Sparky and the Cowboy


and other stories
by Tim Hulings

It's Here!

It’s Here!

I’ve been working on pounding 13 fictional stories into shape for the past eight months - editing, re-reading, cross checking and proofing. Between my work and the waiting, it seems to have taken a long time. Now the book is ready and available.

These 13 stories weren’t written within the last eight months; that was simply the work to get them ready for publication. It took ten years to write them. Alecia Ball, a friend from my Peace Corps days in Romania helped immensely with her editing. I referred to her in an earlier blog post as a blacksmith, taking my words and hammering them into something useable.

Two of the stories, the Cowboy stories, are connected and together they could have been considered a short novel, but they were written years apart and I purposely separated them in the book by inserting several unconnected narratives.

I realize that novels are considered more saleable and that short stories are an antique form of expression, but I’m most comfortable when I write and think in the short form. My plots are not strong enough for a novel and I get tired of my characters before a novel is complete (I have tried) - not that those two deficiencies seem to inhibit many novelists. My tales were not written for publication, but for my own pleasure in their creation. Only because of the encouragement from a few select readers have I embarked on the publication of my first book.

Like Slim, the pitiful character in the last of the stories, I like to keep track of things. I have set a goal for the number of books to be printed. My hope is to get Slim’s and Cowboy’s and Red’s and Nana’s story into 5,000 pair of hands. If you would like a signed, first edition copy ({gratis with strings attached} while supplies last) please contact me via email at snowridge2000@yahoo.com The books are also available from the publisher at www.iuniverse.com , at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and, I believe at Books-A-Million web sites in either paperback, hardback or e-editions. Search the sites by my author name, Tim Hulings.

I hadn't posted a blog in awhile then this past Sunday I published a segment about Hope springing eternal. It does. But sometimes it takes a round about way of springing. If you are looking for the hopeful, skip this and move on to the Jan. 4th posting.

Early, early on Tuesday morning a jogger was fatally struck by a vehicle. It took me a day to be able to write the following:

Wednesday January 7th, 2009

Sherry and I were co-workers.

Depending upon the definition of friendship, I’m not sure we were friends. Everyone liked Sherry, for sure, including me, but I’m not sure we were friends. We did not share our dreams, our disappointments or our aspirations. We revealed little personal information to each other. We didn’t share lunch or dinner. I don’t think that I ever touched her. I don’t recall shaking her hand or exchanging a hug. I don’t remember placing a hand upon her shoulder or arm and I don’t think that she ever did that to me either. We did not touch physically.

Our relationship was not based on anything physical. It was based on trust, respect and communication. Perhaps half a dozen times in one’s life you find someone that you mesh with, that’s on the same wavelength. Some ways, Sherry and I were not friends, other ways we were better than friends. I would ask to her amend her work plans and she would always agree, but I would ask, never tell, and she knew that she could always refuse. And she would, on occasion ask me to procure her something or do some small favor and she knew that I would try my best to achieve it, but she would ask, never demand. We understood each other and while we never touched physically, we certainly did on a higher level.

I had the duty to close the store on Monday night. She had been working diligently and alone for the evening and she was the last to finish her task. All the other employees had escaped home. Sherry headed back to the offices to leave her supervisor a note, saying what she had completed and where she had left off. I was in the cash room finishing up my chores but with the door open so that I could stop her before she left the building.

“Sherry, stop. I have something for you,” I said as she walked past the open door.
I got up and showed her a packet of reward certificates that had her name on them. I handed them to her.
“What are these for?” she asked.
“Because you’re special,” I said.
“No, these are because I was on Brenda’s team and we won the contest.”
We exchanged looks, and her eyes had that unusual twinkle in the corners that she got when she chuckled. I am sure that she understood that what I had said partly in jest, I also truly meant.
“Goodnight, Sherry,” I said.
“Goodnight Mr. Tim.”

Often times when a relationship ends suddenly in anger or accident or Act of God we look back on our last words, our parting words and we think how foolish, or vain, or inappropriate were those words. It is some consolation to me personally, and I think to all of us at Belk, Harrisonburg, to know, that with Sherry, the last words, spoken without forethought, were the perfect words – “Because you’re special.”

Sherry was special. She is special. And, so long as we hold her in our memory, she will be special.

Tim

Hope in 2009

Hope which Springs Eternal

When our children were younger, I directed the youth hand bell choir at our church. It was usually a fun exchange between director, bell ringers and listeners. There were a few times that the exuberance of the participants and the director clashed with the traditions of the worship service, but everyone, including the kids, seemed to have a good time.

One year the ringers and I were asked to perform at a secular event. It was a dinner held at one of the original homes of the town, cooked by the ladies auxiliary, or some such charity. Stevens Cottage presented a little bit of a problem in presentation for the hand bells, in that there were three separate rooms that would be used simultaneously for meals and no one area large enough to hold both the 8 bell ringers and the diners. It was early spring and the weather to iffy to chance performing on the cottage porch, so I decided that we would be traveling minstrels, going from room to room with our noise.

The song we came up with, practiced and modified to fit a few of our participants was “Daisy”, and her bicycle built for two. We followed that with a short rendition of ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame” interspliced with a reading of Ernest Thayer’s poem, “Casey At the Bat”. We recruited a talented female singer to help us with Daisy, and we all sang the Ballgame, although it was asking the kids to do a lot with both playing the hand bells and singing at the same time. I recited the poem. It was a good evening and as there were three rooms of guests, and two settings for dinner, we got to perform six times. By the sixth time, we had our lines down pretty well.

I remember all this because of the section of the poem – “The hope which springs eternal in the human breast.” It was used as the hometown crowd of Mudville entered into the ninth inning of the baseball game. There were two out and the Mudville nine were down by two runs. The home team’s best player, Casey, had two batters in front of him before he could hit, Senn and Dougy Blake (members of the bell choir, not the ball team actually). The former was a phony and the latter was a flake. I had to say that with a smile so they wouldn’t get mad at me.

The poem ends of course with these famous lines:

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;But there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out

I write this now not for the strike out part, but the hope that springs eternal part. We’ve come through a remarkable year. It was remarkable, not necessarily in a good sense, but certainly 2008 was a year to remember. Nancy and my financial portfolio has diminished, but at least we have much company in that misery. We’ve lost friends in the past year. The current state of the world does not seem to be much better than it was this time last year.

We still have our health, our jobs and our hopes. We suspect that you have your hopes and dreams, too. Perhaps there are diminished after this past year, more realistic, but I suspect that they’re still there. And as long as we hold onto those dreams, the band will be playing again sometime soon.