Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
"Brokeback Mountain" and "Wuthering Heights" - both "one of a kind"?
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on March 27, 2017, 05:10:08 pm ---My excuse for misspelling your name, lately, Katherine, is that I have a client named St. Kathryn Cellars, so that has become the default spelling! I'll try to do better!
--- End quote ---
Not to worry! :) Seriously. I'd rather you misspell my name than your client's!
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on March 27, 2017, 06:11:56 pm ---Vinnie? :o
--- End quote ---
Well, just a thought. We'd probably have to move to New Jersey, though.
We briefly toyed with "Otis." My great uncle was named Otis, and he was quite a character -- a talented artist in both paint and sculpture, but much of his artwork is vaguely disturbing, eccentric to the point of being almost macabre. I have several pieces of his and love them, but mainly because they're weird. He also did time in prison for counterfeiting, and according to family legend he spent more time in the slammer than his fellow counterfeiters because he was so difficult.
When Mike and I mentioned, at a family gathering at my dad's, that we were thinking of naming the kid Otis, my entire extended family spoke in unison: "Don't name him Otis!!"
My only objection to the name was that it reminded me of the town drunk in Mayberry. But they probably remembered their eccentric uncle.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on March 27, 2017, 10:52:21 pm ---Well, just a thought. We'd probably have to move to New Jersey, though.
We briefly toyed with "Otis." My great uncle was named Otis, and he was quite a character -- a talented artist in both paint and sculpture, but much of his artwork is vaguely disturbing, eccentric to the point of being almost macabre. I have several pieces of his and love them, but mainly because they're weird. He also did time in prison for counterfeiting, and according to family legend he spent more time in the slammer than his fellow counterfeiters because he was so difficult.
When Mike and I mentioned, at a family gathering at my dad's, that we were thinking of naming the kid Otis, my entire extended family spoke in unison: "Don't name him Otis!!"
My only objection to the name was that it reminded me of the town drunk in Mayberry. But they probably remembered their eccentric uncle.
--- End quote ---
:laugh:
Katherine, you need to write a book about Uncle Otis! Never mind the other stuff! Write about Uncle Otis! :laugh:
Actually, I'm serious about that! :)
(I remember the town drunk from Mayberry. ;D )
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on March 28, 2017, 08:58:48 am --- :laugh:
Katherine, you need to write a book about Uncle Otis! Never mind the other stuff! Write about Uncle Otis! :laugh:
Actually, I'm serious about that! :)
--- End quote ---
Follow-up:
I took the liberty of sharing "Uncle Otis" with my colleagues here at work. One responded immediately, "I'd buy that book!" The others all agree with me, too.
Just sayin' and passin' on. ...
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on March 28, 2017, 08:58:48 am --- :laugh:
Katherine, you need to write a book about Uncle Otis! Never mind the other stuff! Write about Uncle Otis! :laugh:
Actually, I'm serious about that! :)
(I remember the town drunk from Mayberry. ;D )
--- End quote ---
I actually have fantasized about spending a year in my dad's hometown, on the western edge of Iowa, and writing about it. Maybe 17 years ago or so, my family went through the town on the way somewhere else. I had spent some time there when I was a kid, when my grandmother moved back there toward the end of her life. (She had spent the interim years in Des Moines.)
We were there for an afternoon, and had lunch with my dad's cousin. At one point, her son came in. He was the mayor, and said the town had asked Johnny Carson to donate to its big new athletic center. (Months later, I just happened to be reading the "people" column in the paper, and there was a little item saying he did! Total serendipity, since I don't usually read that column.) Johnny didn't grow up there, he grew up in nearby Omaha. But his cousin Rex was a childhood friend of my dad and his sisters, and family legend has it that my grandmother dated Johnny's father.
After lunch, we went by where my great uncle and aunt's motel used to be. It was called the L&M Motel, after their names, Lloyd and Mattie. Now it was a little clinic of some kind. At that point, this woman walked up to our car and asked if we needed help or directions. Turned out she had been Lloyd's housekeeper (he lived across the street) and cared for him during his final years/days. He'd been born in 1898 and had hoped to live to see three centuries, but didn't quite make it. Now this woman lived in his house. I can't remember her name, but in the essay I wrote about it later I called her Roberta, so I'll call her that.
I joined Roberta in her giant old car, my husband and kids following, and we all drove to the cemetery, where Roberta led us to the family graves. One was a huge -- like, 12-foot-tall -- monument with my dad's name on it. Of course, it wasn't my dad's grave -- he had the same name as his father, but it wasn't his father's grave, either, judging by the dates of birth and death. It must have been his father's father. Other Reads had been buried in this same place, people with names like Maude and Beatrice.
Roberta then led us to the old family house, this big white house where my dad had grown up and where his senile grandfather (a traveling salesman who always thought he was living in a hotel and the family members were the hotel staff) lived for a while, as did Uncle Otis. Roberta told me Lloyd's attic was full of old papers and other stuff, including Otis' court records, written (of course, at the time) by hand.
After that, we drove to my aunt and uncle's house for dinner in a town not too far away. I asked my aunt about Roberta, and she recalled that when she was in high school a girl got pregnant, and she thinks the child was Roberta. I asked about the giant cemetery monument and what she knew about her great-grandfather, and she said she knew nothing about him. Which is so odd, because he had apparently owned a lot of property in town and it was a very small town. My grandfather inherited money, but lost it in the Depression and never worked again. When I was really little, he killed himself.
Anyway, I've thought it would be fun to go back, live a year, go to the courthouse and look into the family records, see if Roberta is still around and if Lloyd's attic is still full of stuff, and also generally write about the experience of living in an extremely small town. You don't hear much about that experience, or see it depicted in movies or TV shows -- they're always slightly bigger small towns, like Mayberry. Often they're cute and quaint. This one isn't particularly. If you've seen What's Eating Gilbert Grape? it's like that town.
So although it's pretty close to Omaha, it would be a scary adventure in culture shock. But just think of what I'd saving on housing for a year! If I could get an advance book contract to do it, I'd probably do it.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on March 28, 2017, 10:17:56 am ---So although it's pretty close to Omaha, it would be a scary adventure in culture shock. But just think of what I'd saving on housing for a year! If I could get an advance book contract to do it, I'd probably do it.
--- End quote ---
Well, maybe there's more there than just Uncle Otis. You could at least get an article out of it--and send it to The New Yorker!
Is it far from Council Bluffs?
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