An Interview with ‘Radium Girls’ Playwright, D.W. Gregory

By Don Redman

D.W. Gregory grew up in Pennsylvania in a family of Irish Catholics and German Lutherans _- “the Irish won out in the religion department, and the Germans in the culinary department,” she says.

D.W. Gregory

Photo by:

Claire Newman-Williams

During her formative years she became fascinated with the Algonquin Roundtable – a renowned group of writers, critics, actors and wags in the 1920s who met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York to trade lively banter. She was particularly drawn to writer and drama critic George S. Kaufman, whose notable works include Of Thee I Sing – earning the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a musical – and the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, You Can’t Take It With You.

“I thought it would be really cool to be a theatre critic in the 20s,” says Gregory. “Since I couldn't engineer that career choice I went into journalism as a business reporter and worked in daily newspapers for a number of years.”

She says she drifted into playwriting because she “didn't have enough nerve to be an actress. So I get to play all the parts at the keyboard.”

Gregory began her career path as a playwright first by attending workshops and “writing terrible one-acts with no real point.”

“That went on for a few years,” she said, “and then one day something clicked and I wrote a children's play that won a contest and a 10-minute play that eventually was a finalist for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville.  This proved encouraging and I kept on writing plays.”

Drawing on her working-class roots, Gregory’s plays, whether comedies or dramas, often explore the disconnect between the dream and reality of American blue-collar experience. That’s what attracted her to the Radium Girls when she read about the real-life events in a newspaper article.

“What interested me about the story,” she says, “was the idea that you could be on the job, at work, just doing the job you were instructed to do and end up with a horrible disease -- I found it morbidly fascinating and as I dug into the story it became apparent that there were incredible parallels between that story and the story of big tobacco, big Pharma, and myriad other cases of product liability.”

Working from a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, Gregory developed the play at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey.

“The original production involved the associate artistic director of the theatre,” she recalls. “I did not choose him, he just stepped into the job, but we worked together in casting -- which is really fun. Lots of actors coming in and reading the parts. I was amazed at how hard they worked to prepare. Before we got to that point, though, the play went through a series of readings and a workshop.”

The play premiered at Playwrights Theatre in 2000 and was named the Best New Play of the 1999-2000 season by the Newark Star-Ledger.

 Nearly 15 years later since writing Radium Girls, what still stays with her?

“How young they were,” she says, “how trusting, and what a horrible betrayal it was, that they were poisoned and then the company dragged its feet in taking its responsibility.”

Gregory’s approach to writing a play varies, depending on the subject: “Each play is different. Radium Girls took a lot of research, and I didn't start out with an outline so much as a list of events I knew had to be in the play. I'm writing one now that I outlined in detail. Some I start just by writing scenes and letting the characters talk.”

She says because of her regular job, she usually has to write in bunches.

“I'm a binge writer,” Gregory says. “Since I have a day job I can't put in more than an hour or two during the weekdays. When I'm working on a play I like to hole up in my office on a long weekend and crank out about 50 pages in three days.”

 Juggling multiple writing projects, Gregory’s weekends are undoubtedly busy.

“I have a couple things in development,” she says. “One is a black comedy about a young couple who move into their dream house, only to discover the new neighborhood is being stalked by a serial sniper.”

D.W. Gregory writes in a variety of styles and genres, from historical drama to screwball comedy, but a recurring theme is the exploration of political issues through a personal lens. The New York Times called her “a playwright with a talent to enlighten and provoke” for her most produced play, Radium Girls, about dialpainters poisoned on the job in the 1920s. A resident playwright at New Jersey Rep, she received a Pulitzer nomination in 2003 for the Rep’s production of The Good Daughter, the story of a Missouri farm family struggling to adapt to rapid social change. Other plays include The Good Girl Is Gone, a black comedy about maternal indifference; October 1962, a Cold War era psychological thriller; and Molumby’s Million, a comedy about the boxer Jack Dempsey, which was nominated for the 2011 Barrymore Award for Outstanding New Play by the Theatre Alliance of Philadelphia.

Gregory also writes frequently for youth theatre. Her play Salvation Road, about a boy whose sister disappears into a fundamentalist church, was developed through New York University's Steinhardt New Plays for Young Audiences program. A member of the Dramatists Guild, a former national core member of The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, and a recent inductee into the League of Professional Theatre Women, Gregory is also founding member of the Playwrights Gymnasium, a process oriented workshop based in metro Washington, D.C.

'First Ladies,' A Poem By Eve Brouwer

First Ladies,   m. 1963—d. 1976

 By Eve Brouwer

(reprinted with permission)

We were the first ladies . . .
Kay, Diana, Sharon and I.

Ladies first—through doors, to be seated,
into aisles of theater seats. 

We were always ladies,
first, and foremost, and above all else.

We’d been dutiful daughters, and virgin brides,
and became good wives, and loving mothers. 

Yes, we were ladies first, and foremost, and above all else.

We were the first ladies

upon whom our husbands

bestowed their names,

the first ladies to whom they

plighted their troths.

