While in the area to visit a couple of local schools — Mandalay and Wantagh Elementary — I stopped off at the town library to give them a few spare titles for the collection. The director actually knew my books but didn’t realize I grew up there. We had a nice conversation.
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I took a quick snap of a seating area that I remembered across all these years . . .
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. . . and that I had reimagined for a scene from Bee the Change. Illustration by the wonderful & ridiculously talented Stephen Gilpin. When I present before young readers, we often talk about where ideas come from, and valuing the core experiences of our lives. Our families and pets, our town and community. This is a small example of that, I suppose.
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Here’s the book cover, the third in my “Big Idea Gang” series. Books that are about young people who work together to make their world a better place. In this case, installing a bee-friendly garden at their school.
I love this old photo of me and my sister Barbara — 1965, I am told — in front of the old station wagon that used to take us all on long summer vacations to Vermont & elsewhere. My father would spend the morning artlessly tying down luggage on the roof, good enough to get the job done, my mother stressed and making sandwiches for the road, anxious about forgotten toothbrushes & wayward children, seven kids climbing in, vying for the good spots. My parents smoking Camels or Chesterfields the whole ride out: 5 hours, 6 hours. It felt like 40 days in Noah’s Ark. But gaze for a moment at four-year-old Jimmy. I look like the future of America right there, standing on the green grass of the suburban dream, 1720 Adelphi Road, Wantagh, New York, bold & innocent in yet another ill-fitting jacket. Whatever happened to that kid?
Hey, look here, a bunch of letters from Alabama! Let me reach my hand into the big barrel and pull out a sample.
It’s from Patrick:
I replied (because I usually do!):
Dear Patrick,
Thank you for your letter. Writing can be lonely work. For example, right this minute I am alone in a room in an empty house, plucking away at the computer keyboard. Just me, by my lonesome, trying to write.
Letters like yours make me smile, and make me feel connected to my readers. I write a book . . . and somebody out there . . . a boy named Patrick . . . reads it. The job wouldn’t be nearly as fun without you. So, again, truly and sincerely: thank you.
I suppose, yes, that Jigsaw is a little like me. We are both the youngest in large families (I am the youngest of seven), and we share the same sense of humor. I was never a detective, however; though I did love to spy on my brothers and sisters. I was sneaky.
You are lucky about the uniforms. I wore a uniform in Catholic school when I was a kid. Purple polka-dotted pants, striped shirt, red suspenders and a big yellow bow tie.
No, just kidding. Green pants, white shirt, green tie. Day after day, week after week, year after year. Sigh.
I just wrote a new “Jigsaw Jones” titled The Case from Outer Space. It will be out in the Spring of 2017. I hope you check it out –- there’s some really funny parts. And since you mentioned ghosts, you might enjoy my “Scary Tales” books. They aren’t hard to read, but they will make your heart go thump, thump, thump.
Stay cool and have a great summer!
That’s me, top row, fifth from the left. Big class, huh?
Today is my sister Jean’s birthday. Fifty-four years on this earth. So I dug out this old photo from a family trip, D.C. I think, perhaps Virginia. I seem to recall us heading down there to visit my brother John. Of the seven children, Jean was #6 and I was #7, so toward the end, as the elders fled, it was us.
I’d bet that I’m 13 in this shot, making this 1974, guessing.
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Don’t you love my retro kicks?
If you are like me, you can’t get enough of shots from this period, Nixon to Ford to Carter.
My new book, Bystander, hits the shelves on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009. And that’s a strange thing for an author, because it’s an anticipated date but also anti-climactic. A smile followed by a shrug: Okay, so? What now?
Allow me to dwell on the book a little bit before rushing off to the next thing. Consider it the blog equivalent to chilling the champagne before the cork is popped and the hangover drops.
One of the pleasures that came with writing this book was the setting, my hometown roots of Long Island, New York. I grew up in Wantagh, “The Gateway to Jones Beach,” lived there all through high school, the same address, the same phone number.
For Bystander, while thinking of Wantagh, I called the fictionalized town Bellport, combining the names of two nearby towns, Freeport and Bellmore. In the book, Eric drives with his mother along Wantagh Parkway, visits Jones Beach, walks the boardwalk, and even references a restaurant where I used to wash dishes. I’ll save those memories for another day, perhaps. Because today I want to talk about President Richard Milhous Nixon’s black-and-white dog, Checkers.
