Tag Archives: Western Massachusetts

Isabel Long Mystery Series

When You Gotta Write Poetry

I wrote poetry before I could write prose. I began in college, where I fancied myself a poet, and a few years afterward until real life, including having six kids and a 25-year writer’s block, took over. When I did resume writing, I turned to prose, that is, novels and short stories. I no longer wrote poetry. But that changed when I wrote the third book in my Isabel Long Mystery Series, Checking the Traps.

I should note that book was re-released along with Chasing the Case and Redneck’s Revenge on Nov. 15 by their new publisher Bloodhound Books.

In Checking the Traps, Isabel is hired by a local bad boy drug dealer, Gary Beaumont, to find out how his half-brother died. Did Cary Moore jump from a bridge known for suicides or was he pushed? But what fires up Isabel’s interest in this case is that Cary drove heavy equipment by day and wrote poetry at night.

Gary lends Isabel the notebooks in which his half-brother transcribed all of his poems. As Isabel discovers, Cary’s poetry in the early books are really juvenile. But he gets better, well, enough that a famous poet uses the poems for his own in what turns out to be an award-winning book. He actually paid Cary for the poems, but he put his own name on them in a book that garnered big awards. Yes, the poet is a suspect in the man’s death.

Cyrus is indeed a noted poet, hence the snarky nickname, the Big Shot Poet, which the irreverent Isabel Long secretly calls him. He made it big after growing up poor with the release of his first book of poetry, Yonder.

He’s done well for himself, building a swanky home in the hilltown of Penfield and driving a Mercedes. He has a slew of adoring fans, mostly women. He’s quite the charmer. And, no, I don’t know anybody like him. Cyrus is a figment of my imagination.

One of my favorite scenes in Checking the Traps is a bookstore reading Isabel and her mother attend. I tried to capture poetry readings I’ve attended, including those loud sighs and moans from adoring fans.

Isabel also finds poetry that Cary wrote as gifts for other people.

So, that meant I had to write poetry, too, for this book.

Actually I found writing poetry wasn’t hard at all. I was able to channel that inner poet to come up with several complete poems plus lines from others. I tried to imagine what a man who had never gone farther than 100 miles from his country home would write about and how he would write it. I figured on a plain but sturdy style of writing. There would have lots of imagery from nature. The poems would not be long.

Poetry, including a reading where Isabel corners the famous poet, figures big in this book.

There are not many full poems but excerpts like this one: The wind tells me things my mother never did. And this one: gliding on ice/ if only life was still that easy.

Here’s one Cary — and I — wrote for Jack, the owner of the Rooster Bar, where Isabel works part-time. He’s also her love interest in this series.

What’ll it be tonight, boys?

The barman asks each one.

Give me some hope in a bottle.

Give me courage.

Give me love.

The barman laughs.

Sorry, boys, it’s only beer.

Did the experience inspire me to write more poetry? I will be honest and say no. But I enjoyed letting one of my characters do it instead.

Once again, here are the links to Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Meet the Old Farts

I call them the Old Farts. Actually, that’s what Isabel Long, the protagonist of my mystery series, calls them — with a capital O and a capital F. And they are an amusing source of intel for her.

The Old Farts are a group of six gossipy old men who hang out early mornings in the back of the Conwell General Store. They appear to know everybody’s business for miles around, including Isabel’s.

For that reason, she finds the Old Farts useful when she takes her first case — in Chasing the Case — trying to find out what happened to a woman who went missing 28 years earlier in that town of a thousand people. They know all the players.

That’s true of the next cases she investigates — Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps, which now have a home with Bloodhound Books, had a Nov. 15 release date on Amazon. Just clink on the titles below and you’re there.

Actually, Isabel takes this relationship one step further and gives the men secret nicknames. Here they are: the Fattest Old Fart, Serious Old Fart, Bald Old Fart, Silent Old Fart, Skinniest Old Fart, and the Old Fart with Glasses. You can guess how she came up with those names.

The Old Farts, of course, don’t know a thing about it. It’s likely the only one they don’t.

And once in a while, there are Visiting Old Farts, but they aren’t regulars.

Isabel started visiting the Old Farts in the back room on a regular basis after she lost her job running a newspaper and decided to be an amateur P.I. She always sits on a bench besides the Fattest Old Fart, who could rightfully be called the Loudest Old Fart, because nobody else does. He always announces her arrival.

The Serious Old Fart always offers Isabel a cup of the store’s crappy coffee along with a joke that the expresso machine is broke — yes, he mispronounces espresso.

