Making of a Writer (9780307820464) (2 page)

Nanny and Pa were wonderful companions and the best of baby-sitters. Tall, quiet Pa and chatty Nanny, who barely reached five feet tall, were infinitely patient and spent hours playing Chinese checkers, whist, and poker with us as we graduated from our early years of fish and slapjack. With both parents and grandparents close at hand, my sisters and I were tucked into a snug, secure environment.

In some of my earliest memories I see myself running to my grandfather and saying, “Pa, will you read to me?”

Pa, a sun-browned man with curly, graying hair, had retired from his job as a mail carrier. I could usually find him reading in his favorite armchair because he dearly loved good books. When I appeared, carrying as many picture books as I could hold, he’d close his own book in the middle of a sentence. He’d wait until I’d climbed up in his lap; then he’d begin reading.

Mother, who also loved to read, shared countless books with me, and later with my younger sisters, Marilyn and Pat. After I was grown Mother liked to remind me that before I was old enough to read or write, I’d sometimes come to her and say, “I have a poem, Mama. Write it down.”

Apparently, from a very early age I understood that words could be put together in a wonderful way, then written down and kept forever. Even before I was old enough to begin gathering memories, I wanted to be a part of this writing-and-keeping process.

When I was young we didn’t have television. It hadn’t been invented. No one had dreamed up the Internet or electronic games to keep us solitarily indoors, so—unless it was raining—all the kids in the neighborhood got together outside
and played red light–green light, hopscotch, hide-and-seek, and tag.

Adults had not yet organized kids into regulated teams for sports, so we made up our own. Occasionally, when conditions were right, we enjoyed a weed fight in the vacant lot in back of our house.

A perfect weed fight had to take place after a rain, when the dirt was loose and muddy. It was also important—for obvious reasons—that neither of my parents be at home. As all the neighborhood kids gathered in the lot, we’d choose sides and form teams. Then we’d grab handfuls of the tall grasses that covered the field, their roots tangled in balls of damp earth, and let fly.

It was great fun to throw dirt clods at each other until we were exhausted. The clods weren’t hard enough to cause any damage, and no team actually won or lost the game. We simply ended up sweaty and itching, with dirt in our hair and ears and sifting down the necks of our shirts.

In our neighborhood we often played outside until just before dinner. Then we all dashed to our own homes so that we wouldn’t miss the fifteen-minute radio dramas designed just for kids:
Jack Armstrong: the All-American Boy
,
Little Orphan Annie
, and
Uncle Whoa Bill
, a local children’s talent program heard in the Los Angeles area.

But my very favorite radio program, the one I couldn’t bear to miss, was
The Lone Ranger
. It came on at seven-thirty in the evening. As the Lone Ranger and his “faithful sidekick,” Tonto, raced through canyons and across plains in their urgency to make the West safe for humanity, I could close my eyes and envision broad vistas of sun-scorched earth, glowing campfires, and dark night skies swept with glittering, oversized stars. In my mind the bad guys looked
as mean as their voices, and I was sure that the settlers who were helped by the Lone Ranger had grateful, happy expressions on their upturned, trusting faces. The bad guys always lost, and the good guys—with the help of the Lone Ranger—always won. It was a comfortable world and satisfied my sense of justice.

My father, Joseph Lowery, an accountant, had an orderly, disciplined mind. When I was seven and school began again in September, he informed me that good students always got plenty of sleep. Therefore my bedtime on school nights would be at seven-thirty, not a minute later.

“Not seven-thirty!” I complained. “That’s when
The Lone Ranger
comes on!”

Daddy was adamant. “Bedtime must be the same each night,” he insisted. “Your routine shouldn’t be interrupted by something as unimportant as a radio program.”

“
The Lone Ranger is
important,” I insisted, but my arguments didn’t help. Tearfully, I obeyed, and Mother tucked me into bed exactly one minute before seven-thirty.

I didn’t have long to feel sorry for myself. Suddenly the power of the theme music, the
William Tell Overture
, swirled through the room, and the familiar voice of the announcer began: “A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty, ‘Hi-Yo, Silver!’ The Lone Ranger rides again.”

In her living room at the front of the house, Nanny had turned the volume of their radio high enough that I could hear my favorite program in my back bedroom.

It didn’t take long for Daddy to knock at the door to my grandparents’ side of the house. Since he and Nanny had to shout to be heard over the radio, I didn’t miss a word they said.

