Friday, November 3, 2017

NANOWRIMO 1

Well, today is November 1, which means that we're kicking off NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writers Month) a

Thursday, May 4, 2017

Fishing Hole - Perry Humphrey


"Hey Smitty, I need to talk to you about somethin," Perry Humphrey said, walking across the gravel.
      Smitty surveyed the three fishing lines he had in the water, and comfortable that nothing was going on, he turned his attention to Perry.
       "How did you know your wife was the one?"
     Smitty wiped the condensation from his beer can and brushed it across his forehead.  "I didn't.  LouDella had some serious competition.  Obviously, you ain't gon tell her this if you see her again, but I'm not even sure I always wanted her to win."
     "For real?"  Perry tilted his head.
     Smitty nodded.  "I mean, forty-two years later, it's easy to say I picked right, but the truth is, if I had married one of those other girls, I'd probably be saying the same thing."
      "So she wasn't your one?"
      "Ain't no one.  Television and movies got y'all heads messed up.  So you really think out of 150 million women in the U-nited States, it ain't but one suitable for you?"
     "Not when you say it like that," Perry admitted.
     "So what's going on?  You must be thinkin' about somebody in particular.  How long y'all been datin'?"
     "That's the thing.  We haven't, really."
     "But you thinkin about marryin' her?"
     "Sssorta," Perry hedged.  "This gon' sound dumb."
     "I believe you.  But you done started talkin' now.  Might as well finish."
     Perry pulled off his ballcap and scratched the top of his head.  "You know how sometimes two people will be like, 'if we get 30 and neither of us is married or dating seriously, then we gon get together?'"
     "Nope.  I got married when I was 25."
    "Well, me and this girl said that when we were in college."
     "And her birthday is comin' up and you tryin' to figure out what you gon' do?"
    Perry shook his head.  "Her birthday was four months ago.  My birthday is in 3 months."
     "Sooooo...what's happening?"
"Well, when we was in college, we was together a lot, but we was never actually together.  Like, we went out a few times, but I think we mutually weren't each other's type.  She was interested in a different type of dude, and I was definitely interested in a different kind of woman."
"Woo-hoo-hoooo!!" Smitty laughed.  "What was she, fat?"
Perry shook his head.  "Nothing like that.  She wasn't bad-looking, she just wasn't bad.  Back then, I had a thing for strippers."
"Oh, good Lord."  Smitty shook his head.
"So anyway, a few of us that hung out in college got together for her birthday.  We all had a few drinks - nobody was all sloppy - but we got to talking.  Now when I brought it up, I wasn't even being serious.   I was really trying to make a joke about the whole thing, but I guess she thought I was actually, you know, trying to make somethin happen.  And like I said, neither of us is really seeing anybody right now, so it's not like I had anything better to do.  But now, I don't know if it's for giggles anymore.  I think she's gettin' comfortable with the idea, and honestly, I'm gettin kinda comfortable with the idea too.  "
Smitty shushed Perry and rose slowly from his webbed lawn chair.   On the third dip of the fishing rod's tip, he snatched it from its cpv pipe holder and yanked it high in the air.   "Got 'im!"  He said with assurance.  
Perry stepped back and watched the older man work.   As far as he knew, Smitty had been coming to this same spot for decades.  That was probably why he had never seen Smitty get skunked.  No matter the time or weather, Smitty always caught something.  He complained as much as everybody else about not catching as big a fish as he wanted, or sometimes not catching as many as he wanted, but as far as Perry knew, there was never a time when Smitty didn't catch anything.  Today's catch was a forearm-length catfish.  Probably somewhere in the 3-5 pound range.  The perfect skillet size.
Grabbing the fish firmly behind the dorsal and caudal fins, Smitty worked the hook out of its mouth.  Without looking at Perry, he said, "She make you happy?"
"I guess.  I mean, I like spending time with her.  That hasn't changed since college."
"So why didn't y'all get together in the first place?"  Smitty dropped the fish into the five-gallon bucket to join two others of similar size.
"You mean in college?"
"Naw.  You said you was into strippers then.  But what about later?  Y'all been in contact since then, how y'all just now givin it a try?"
Perry shrugged.  "We were never really single at the same time.  In college, we were kinda between people at the same time, but I wasn't trying to get into anything too heavy with her, you know?  I mean, we went out a few times, but it wasn't like a date-date.  More like, I'm hungry, you hungry, since we both eatin, might as well eat together."
"So basically, you didn't want to get her involved in your foolishness."
"Somethin' like that."

Monday, May 1, 2017

Jumping In

Well, we're coming back to blogging.   The idea here is to link up to a writing partner (or several) to get us to going more frequently.   We'll probably also try to use this to get some feedback on some of the stuff that we may try to refine and actually send somewhere.  But once we get something good, this will NOT be the ending place for it, as it has been with several other pieces that I thought could've been interesting.

The ultimate goal so far is fairly modest.  I want to write EVERY DAY for 30 days.  And we'll see what we get going.