Message in a Bottle

Recently I have asked myself this question: why do I write? When I was in school I wrote as part of the learning process. As an academic, writing was part of my job. Later I wrote books and articles to inform others, and for their enjoyment and pleasure. I am no longer writing term papers, books, nor articles. But I am still writing. Why am I writing?

I write for myself. It is good mental exercise, a way to sooth the soul, a form of meditation, a way to integrate my thoughts and emotions, and to look back at where I have come from and see how I got where I am today. I think writing has made me a better person. It allows me to see myself and those around me more clearly. And to understand. Where am I going? I do not know, so I cannot write about that. When I am gone, someone else will have to write that for me.

In my high school English composition class the young, bright-eyed, red-haired, freckle-faced teacher (whose name I have long forgotten) told the class to write about ‘what you know.’ I took her advice to heart and have always written about what I know, or feel. I write about events, some humorous, some tragic, but I am really writing about emotions — love, laughter, loss, disappointment, fear, anger, joy.

MY WRITING JOURNEY

That freckle-faced English teacher must have seen some promise in my writing because the second semester of my junior year she placed me in an advanced composition class. Soon afterward I was invited to join the staff of the student literary magazine. At the end of the school year I was admitted into the Quill and Scroll Honor Society. That was a thrill, but I still did not understand what this writing thing was all about. Unfortunately, my senior year I changed high schools and that nipped my writing life in the bud.

I did my first serious writing during my senior year in college. I had not done well academically until then (I was a lousy test taker), but that year I had three courses that focused on research. In all three classes I wrote papers on different aspects of Latin American geography, economy and society, and to my great surprise (I was not a good student overall) upon graduation I received the Rowe Award for the most outstanding undergraduate research paper in the field of  Latin American studies (this was at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University).

After graduation I went into the Peace Corps and ended up living in the jungles of southern Costa Rica. During that three-year stretch I wrote to my parents on a regular basis. My mother saved my letters and typed them up. Although my letters were no great literary work, they did document my life in the Peace Corps, and years later became useful in jogging my memory.

I am a ponderously slow reader but occasionally I find a writer who captures my imagination and I feverishly devour his or her books. Among these authors are Mark Twain, E. B. White, Loren Eiseley, David McCullough, James Herriot and Jon Krakauer. Over the years I developed a love of books and this in turn led me into the field of librarianship. To make a long story short, I ended up at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. Librarians at Clemson were on a tenure-track system and were expected to do research and to publish. It was publish or perish, so I had to write, and it was dry, boring stuff. But I enjoyed the writing process. What I needed was something more interesting to write about.

It was in the mid nineteen eighties when I became interested in imported beer, and shortly thereafter in the craft brewery movement. Desktop publishing had just been invented, so I got a computer and a printer and began publishing a beer appreciation newsletter called The World Beer Review. I know that has kind of a pretentious ring to it, and it was, pretentious. At the time the craft brewing movement was very young and it was difficult to find out what was going on other than by word of mouth. And as more and more breweries opened, a new movement was born — beer tourism. Where were these new breweries, what were their phone numbers, their hours of operation, the names of their beers, and so on? By now I was plugged into that word-of-mouth information network. Being both a librarian and a beer lover, I was in a unique position to see what was needed — a brewery guidebook — and with my knowledge and contacts, I was the person to write that book. In 1989 I threw myself into the task, and self-published On Tap: The Guide to North American Microbreweries and Brewpubs. Suffering from momentary insanity, I decided to invest my life savings and print 5,000 copies. After that I went into a deep depression. Five thousand copies! What possessed me to print 5,000 copies? But my gamble paid off and the book eventually sold out, and I wrote two subsequent editions. Soon I was writing brewery guides for honest-to-goodness publishers (Chronicle Books and Gulf Press) and was writing columns for several beer magazines. It was great fun and a wonderful adventure and I made enough money to help put one of my sons through college. But the income was not enough to live on. All that work and meeting all those publication deadlines eventually took a toll on my health. After undergoing some tests, a heart specialist told me, “Mr. Johnson, you can stay on this course and live maybe a few more years, or you can quit one of your jobs and live to a ripe old age. The choice is yours.” It was a painful decision, but the choice I had to make was obvious — I kept my job at the library, and quit writing. After all, it was the day job that put bread on the table. On the other job, I got free beer. A man cannot live by beer alone.