A place of honor was given us.

We knew our place and kept to it.

We supported husbands
earning degrees

and, by degrees,
their masculinity,

husbands who came
—and went—

with impunity.

We stayed still, in ladylike passivity.

In still nights we stayed
—and waited—

loosed our chignons, our French twists
—and stopped. 

Frozen in an earlier time.

The world turned and skewed, and,

through curious eyes,

we viewed askance
political revolutions.

Through amazed eyes,

we read, titillated
by a sexual revolution.

With guilty consciences, we stood in line,

signed the children into pre-school.

Minute cracks in our polished veneer
let longings in,

let the Ms.’s hook their fingers toward us,

let the Ms.’s beguile us thus.
They kept their own names,
Wrote their own vows,
Took their own bows.

Looking back, are those our new “sisters”
marching on DC?

Is that us, sitting still, still sitting,
watching on TV?

Yes, and then . . . the husbands left.

Yes, and then . . . we fell
into the abyss.

Some to sink, some to swim,
most to flounder, betrayed

by our mothers’ voices,

our husbands’ vows,

our sisters’ visions,

our own ambitions.

Swept away, footloose, we lost our bearings,

doubted our instincts.

A toe
touched a rock here

A hand
reached for a branch there.

We loosened the weights dragging us down.

Then grabbed them back to our maternal breasts.

We emerged alive, to find

that women had put away

their feminine touches

—their pill-box hats, their white gloves, their recipe collections—

had relegated their children to others’ care,

were pursuing degrees, careers, orgasms galore.

Through it all, even as we
threw off the fancy hats,
drew on more appropriate gloves,
entered the no-holds-barred fray,

it never felt right.

Behind it all, under it all,

we were still

ladies who waited

for their men to return.

And waited, for a long time

after they'd finally gone for good. 

Yes, the first ladies in those husbands' lives

were merely the first in their series of wives.

Eve Brouwer
Photo by Donald G. Redman

Eve Brouwer lives and writes in Covington, Louisiana. An author and poet, her published works have been recognized by the New Orleans Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society and by Louisiana Inklings. She is the 2012 St. Tammany Parish Literary Artist of the Year and she serves on the board of the Northshore Literary Society.











Copyright Eve Brouwer. All rights reserved.
Illustration by Donald G. Redman

Finding Art In The Ordinary

 An Interview with Author/Poet Eve Brouwer

by: Donald G. Redman

Eve Brouwer
Photo by Donald G. Redman

Eve Brouwer’s thousand-watt smile and effervescent personality lights up any room she enters. The former manager of the national Chia Pet television campaign – yes, that Cha-Cha-Cha Chia Pet – Eve has been a professional writer since 1980, first as a newspaper reporter then later as a writer for public relations and advertising firms. Today, she resides in Covington, Louisiana, where she continues to write, this time for art.

Her published works include short stories and poetry which have been recognized by the New Orleans Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society, and by Louisiana Inklings. Eve was recently named as the 2012 St. Tammany Parish Literary Artist of the Year and she serves on the board of the Northshore Literary Society and helped organize Poets Alive!. She earned her B.A. at Loyola University in Chicago and her Master of Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago.

The Redman Writing Project recently caught up with Eve for an interview...

RWP: What were your earliest writing experiences? Did you write for the high school newspaper and did you keep a journal? Did you enter any writing or poetry contests in school? What did you do to foster the writing bug?

Eve Brouwer:  I think I’ve always had a strong creative instinct.  I don’t know if that’s something that’s inherited or acquired.  My father was an artist:  he played acoustical guitar, painted, and wrote.   My mother is a voracious reader.  My sister and I could not help but love art, music and literature, especially literature, anything to do with words—talking, reading, writing, acting. Anything I did to “foster the writing bug” was inadvertent, merely a natural, everyday activity.  

RWP: At what point did you decide you wanted to be a writer? Was there one teacher, one influence or was it just an accumulation of events?

Eve Brouwer:  It was an uncomfortable event that put me on the path to writing.  In seventh grade, in the Chicago Public School system, I had a wonderful teacher who was enthusiastic and kind and sincere.  When our standardized test scores came in, she was thrilled to see that two of her students had scored literally off the chart in the verbal section of the standardized test the CPS system was using at that time.  She singled us out, Loretta and me, and, in front of the whole class, asked us what we wanted to do when we grew up.  The question had never before occurred to me.  Loretta said she wanted to be a lawyer.   All I liked to do at that time was read, so, thinking of the great literature I was just beginning to discover, I said I’d like to be a writer.   Later in life, when I found myself wishing I had pursued less nebulous and more lucrative goals, I thought it would have been wise if I’d just copied Loretta’s answer and followed her into law!

RWP: How did you get your first start? What was your first published piece?