The conversation is lively although the Silent Old Fart lives up to his reputation and rarely speaks. (When he does, it’s significant.) They like to tease Isabel about her personal life. But they do give useful tips or at least some history because unlike Isabel, they are all natives of Conwell. They’ve known each other forever. And they have no better way to start the day than to drink coffee, eat a donut, and shoot the shit, so they love it when Isabel shows up and groan when she leaves too early.

Perhaps you have a group of Old Farts who meet in your town. They might meet regularly at a coffee shop or like mine, in the back room of a general store.

So many readers say they get a kick out of the Old Farts. You can meet them in the first three books in the series. Here are the links: Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

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Hilltown Postcards

Stacking Firewood

The wood stove we bought was our only source of heat in that funky house we rented in Ringville. It wasn’t our first go-round keeping warm this way. We did that when we lived for a year in a cabin in the middle of nowhere New Hampshire.

When we first moved to that part of Worthington, we bought long slabs of hardwood from a lumber yard. As you can see in the photos below, Hank used a chainsaw to cut the slabs into burnable pieces that were then stacked beneath the house’s front overhang. I don’t touch power tools, especially ones with a blade, so I helped with the stacking.

We brought in enough wood to last a few days or longer depending on how cold it was. The warmest part of the house was in the living room, which had the wood stove. The rest of the house, especially the bedrooms, was quite cold with ice on the single-paned windows. I seriously doubt the house’s walls had much if any insulation.

Fortunately, our thoughtful friend, Win Donovan came to our house to keep the fire going when we visited my parents at Christmas, the only time we were away during the winter. Otherwise the water pipes would have burst.

I recall someone saying you should only have burned half of your wood supply by Christmas. I always assessed the amount we had at that time. Fortunately, we never ran out.

As the years went on, we upped the quality of the hardwood we burned. It was necessary to burn seasoned hardwood, that is, logs that have dried at least a year after they were cut. (When we lived in Taos, New Mexico, we burned softwood in our passive-solar home because that was all that was available.)

Seasoned wood costs more than unseasoned. The smart thing would be to buy green wood, and then let it dry for a year. We weren’t able to afford that until we moved into the home we built — stay tuned for future Hilltown Postcards. We burned three cords to heat that house.

Each fall we bought firewood from Dean, who lived in town and cut wood year-round. One year we splurged and bought six cords of dry and green wood. We burned the dry wood and let the green logs be. Next year and from then on, we only needed green wood delivered because we were ahead of the game.

In the fall, the green wood was stacked in long rows for a year. We brought most of the dry wood into the house’s walk-in basement and stacked what couldn’t fit beneath the deck. We had to carry the logs to the wood stove upstairs although we also had one in the cellar for those really cold days. 

Yes, we moved those logs a lot.

The chore of stacking firewood fell to Hank and I although I recall our three sons were helpful. The girls would start and somehow wander off before the job was finished. We worked at it for weekends.

I’ve always liked the puzzle of making a free-standing stack. You need a solid base and crisscrossed squarish logs at the ends to keep the rows in place. I so enjoy that clocking sound of wood falling in place. 

It was satisfying to watch the neat stacks rise, and later in the winter, use the wood to keep us warm.

I was inspired to write this post the other day while stacking firewood that will heat Hank’s workshop in our home. He burns one cord max. A half cord arrived to replenish our supply, thanks to our town’s program that supplies up to a cord of firewood free to residents. (Thank you Buckland and the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.) The logs came from trees felled by the power company. Volunteers helped prep the wood.

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Hilltown Postcards

An Unfortunate Accident

It was supposed to be an ordinary Monday. Hank went to work that summer morning 36 years ago, doing finish carpentry for local contractors building a house in the next town. I stayed home with our six kids. 

But that day Hank got badly hurt because of somebody else’s carelessness. 

Hank and his helper were setting up to work on the house’s third floor, which required moving a pile of wood left on a large sheet of plywood in the room’s center. But when Hank lifted the plywood, he fell through the large hole it was covering. The sheet of plywood should have been nailed, but it wasn’t, so he dropped 18 feet through the hole and managed somehow to land on his shoulder on the first floor. If Hank hadn’t, he would have gone another eight feet or so to the cellar floor. 

Hank got himself out of there and drove to a hospital’s emergency room, where he was told it was probably a bad sprain, and then he went home. I was stunned when I heard what had happened.

But his injury wasn’t a bad sprain, as we found out during a visit a couple of days later to another hospital. The impact had torn muscles in his shoulder. He was in pain. 

It was obvious Hank wouldn’t be able to work for a while, so he reached out to the contractors to see if they could pay him until he was able to work again. But they said no. Hank was a subcontractor and not an employee. He had no benefits.

We were in a fix. Hank did his best to keep our family going with what he earned although we lived modestly, renting a small house in Worthington’s Ringville section. We had an old pickup and a station wagon. Most everything we owned used to belong to somebody else. 