I attended Wantagh High School, 1976-79. Immediately across from the front parking lot was the Bide-A-Wee animal shelter and pet cemetery. Famous, in its way, because according to legend it was the third largest pet cemetery in the United States. Nothing to sneeze at, that. Sure, it wasn’t one of the Seven Wonders of the World, but it represented our thin slice of fame nonetheless. And the slice grew even thicker, thanks to the fact that President Nixon’s famous dog, Checkers, was buried there.
This dog was no mere pet, for it managed to play a key role in winning sympathy for Nixon in the hearts and minds of American voters. I am referring, of course, to the famous “Checkers Speech” of September 23, 1952 (see clip, below). A speech that any American history buff well knows, for it helped save Nixon’s political career.
By high school, I was aware of the circumstances of Nixon’s speech, its historical significance, and so thought it was pretty cool — in a total goof kind of way — that the aforementioned dog was buried nearby. From time to time, on breaks from the drudgery of classes, my friends and I might wander into the cemetery . . .
pass deep into the vast grounds . . .
and finally reach our destination, toward the way back. This:
I remembered the grave usually had small American flags at each side, which my research confirmed, lending the site an odd sort of patriotic gravity. We remained suitably morose, lazing on the grass, killing time.
I set a pivotal scene at this exact location, this specific and somewhat bizarre place from my youth. To set up the excerpt, let me explain that Eric is being led into the cemetery by David Hallenback, who wishes to show him something both private and important.
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They hopped a short fence and entered the grounds.
“Where are we going, exactly?”
“It’s back here. You’ll see.”
Despite its proximity to the school, this was actually Eric’s first time inside the cemetery grounds. It wasn’t that creepy, the way a real cemetery –- a human cemetery –- could sometimes be. Eric couldn’t get too worked up about a dead Siamese cat. Still, he marveled at the size of some of the headstones. There were a few that were really huge. Most of the gravestones were modest in height, about thigh-high, but they were thick and looked heavy. They were light brown or gray, with a few shiny black ones sprinkled in. Each had the dog’s name engraved into it, complete with year of birth and death, and the last name of the owner.
Eric thought it was kind of comical. It was a cemetery, and that’s serious stuff, but the names on the tombstones were, like, Sparky and Mugsy and Luther and Bubbles.
A few had pictures of the (dead, buried, rotting) pet, and there were even little statues of dogs and cats at some of the grave sites. Eric noticed fresh flowers at a couple of sites and that gave him a chill, the thought of some lady weeping at a grave site over poor old Mr. Chuckles, the world’s perkiest Yorkshire Terrier.
He thought of Mrs. Rosen, the noon aide whose dog died over the summer. When she had talked to Griffin that day, she seemed really heartbroken over it. Maybe her dog was buried in here somewhere. What was its name? Daisy. He remembered something his father said, back a years ago when Eric was lobbying hard for a pet. Eric’s dad replied, “Dogs are built-in heartbreak. Ten good years, two bad years, some giant vet bills, then they die and break your heart. It’s not worth it, believe me.”
That was sooo his father. Mr. Half Empty.
“I wish I had a dog,” Eric said.
Hallenback remained quiet, distant. He hadn’t said a word since they entered the cemetery. Something on his mind, Eric surmised.
When they neared the far corner, Hallenback steered them to a low, granite tombstone. Several small American flags –- the type that kids wave at Fourth of July parades –- were planted in the ground at each side of the site. The tombstone read: CHECKERS, 1951-62, NIXON.
“Is this it? This is what you wanted to show me? Where President Nixon’s dog is buried?”
Hallenback appeared distracted, not listening. He was looking off in the other direction. A group of five boys emerged from the far side of the cemetery.
Eric knew each one of them. They were led by Griffin, with Cody at his side. By the look on their faces, Eric could see they meant trouble.
Hallenback was going to get creamed.
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Here’s a brief excerpt from the televised Checkers Speech, featuring most of the best lines in a classic of American rhetoric, including:
One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don’t they will probably be saying this about me, too. We did get something, a gift, after the election.
A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog, and, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was?
It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate that he had sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it Checkers.
And you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.