Eve Brouwer: I submitted a piece, “No, I’m Not Dutch,” to a national, religious magazine, The Banner.  The article was about the experience I’d had as a student, in the 1960’s, at a private, suburban, faith-based high school that had been founded by immigrants from the Netherlands.  Chicago at that time was—and perhaps it continues to be—comprised of ethnic groups who insulated themselves, were definitely not part of America’s “melting pot” mystic:  my parents—he of German descent, she of Italian—had in large part broken free of their ethnic bonds and expanded our family’s horizons; but my sister and I were being raised in a small Italian enclave on the city’s west side and she and I towered, although we were each only about 5’4” tall, over most of the neighborhood’s Neopolitans; it was a shock, then, on the first day of high school, to find myself suddenly short . . . and dark!  But I was, in fact, a shrimp in a sea of tall, fair, blue-eyed, very curious students who, it appeared from their questions, could not believe a non-Dutchman had entered their midst. As you would expect, the point of the article addressed the meatier differences underlying these superficial ones.   

RWP: Tell us about your poetry:

Eve Brouwer:  My sixth-grade teacher accused me of plagiarism when I wrote this poem about autumn:

The falling leaves, colored leaves,
Floating to the ground in a frolicking breeze,
Covered with brown, red and gold,
Making way for the winter cold.

Of course I had not copied it.  But I felt bad that I was accused.  So now, as I’m answering your questions, I’m thinking maybe that experience soured me on writing about nature.  But perhaps I’m being melodramatic here.  Still, in any case, I don’t write about nature.

I write about the metaphors in the objects and in the activities of our ordinary, day-to-day lives.   Although I attempt to create layers of meanings, my goal is for the pieces to be understood and enjoyed at any level, perhaps merely as stories, perhaps as stories with meaning.

 “The Tarantella,” for instance, while ostensibly recounting a day in the lives of a multi-generational family, is actually speaking of the challenges we all face in trying to balance and blend traditional values and customs with the relatively-new freedoms and opportunities to be found in contemporary society: 

As the hours passed,as we workedthat March dayin that hot kitchen,the matriarch told stories,told tales,of a long ago sister-in-law who . . .did not like to cook!Who would rather work in her garden!!Or write poems!!!Or paint pottery!!!!Or go to parties!!!!!Than prepare meals for her family.“Hmmmm,” we three murmured,eyes assiduously averted,hands occupied,mincing garlic into submission,focusing energies,funneling talents.Hot tomatoes concentratingin and onthe contents of the pots.

Another poem of mine, “First Ladies,” a narrative piece, tells the tale of four friends, each of whom was married in 1963 and divorced in 1976.  But it places their personal events in the larger context of the upheavals of those tumultuous years:

The world turned and skewed, and,

through curious eyes,

we viewed askance

political revolutions.

Through amazed eyes,

we read, titillated,

by a sexual revolution.

With guilty consciences, we stood in line,

signed the children into pre-school.

Minute cracks in our solid veneer

let longings in,

let the Ms.’s hook their fingers toward us,

let the Ms,’s beguile us thus.

They kept their own names,

Wrote their own vows,

Took their own bows.

RWP: Most writers will tell you that there is a particular time of the day they feel they are most creative and do most of their writing. When do you do the bulk of your writing?

Eve Brouwer: I write in the morning, when I’m the most alert and fresh.  I keep paper and pen on my nightstand and write my first drafts in longhand.   Sometimes I rewrite and rewrite and rewrite in longhand but usually I’ll key an early draft into the computer and continue on from there.

RWP: What is the most difficult aspect of writing for you?

Eve Brouwer: Wondering if my work is effective, if it has a style of its own, if it’s too naïve or too obscure, if I should be doing it at all.

RWP: Is there a person you turn to for support or to critique your writing before publication?

Eve Brouwer: I have to mention what a great support my husband, Randy Cronk, is.  What I especially value is that he reads everything I write and makes comments and even re-reads subsequent drafts.  

As you can imagine, this hands-on type of encouragement is invaluable.  Having someone believe in you and in your talent is good.  Then when they actually put in this kind of time and effort, it's fantastic! 

RWP: What are your interests?

Eve Brouwer:  Conversation and culture. I like sitting around in restaurants, drinking wine, talking interminably, growing wittier by the glass. I also love movies, especially foreign and independent films.  St. Tammany Parish Library is a wonderful resource.  And I like opera.  I appreciate the simulcast productions that the NY Met makes available to us at the Stadium 14 movie theater in Covington.  

RWP: What are you writing today?

Eve Brouwer:  Aside from a number of individual poems and a few short stories, I’m working on two projects:  selling my novella, My Grandmother Danced, and co-writing a nonfiction book, with my sister, based on correspondence between our parents during World War II. 

o       My Grandmother Danced is about how we reach out to the world, how we celebrate or shape or bury significant events, perhaps as wonderful memories, perhaps as deeply-held secrets that we will forever keep hidden, even from ourselves. More specifically, it’s the story of the repercussions that follow when a naïve, exuberant bride happily accepts her father-in-law’s invitation to dance with him at her wedding reception.   However, the structure of My Grandmother Danced is rather unusual, perhaps, I worry, too unusual:  each chapter is a poem, which, for marketing purposes, I’m no longer identifying as poems but am now describing as “brief, lyrical chapters.”  This terminology change is primarily due to responses similar to that of an agent who, upon hearing the word poem, refused to look at even the first page and said something like, “I never read poetry.  I didn’t study it in college.  I don’t understand it.”  I was shocked.  Aren’t nursery rhymes our very first literary love! 

