Different Slants

Comment by Don Larson

October 14, 2009 @ 7:46 pm

At the most desperate times in our lives, things have a way of working out. You are the person that knows this better than I because of your numerous encounters with such matters.

You were put on Earth to tell these stories. I really believe that.

I look forward to the other chapters, my friend.

Comment by Bob

October 14, 2009 @ 9:12 pm

Don,
You can’t imagine where this story is going, because reality has no predicable dramatic arc. When I sat down in a small park about 30 miles from San Francisco while visiting Rick Munden—on a scorching day near one hundred degrees—I didn’t imagine I’d be sitting there for five hours, writing 6,000 words, moving from table to table to avoid the punishing sun.

I left Chicago the morning after Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah, and decided to write about it four days later. I thought it was a remarkable series of events covering 42 days and that other people would want to read it. I’ve been right about that, so far. I hope people will tell others to read it, too.

Now it’s a month later. The story has grown in its complexity, seemingly taken on a life of its own and has become about much more than my family alone. It seems to write itself, somehow. It will be eight parts total when the last chapter is posted in January 2010, and as it stands now, near 11,000 words.

The eerie thing is, it ends over a half century ago, in the late Fifties, about when I met you at Caldwell, and three years before I met Rick. In this unexpected story, time bends.

I hope people become caught up in the emotion of it, because I sure am.

Don, you’re not in this story, but you will know a person who is in it, at the end. Brace yourself.

I agree with you. I believe I’m supposed to tell stories that will matter to other people.

See you,

Bob