history, and diaries.
You have indeed come a long way since Bobby Sauls.
I particularly enjoy your dialog. Your characters are alive; even the flat ones have round edges. I want to know what happens to him, or her.
Tom is an excellent point of view from which to observe the narrative.
And I have not thought of you once.
You did it.
So far, it’s perfect.
Hey, thanks! Your comments are certainly what one aims for. I hope you will consider doing a review when you’re finished. You know how Amazon loves those.
This is so much more than a period piece. It clearly took twenty years of research to have this sort of a passing knowledge of the various topics you present; You blend effortlessly from the more interesting aspects of sailing against the wind in a sailboat to the terrifying possibilities of religiously-tainted eugenics. From the first death of rail to the freedom of the personal automobile, and the ghostly predictions of Eisenhower’s coming interstate system.
Seriously, I taught FAHRENHEIT 451 in the high schools as a long term sub a couple years ago, and was shocked to realize that we now have basically everything Bradbury predicted in 1953; even the mechanical hounds. His work matters on so many more levels than just personal entertainment.
Your book is even more important than that; you have a piece taken out of time which surely existed, and which would have been completely lost to time had you not recorded it, even as a fiction.
It would not surprise me to learn that, by 2093, BRINGING BACK CANASTA is now required reading in the social studies classes simply for its thought-provoking forays into the period, and a glance back at what that obscure time period ‘was like.’
We know intimately what a life without computers was like, and we are the very last of our kind. No, you must write; especially now, when you write like this; when you are so very good at it. Anything before 1995 will be invaluable in the coming century.
My grandfather’s lifetime (1893 -1984) connected the Civil War horse-drawn era to the space age. He never drove a vehicle; choosing instead a team of oxen and a buckboard. I knew him, and ‘your time and mine’ now connects his era of time to the age of the computer.
And we are the last of the ‘unrecorded’ eras; the last generation not to have been completely recorded on line.
If any fiction will ever matter, it is the fiction from our lives.
Men bearing the composition of your characters have all but vanished in modern times; men who walked about with a wealth of knowledge in their minds; the result of an actual education. I knew such people personally, all of whom have passed, I am sorry to say.
Oh, and Absolutely!
I’ll be very happy to review BRINGING BACK CANASTA for you.
I deal with my great patron, Amazon, quite regularly concerning comments about my various little attempts at books and videos. I know that we live and die by the sword of The Star!
Wow, man. I am overwhelmed. As you know, when you are in the writing phase, you work like hell on the details, trying to hold in mind the whole picture, and even when you’re satisfied as you can be, there is always doubt. To hear this kind of validation from someone whose opinion you trust, really buttons it up. Thank you. I felt it was a good book, but no agent or editor would touch it; most never even responded, a lot of it having to do with the fact that I had a shot long ago, and didn’t set the world on fire. Whatever. I just want to get it out and read. Your opinion matters, and I thank you deeply. Keep thinking, keep questioning, and keep in touch.
And may I say, your comment on the book reads like a beautiful, concise essay. You got it all! Well done.
So beautiful Sam. Love how you capture the essence. Frannie
Thanks, dear friend.