o       The second project is the book I’m co-authoring with my sister, Phyllis Pals, who is also a writer:  our father was second-generation American, but he’d learned German from his grandparents and so found himself assigned to the POW camps in Fort Collins, Colorado.  His letters are fascinating as a unique window into the psyche of the Nazi prisoners and also as an incisive commentary on the cultural and societal norms of the 1940’s.  We’d like to include photos of paintings done by one of the prisoners and given to my father.  A particular favorite is of me, copied from a photo my father carried with him.  My understanding is that the prisoners made their own paints using vegetable oil that they colored with substances found in nature.   As is obvious, we are still researching our facts.

RWP: What advice would you give to novice writers or even those unpublished writers still slugging it out?

Eve Brouwer:  Interact with writers as much as possible.  Listen to others and also tell others about your craft.  Whether you’re published or not, identify yourself as a writer.  Join literary groups and attend conferences:  in the St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, area, I especially recommend the Northshore Literary Society and the local chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and Covington’s Poets Alive!

List five of your favorite poets and or authors:

o       James Thurber

o       Thomas Hardy

o       Marcel Proust

o       Ha Jin

o       Emily Dickinson

o       Jon Krakauer

List ten books you’ve read that you’ll never forget:

o       Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

o       The Ox Bow Incident, Walter Van Tilburg Clark

o       Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton

o       When the Crocodile Eats the Sun, Peter Godwin

o       Berlin Diaries 1940-1945, Marie Vassiltchikov

o       Edie: American Girl, Jean Stein

o       Blooming, Susan Allen Toth

o       As Always, Julia, ed. Joan Reardon

o       War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

o       One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty

o       The Little Red Guard, Wenguang Huang

o       Herself Defined:  H. D. and Her World, Barbara Guest

Oh oh, maybe that’s more than ten!

RWP: What are you reading right now?

Eve Brouwer:  Well, I have followed my own advice and have joined the type of social and study groups where I meet a good number of writers.  That said, I also am a person who wants everyone to like me and wants to please everyone . . . so, I’m currently very busy trying to catch up and read books of authors I know.  I want to be able to say, when I run into these authors, “I read and enjoyed your book!”  These are some of them (and I really did like them!):  Cuba onMy Mind by Katie Wainwright; Davenport’sVersion by John Gery; Unless a LoveBe Free by Jerilyn Willin; Dancing onGlass by Pamela Ewen Lott; The Beachat Herculaneum by Susan G. Muth; AmySigns by Rebecca Willman Gernon; Mattersof the Heart by Mary Culver.  And I’m just now starting two more: Mercury Falls by Robert Kroese and Finding Faith in theCity Care Forgot by Teena Myers.  

RWP: Where can people find your work and where can they follow you?

Eve Brouwer:  Two of my pieces—a poem, “The Tarantella,” and a short story, “Gloria,” are included in Louisiana Inklings: A Literary Sampler, an anthology that is available electronically through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

A non-fiction book I especially liked contributing to is The Mad Cow Crisis: Health and the Public Good, edited by Scott Ratzan.

RWP: Thank you.

Copyright 2013 Donald G. Redman. All rights reserved.

10 Haiku

I recently rediscovered haiku – a form of poetry I never totally got before. I think today’s looser interpretations of haiku have broaden the boundaries, making it more appealing to me. I am, however, more willing today to explore the works of the Old Masters with a greater appreciation than I had in my youth.

Today I offer my first attempts...

10 Haiku

by Donald G. Redman

I.

Pan’s flute clogged with slime.

Algae blooms in the fountain.

Dog days of summer.

II.

A scoop of ice cream

melting on the hot sidewalk.

Tears like summer’s rain.

III.

Droplets of red light

like rubies on the windshield.

A wet commute home.

IV.

Birds yell from treetops

over the drone of lawnmowers.

Spring in the suburbs.

V.

A dewdrop dangles.

A dragonfly lands lightly.

A drip. A ripple.

VI.

Lucky is the child

Who can close her eyes and let

The world disappear.

VII.

Night comes without you.

An eternity passes.

I lie awake, still.

VIII.

Leaves stirred by a sigh.

I spy you among the trees,

But I look away.

IX.

A loon’s wail echoes

Across the blackened waters.

Heartache spreads like fog.

X.

Fallen rose petals

Litter the broken pathway.

Torn flesh bleeds anew.

Copyright 2012 Donald G. Redman All rights reserved.

"The Llama Song"

The Llama Song

by Donald G. Redman

I was up late Saturday night. I couldn’t sleep for thoughts of you were invading my dreams like a horde of Tatars.

Easing from the bedside so as not to arouse the woman lying next to me buried beneath layers of blankets, I gathered my robe and tiptoed out into the darkness of my house.