I remember going to the house to help Hank remove his tools. I saw the piece of plywood covering the hole, now nailed in place as it should have been. On the advice of others, we contacted a lawyer, but our case wouldn’t be resolved for years. 

This accident also meant our plans to build our own home on land we bought the previous year would have to wait.

But more importantly, how would we be able to take care of our family. I was working as a correspondent for the local newspaper, getting paid by the story, but that was a pitiful amount of money. I would have to get a real job.

Fortunately, I had listened to my mother and got my teaching certificate, which in those days was permanent, when I went to college. You never know when you might need it, I remember her telling me in what turned out to be prophetic piece of advice. (Thank you, Mom.)

So, I applied to be a substitute teacher at the Gateway Regional School District. Hank would stay home with our youngest child who was not school age, plus the next-to-youngest who went a half day to kindergarten. We would live as simply as possible while he recovered.

Then luck was on our side once again. I had only worked a couple of days as a substitute teacher when I was asked to fill in for a teacher who would be on a six-weeks leave of absence for medical reasons. She taught reading to fifth and sixth graders and writing to seventh and eighth for those students who needed extra help. Later, the teacher decided not to return. 

This turn of events meant a steady income for our family and an experience I treasure still. More to come.

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Hilltown Postcards

Bad Neighbors

In my last Hilltown Postcard, I wrote about good neighbors. As promised, here is one about bad neighbors. The names have been changed for obvious reasons.

When we built our house and moved from one part of Worthington to another, we encountered a whole new group of neighbors. Just like in Ringville, we had good neighbors, many come to mind, but here we encountered a few bad ones. 

What constitutes a bad neighbor? Frankly, the things they do just make them unlikeable. It’s a good practice to just stay clear after you figure that out like the neighbor who went off the deep end.

George used to be a decent friend before he became our next-door neighbor. Like us, he bought a piece of land and built the house he owned. Hank even worked with him. But things went strange between us, really strange.

Once when Hank went to George’s house to borrow a tool, he claimed our kids were breaking into his house. He said they moved his furniture, but only enough that he would notice. George was certain it was happening because he stuck a blade of grass between the front door and jamb, and it was gone when he got home. Hank stormed home in disbelief.

Then one of our sons caught George glaring at him through the woods.

Hank went to see the town’s police chief, who told him George had complained about our kids many times, but he didn’t believe any of it. The problem was solved when he sold his house and good neighbors bought it.

As the former hilltown reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, I covered a few neighborhood disputes brought to a town board to be resolved. Most often the dissent concerned barking and/or vicious dogs their owners didn’t properly restrain although there was a notorious hearing involving pigs I wrote about earlier.

I can think of two dog situations in our new neighborhood, including one mutt that made it risky to walk along that part of the road in case the animal was loose. I recall a neighbor on a walk once flagged down a car and jumped inside for a ride home when that awful dog got loose.

Another neighbor had a Doberman Pinscher he didn’t tie up and we didn’t trust, with good reason it turned out, because the dog turned on the daughter. The man shot the dog, then left the body in the woods because the ground was too frozen to bury it. Wild animals picked the carcass clean. I recognized the tufts of fur when our dog dragged the bones to our yard. Anyway, the man moved away soon after that happened.

I recall a few incidents that get your head shaking when what a person does in private goes public. Ranking as the absolute worst was the creep who got arrested for watching his teenage daughter while she showered. 

One time, we heard loud banging coming from a neighbor’s house. An ousted husband was repeatedly smashing the front end of his pickup against the door of a newly built garage. The cops were called.

Then there was the teenager who stole his mother’s car and crashed it in another part of town — an accident that badly injured him.

In another incident, a neighbor hooked up with the wrong people, thankfully very briefly.

One night Hank and I had finished watching the film, “Pulp Fiction,” when a state trooper knocked at the door and asked to use our phone since cell service was nearly nil in those days. It didn’t take much to get the trooper to say two men had gotten into a fight, and one guy, who happened to be a new friend of our neighbor Sandy, stabbed his buddy through the throat. The man had fled to the woods, and he was calling in dogs to find him. He would likely be going back to prison. He hadn’t been out that long. I believe he and Sandy might have been pen pals.

I thought for a moment I should tell the state trooper I was a reporter for the local newspaper, but I didn’t. I would instead pass the story to another reporter. The police dogs found the stabber hiding beneath the floorboards of a shed, and he was sentenced later to seven years after admitting in court he intended to kill his friend.

Sandy turned into a model neighbor, except for an occasional barking fit by one of her dogs, but they were harmless. Last I knew, she had a beautiful garden and worked hard at it.

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