Afterward I came to miss writing and needed to fill that void in my life with something. As I was cleaning up my office one day I came across my letters from the Peace Corps. It took me the rest of the afternoon and on into the evening to read them all. I could not sleep that night and by sunrise I had come up with a plan — write a book about my Peace Corps experience. It would be kind of like All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. Each chapter would be its own short story. I could write the book at my leisure and I would not be faced with all those deadlines. Voila!

So I began writing, and quickly discovered writing short stories was quite a challenge. It was hard, very hard. Whatever skill or knowledge that was needed to write a short story, whatever it was, I did not have it. It is difficult to find something when you do not know what you are looking for. The emotions were the important part of the stories, but the way I expressed them left the reader flat. What I eventually learned was to just tell the story without the emotions, but tell it in such a way as to evoke the emotions in the reader.

I joined the local writers’ circle and began reading chapters there, and got some helpful feedback. A friend from the Peace Corps who later did a stint as a high school composition teacher agreed to revise the chapters. Then I showed a few of the chapters to my older brother. He had kind of a hush-hush job with the federal government and had written several history books. The books were all classified information, so I could not read them, but I heard they were highly regarded by the select crowd who could read them, so any input from my brother would be valuable. His feedback was that my writing was okay, but by then hundreds of thousands of people had served in the Peace Corps and the novelty had worn off. It would be difficult to find a publisher, maybe impossible. That made a lot of sense, and I put my publishing hopes aside. But I kept on writing because it was important to me, even though it was not important to anyone else. It was kind of like keeping a journal. Over the years I kept thinking about the hard reality of my brother’s advise, and then one day I came to this realization — yes, there had been hundreds of thousands of Peace Corps volunteers, but it was also true that when Herriot began writing his books about his adventures as a veterinarian, there had already been hundreds of thousands of veterinarians. So the novelty of the subject matter really had little bearing on the success of the book. What did matter? The quality of the writing (plus, in Herriot’s case he had a built-in audience of animal lovers). By any stretch of the imagination, was my writing comparable to Herriot’s? Not on your life. So with a deep sigh, for the second time I put aside my hope of writing a book of short stories.

Years later I joined Facebook and eventually, with some trepidation, began posting stories. It was like a writer’s blog on Facebook, which was cheating, I guess. To my surprise, some friends liked my stories. It was great practice for me and I could kind of tell from the number of likes or lacks thereof, if a story hit home. Recently people have contacted me to say they want to read the stories, but do not want to have a presence on Facebook. So I decided to create this blog, where I can collect the stories, and eventually turn them into a book.

AUNT CAROLINE’S MANUSCRIPT

Meanwhile, as these events were unfolding in my life, in another part of the world a manuscript was lying hidden in an old footlocker in a dark, dusty attic. The manuscript told the story of growing up in the early part of the twentieth century in Friday Harbor and Bellingham, Washington, and had been written by my aunt, Caroline Reed. I never met aunt Caroline because she died of a heart attack a few years before I was born. The manuscript ended up in her sister’s house, my aunt Virginia. Decades later aunt Virginia came across it as she was cleaning the attic, and decided to edit the papers and publish the book. When the book was ready she had 500 copies printed to give away to family and friends and local libraries and historical societies. By then Friday Harbor had developed into a popular tourist destination. One day Virginia received a call from the local bookstore. The owner of the store had heard about the book and told Virginia tourists were always asking for books on local history, of which there were hardly any. She took five copies on consignment, and thought it might take quite some time to sell that many books. A week later she called back for more copies; they had sold out. Sales continued to be robust and eventually Virginia had to print 500 more copies. The book, Underpinning, is now in its second edition.

A GIFT IN KIND

Aunt Caroline’s book was like a message in a bottle. With the help of her sister, that bottle was cast upon the waves, and half a century later it washed up on a far shore, and I read the message in it. In like manner, I write for an unborn relative on a far shore in the distant future, and I cast this bottle upon the waves. It is my gift to you, whoever you are.