Safe in the kitchen, I grabbed a small snifter and a bottle of cognac and went into the den to seek you out. And there I found you, tucked inside my favorite poetry book – the same tattered book I brought with me when we stole that weekend to your family’s beach house.

I tried recalling some of the poems we liked, but they all seemed to blend together. I do remember you were fond of Walt Whitman.

It was getting really late and I thought of returning to the woman beneath the blankets. Her slumber was intense; sounds of her snoring echoed down the dark hallway and reverberated off my blackened heart.

The cognac cried out for one more sip and so I obliged.

I scanned past a few more odes, telling myself each would be the last, and then I came across “The Llama Song.” Suddenly, you were stretched out across the couch next to me, your head resting on my lap. I saw your eyebrows, how they arch in such a taunting fashion. I saw your slightly crooked smile and I felt a warmth no cognac could ever provide.

You remember “The Llama Song” don’t you? It wasn’t really called that, but we gave it that name. It was a poem about a couple who realized they were falling in love with each other while still in other relationships. There was a verse something like, “I will not let you love me, but my love for you is so intense.”

They tried valiantly to fight their feelings and you told me you could relate; that you were being torn between two emotions, one to start life anew with me and the other to stay put. I agreed, saying I felt like Dr. Doolittle’s two headed llama and you laughed. “Pushmi-pullyu! This will be our Llama Song.”

The poem ended with the couple caving to love and running off together to spend eternity sipping nectar at the feet of the gods. Or something like that.

But you aren’t one to completely cave are you? You said “The Llama Song” was ultimately a fairytale; there are no happy endings in the affairs of the heart. People are tempted by affairs to feel alive again, but eventually you fall from heaven and are no longer sipping nectar at the feet of the gods, but mopping the kitchen and mowing the grass.

You said I’d get bored and eventually find someone new to sing “The Llama Song.”  No, you wouldn’t be running away with me, you said.

I was as crushed as any mortal could ever be. “Look at me!” I pleaded. “My head is bursting through the sky of love. My hair is dripping with nectar. Love me!”

“But how can I tell if you will ever love me again as you do now?”

Of course I said I would love you forever and again, but that question still haunts me to this day. It’s the question I was mulling when I arose from bed to seek you out.

I corked the cognac and returned it to the shelf. Through the bay window I could see that a new day was wrestling for the reigns from the night, but the fix was in and it was just a matter of time before the nighttime surrendered.

The corner streetlight cast a grey umbrella of light over my lawn. I could see the grass was high and weeds had sprung up as if in a race to tower the trees. For a brief moment thoughts of you vanished, only to be replaced with those of lawnmowers.

Suddenly, the snoring of the woman buried beneath layers of blankets stopped. I cursed the silence.

And then it started back up like a trusty lawnmower cranks up after having choked momentarily on a clump of grass.

It was in that blissful moment between night and day that I understood “The Llama Song.” Just as am asking you, I had once asked the woman buried beneath the blankets to love me. My head had burst through the sky of love. My hair had dripped with nectar. But how could I tell if I would ever love her again as I did then?

I wanted to cry. I was weak with sadness and it felt as if my legs would surrender, but I was braced by the snores coming from the woman buried beneath the blankets.

I stumbled back to bed. I needed the rest for soon I’d be mowing the lawn.

Copyright 2012 Donald G. Redman All Rights Reserved Illustration by Donald G. Redman.

Houston, We Have a Problem! by Bill Redman

Houston, We Have a Problem!

By Bill Redman

 Growing up during the so called “space race,” I have always had a fascination with rocket ships. I had seen all the old movies and TV shows. Up until I was 11 years old, “Forbidden Planet” was by far my favorite movie. Until I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey.” I didn’t really understand it but DAMN! I had to get into space, and quick.

 We were living in Houston, which at the time was ground zero for space travel. I had been on a couple of field trips to NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where during a visit to the gift center, I had purchased a Styrofoam rocket that, get this, REALLY FLEW! You have to remember that jet engines were in their infancy at that time, and most planes flew with propellers. This rocket had a propeller on its nose that was connected to a rubber band so that when you wound up the propeller and let it go, it took off. Not always were you wanted it to, but it flew none the less. That thing could fly as high as the pine trees in my yard. EUREKA! I got to thinking that if this 12-inch toy could reach 200 feet (I was 11 at the time so the height may be a little exaggerated) just think how high a full scale model could go. If I could build one of these in my backyard, the stars were the limit. How hard could it be? It wasn’t exactly rocket science.

 First things first. Inventory of my tools: broken hammer (check); dull saw (check); jammed pliers (check). It was the typical toolbox of most boys growing up during those years. Next I had had to round up the materials needed: lumber, nails and bicycle parts. I would go to every construction site around and pick up bent nails, which I would spend hours straightening with a hammer against the sidewalk ‘til I smashed my fingers to a pulp. I picked up all the scrap wood and anything else I could salvage and either balanced it precariously on my bike or went back and put it in my wagon. (On a side note, I find it a shame that 11-year-olds no longer have a need for a wagon. Today they spend all day at their PCs, watching DVDs while listening to their MP3s. Back then, I was happy to get two hours in front of the RCA … in my BVDs). When it came to bicycle parts, every self-respecting boy would have a miscellaneous assortment (or as my mom called it, a pile of junk) of leftover parts from bicycles, though most were well past their prime.

 It wasn’t until years later that I realized that most, if not all, of my inventions required these materials - wood, nails and bicycle parts. And it took even more years to come to the conclusion that these same inventions were responsible for most of the scars that I have today.

 All I had to do was come up with a plan to make this puppy fly. I can’t say I came up with the idea on how to make this work all on my own. It was Divine Intervention. I had cut open my rocket ship to see how it worked. Propeller on the top, attached to a rubber band in the middle that was attached at the bottom. Viola! No rocket science involved.

 Next it was on to finding the perfect rocket body. I was in luck. A new subdivision had been completed in my neighborhood and they had just taken down the billboards at the entrance. Low and behold, there were two giant red plywood arrows that at one time had guided prospective home buyers to the area. They were about 4 feet wide and 14 feet long. PERFECT! When they were stood on end, I was halfway to the moon.

 Now to select my flight crew. First, they would have to be strong enough to help me get these arrows to my backyard. Secondly, they had to be able to keep a secret and not to go running to their moms if something went wrong (which seemed to happen on a regular basis around me). Thirdly, and most importantly, access to their dad’s workshops.

 That left slim pickings. My next door neighbor, Harry, was the first up for consideration. His dad had the best shop, but Harry would go crying to his mom if he stubbed his toe. My other neighbor, David, could keep a secret but was new to the neighborhood and did not yet have street creds. Dean, from down the street, had a minor mental defect but was strong as an ox. Also there were the Johnson brothers from the next block over. Allen and Jeffery. Not the sharpest crayons, but they were always there and ready to get into any trouble available.

  And then there was my little brother. He hung around my neck like an albatross. He was three years younger than me and followed me everywhere. Our mother was one of the few mothers that were working a job outside the home in those days. She left our younger sister with a neighbor and for some God unknown reason, trusted me and my brother to take care of ourselves while she was at work.

 I assembled the troops and let them in on the plan. Right off the bat, Harry informed me that his dad had an “Honest to God” real propeller that came from a biplane. Harry was in. Chief engineer. David said that he had always wanted to be an astronaut. Ok, I had my copilot. Dean just grunted. I knew who was toting the arrows. Then Allen and Jeffery said that their new “uncle” worked at a junk yard. They were on parts acquisitions.

That left my brother. If I wanted to keep him from telling mom, I would have to include him. I decided to make him Flight Control Officer. He cried until I told him that he would get to do the countdown. Unfortunately, he started practicing right away. I had always known that numbers weren’t his strong suit but I hadn’t realized the implications of my decision until then.  And to compound my mistake, my brother had recently found an old megaphone that our older sister had used in junior high school. For the next two days, throughout the whole neighborhood, all you could hear was an 8-year-old screaming at the top of his lungs “TEN, NINE, ELEVEN, FOUR, EIGHT, TWO, ONE, BLASTOFF!” or some other nonsensical sequence of numbers that always ended in a blood curdling “BLASTOFF!

 After regaining a semblance of hearing in my right ear, I felt that I had everyone in place and we were all set.  I went with Allen and Jeffery to their new “uncle’s” place of employment. In those days, divorced moms always introduced their new boyfriends to their kids as their long lost “uncle” who needed a place to stay for the night. Allen once confided that he was the luckiest guy around. He had at least twenty uncles. I have to admit I was a little jealous. I only had one uncle and he lived in Minnesota. That aside, we went to work collecting anything useful. Filling our wagons, with various pieces of hardware that now seem to have ranged from to the ridiculous to the sublime, we headed home.

"I could hear his mother say, as she looked towards me, 'No good will come of this'. Oddly enough, I have heard those very same words repeated throughout my life. Mainly from my wife to whoever is within earshot at the time I am trying to achieve greatness."

Time for the fuselage.

We lugged the wooden arrows from atop the large earthen berms where the work crews had discarded them and laid them on our wagons. Attaching Dean to ropes tied to the wagons, we started our arduous journey towards my backyard. Besides Dean’s occasional grunting, the trip was pretty much uneventful. As we turned into my driveway, Harry’s mom happened to be outside. Harry quickly ran toward his mother claiming innocence. Of course, he stubbed his toe on the way and burst into tears. I could hear his mother say, as she looked towards me, “No good will come of this”. Oddly enough, I have heard those very same words repeated throughout my life. Mainly from my wife to whoever is within earshot at the time I am trying to achieve greatness.

We then set upon attaching the two arrows together using the wood at hand. Trying to cut plywood with a hand saw that was missing half its teeth was a challenge. Most of our wood cuts looked like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Not a straight line to be found. We sawed and hammered away like there was no tomorrow. I had arbitrarily set the launch date as 3 p.m. Friday.  Three days from now. I figured that would give enough time to build the rocket, reach the atmosphere (wasn’t real sure what that was) and land back in the yard before my mom got home from work.  My copilot, David, kept requesting that we add an “Escape Hatch”.  I started having my doubts about him. We finished for the day and covered everything up with an old tarp.

 When my mother came home from work, she looked out the back window and asked what was out there. My little brother was about to tell her what it was when I asked him to practice his countdown. As he started running around the house yelling out random numbers and screaming “BLASTOFF”, my mother smiled with her usual bemused look and went back to cooking dinner. Thank goodness we didn’t have to abort the mission … yet.

 The second day of construction on the rocket was pretty much the same. A lot of fingers getting smashed by hammers and plenty of splinters to go around. Harry nervously brought over his dad’s prized propeller. He said he wasn’t really sure about this. What if it got broke? I allayed his fears with the promise that when the newspaper reporters took pictures of us and our space ship after our flight, that he would be famous. His dad would see the picture of his son and his propeller in the paper and would be so proud. He was in.

 It was time to stand up the rocket. When the six of us tried to lift the rocket into an upright position, we ran into our first snag. Who knew that plywood and 2x4’s would be that heavy? We were only able to get it to a 45 degree angle. I had the guys rest it on top of an old ladder. I’m not sure which creaked more, the ladder or the rocket. We could at least install the propeller. I used some baling wire to attach it to a bicycle wheel that was wired to a sprocket that was wired to the nose. It was more than little askew, but it looked magnificent. We all stood back and admired our workmanship. We were almost there. All we had left was getting the damn thing upright and finishing our propulsion system. This was another good thing about keeping old bicycles. We had enough inner tubes to make the world’s largest rubber band. Getting the rocket pointing towards the stars was another matter that would require some thought.

After discussing this dilemma with my flight crew, we figured it would take about another ten kids to get it upright. Where to get ten kids from our neighborhood that weren’t banned for life by their moms from ever coming within 100 yards from my house since the “Great Cowboy and Indian Bottle Rocket War of ‘68”? What would attract that many kids? Dead vermin? Nope, haven’t seen any lately. Broken bones? Nope, my mother had promised to skin me alive if I didn’t go six months without breaking something.

 I got it! Comic books! We could have a comic book sale. We could spread the word around this afternoon and by tomorrow morning kids would be lined up down the block. Now for the hard part. Convincing the guys to part with some of their most prized possessions. After having to stop a near riot and a mass desertion of the troops, I used the newspaper bit. We will be “World Famous”, I told them. We could walk into any comic book store and they would give us any one we wanted. Hell, they’ll probably even make a comic book about us and our space exploits. That seemed to work.

 We finished for the day and the guys jumped on their bikes and went out to spread the word of the comic book sale. As I was getting ready to drape the tarp over the rocket, David asked me again about the escape hatch. I assured him I would do that right away and that he should hurry up and get the news out. I was really starting to question my choice of copilot. I quickly went to work on the escape hatch and covered the rocket up just as my mom got home. She looked out the back window again but before she could ask me anything, I hollered to my brother, “Countdown”! Off he went. My mother had that quizzical look on her face that would remain there for years because of me and my brother.

 Day Three at Launch Control.

I was right. By 9 a.m. there were a least twenty kids lined up to go through our comics. I had strategically set up the table in the backyard next to the tarp covered rocket. We lead them to the table and as they were looking through the comic books, I nonchalantly pulled off the tarp.

 Every one of their jaws dropped. They quickly forgot the comic books and gathered around the rocket. They were in awe! Questions were flying so fast I could hardly answer them all. Does it really fly? How far up will it go? How fast will it fly? How big is the parachute? Huh, come again? How big is the what? Parachute? Oops. Missed that one. I left the rest of the questions to my flight crew while I dashed into the house in search of a parachute. What to use? Bed sheets! That was it! And lots of them. I stripped down my brother’s and my bed and my two sister’s beds for good measure. I quickly knotted the corners together, tucked them under my arm and went back outside.

 The kids were still asking questions and looking over the rocket when I returned. I interrupted the Q & A session by announcing that we still had a few positions available on our flight crew and was anybody interested. Man, they rushed me like a hobo on a hotdog. I told them there would be a test to see if they were right for the job. A test of strength. You never saw so many boys flexing their muscles. Most of their biceps looked like what my dad called a “pea in a silk stocking”. I was going for quantity not quality. I tied a rope around the nose of the rocket and threw the other end over a tree branch. I had the hopefuls grab ahold of the rope and pull. It took a little time and a lot of staining but by God we got it to stand. Not steadily, but upright just the same. It was breathtaking.

 We all stood around it in silence, taking it all in. Then it started to fall over. Without saying word, we all ran towards it as one and held it up. I had our chief engineer add some boards to stabilize it. We went about adding a platform in the middle for the pilot (me) to stand on. We then connected the fifty bicycle inner tubes to the sprocket on top and to the huge I-hook we had attached to the bottom.

 The plan was simple. Me and David would insert short 2x4s’ into the inner tubes and wind it up. When I felt we had had reached optimum revolutions to achieve takeoff, we would let the boards go and the propeller would do the rest. I had tied the newly added parachute to a rope and when needed, would throw it out the small observation window next to my head. Who needed to know anything about rocket science? This would be a breeze.

It was almost 3p.m. Zero hour. I climbed in first and then David entered. I saw him look nervously at the escape hatch next to him. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that all I did was nail an old gate latch to the inside of the rocket and paint “Escape Hatch” over it. After all, he wouldn’t need it. We began to wind up the inner tubes. It was easy at first, but then when the tubes started doubling and tripling up, we were really having to strain. Allen had borrowed one of his “uncles” old brownie cameras to document this momentous occasion. He said later that he wished he had actually taken a picture. He was too awestruck at the sight that he forgot he was holding a camera. He and several of the other members of the flight crew said that under the strain of the tightened tubes, the rocket actually bowed outward at least two feet in the middle.

This was it. I hollered down to my brother, “COUNTDOWN”! From the megaphone rang out, “TEN, NINE, (at that moment, time seemed to stand still) EIGHT, SEVEN, (the rocket started shaking violently) SIX, FIVE, (my copilot was screaming like a little girl. “OH MY GOD! The escape hatch won’t open”!) FOUR, THREE (my God, my brother was going to do it!) SEVEN, (Damn) SIX, TWO, ONE”!

 Then it happened. Maybe I should have looked up the first rule of rocket science: Righty tighty, lefty loosy. It had appeared that we had been winding the inner tubes counterclockwise, causing the big I-bolt at the bottom on the rocket to back itself out. Now fifty inner tubes stretched beyond imagination were hurdling up the middle of the rocket at twice the speed of light.

"Maybe I should have looked up the first rule of rocket science: Righty tighty, lefty loosy."

 My father had once mentioned a “Whirling Dervish.” When I asked him what it was he said “Son, most men live their whole lives and never see one. I pray you are one of those.” Well, here I was at the tender age of eleven, face to face with a “Whirling Dervish.” I have looked deep into its eyes and can tell you that it is pure evil.

 Now add to that the 2x4s we used for winding it up were mixed in with the tubes. There were now twice as many propellers inside the rocket as outside of it. This gave a whole new meaning to being “knocked kneed.” I was knocked kneed, knocked shin bone, knocked elbowed and knocked everything else including senseless. My copilot was still frantically trying to escape when the rocket started to fall forward. I tried feebly to shove the parachute out the window. It was to no avail.

 The rocket and its hapless crew hit the ground with a thud. Twenty-five kids ran to their bikes and took off. Most of my flight crew included. Harry was screaming about his dad’s propeller. It was none the worse for wear. Wish I could say the same about me. I had lumps on top of lumps and had black lash marks over the majority of my body. David crawled out and was swearing under his breath something about an escape hatch on his way home.

 That evening, I was sitting on the couch nursing my various injuries and trying to unknot my older sister’s bed sheets before she killed me, when my mother came home from work. She gave me the usual quizzical look and went into the kitchen. She looked out the window and saw the rocket lying on its side. “What is that?” she asked.

 “It’s a submarine, mom. It’s a submarine”. At least you didn’t need to know about rocket science to build one of those.

Copyright 2012 Bill Redman. Reprinted with permission

Writer Lewis Nordan Dies

Lewis Nordan
From "Humor, Heartbreak and Hope"

It’s been more than 20 years now that I was first introduced to Lewis “Buddy” Nordan, a writer and teacher. No, I didn’t meet him personally, but through his novel The Sharpshooter Blues, a gift from a friend. I was instantly hooked, eagerly devouring his books and short stories about the residents of Arrow Catcher, Miss. and elsewhere – tales told with that potent Southern concoction of humor and brutality.

His best-known work was Wolf Whistle, based on the murder of Emmett Till in 1955. It concerns a black teenager, who, like Till, is murdered by Southern whites for allegedly making a suggestive remark – a wolf whistle – to a local white woman. In Wolf Whistle, Nordan employs a unique writing technique, narrating the tale through  multiple points of view, including the point of view of the dead youth himself and even a couple of crows!

According to the New York Times obituary, Nordan “did not begin writing until he was in his mid-30s and did not publish his first book until he was in his mid-40s, was the author of four novels, three volumes of short stories and a memoir.”

A teacher of writing with more than two decades at the University of Pittsburgh, the Mississippi-born Nordan was still able to produce critically-acclaimed works of art and developed a cult following, of which I was a proud member. Among the awards he received for his writing were the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the American Library Association Notable Book Citation, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the American Library Association Notable Book Citation.

In a 2002 article appearing in the Pitt Chronicle, the newspaper of the University of Pittsburg, Nordan told reporter Patricia Lomando White that every time he sat down to write, he’d offer up a brief prayer to the gods: “Make me a great writer.”

 “I guess I could pray, ‘Make me a good writer,’ be a little more humble, but I say, ‘Make me a great writer,’ not a published writer, not a famous writer,” he said. “That’s what I’m working toward.”

And a great writer he was.