“Your radio is so loud it’s causing the house to vibrate,” Daddy shouted.

“I’m sorry, Joe,” Nanny yelled back. “I’m getting older, and perhaps I’m becoming a little hard of hearing. I don’t want to miss my program.”

With Pa in compliance, the radio volume wasn’t turned down until the end of the half-hour program.

Daddy didn’t attempt to argue. Instead, the next day he brought home a small radio and placed it on the night table next to my bed. He told me I could listen to
The Lone Ranger
on my own radio
if
I was in bed before seven-thirty.

However, he neglected one bit of instruction. He didn’t tell me when I had to turn the radio off. So often, after
The Lone Ranger
ended, the radio went under the covers with me as I explored the radio band, looking for other programs of interest.

On one memorable evening, I discovered an amazing radio show that gave an abrupt turn to the direction my life was taking.
I Love a Mystery
, with its heavy footsteps, creaking doors, ear-shattering screams, and heart-stopping murders, was not just scary, it was absolutely terrifying. It was exactly what caring parents like mine would never,
ever
allow their children to listen to. At the end of the fifteen-minute episode I lay in bed trembling, frightened of the shadows in the corners of my bedroom, sure that the scrabbling sounds I heard outside my window were those of a crazed murderer. I whimpered to myself. When I fell asleep I had nightmares.

I loved every minute of that radio program, and during all the years it was on I tried never to miss an episode.

During a visit to our branch library, I accidentally
stumbled across a mystery novel written for children. Although I read eagerly and avidly, until that time I had had no idea that mystery stories could also be found in books. I was thrilled. What an exciting way to write! What a marvelous way to tell a story! The mystery novels for children that I found and devoured were not as nerve-shattering as
I Love a Mystery
, but the books filled my need for breath-holding suspense.

At that early time in my childhood I promised myself that someday I would write books and someday I, too, would become a mystery writer.

I loved listening to
my parents and grandparents tell stories about when they were young. I was always eager to hear a Joe story or a Margaret story or a Matt-and-Hattie story. Instead of the names I knew them by, their given names transferred them into a world that existed before mine, a world in which they became the leading characters in their own stories.

I thought how lucky my mother was when she was young to have shared a bedroom with her aunt Gussie. Gussie owned a candy store and made hand-dipped chocolates. She left for work very early in the morning to make the candy and returned late in the evening after she had closed the store. Margaret didn’t see much of her aunt, except on Sundays, but each morning when she awoke, she
found that Gussie had left a little gift bag of chocolates for her.

My father told about his Irish mother, Mary Elizabeth Lowery, dashing from the restraining arms of her family back into their burning house in the middle of the night. She appeared at an upstairs window, flinging into the darkness something that smashed on the ground. When she stumbled out the front door, her family pulled her to safety and scolded her. What was so important that she had to risk her life to save it?

“The alarm clock!” she answered with surprise. “Without the alarm clock, we’d all oversleep, and you’d be late to your schools and jobs!”

Some of the tales scared me a little, like Daddy’s account of the night job he hated when he was a senior in high school. As he described his duties as night watchman in a mortuary, I easily visualized him making his rounds, his only companions the dead bodies waiting to be buried.

One of the family stories that impressed me the most had to do with Nanny—Hattie—when she and Matt had been married about eighteen years and lived in Chicago.

I don’t know at what point in their marriage Matt decided to bring his father to live with them, but it was probably not too long after he and Hattie had married. In hushed tones, Mother solemnly remarked that her grandfather, Nicholas Meyer, had become an alcoholic and could not work.

Nicholas lived with his son Matt and his family, but he refused to communicate with any of them. Through the years he never spoke a single word to Hattie or to my mother. Stubbornly, he wouldn’t learn English, and the few
words he did mutter were in German, translated as “those bad boys,” when my mother’s younger brothers, Al and Vincent, came near. According to Mother, Nicholas Meyer was a very mean old man.

Each morning Grandpa Meyer would rise early, dress, and go downstairs to the kitchen. He’d take his place at the table, where Hattie was already busy preparing breakfast. He’d grasp his fork in his left fist and his knife in the right and bang them up and down on the table until his food was placed in front of him.

When Mother was seventeen, Hattie became very ill. There were no miracle medicines to rely on at that time, and nothing the doctor prescribed seemed to help. Hattie continued to weaken. Finally, one morning the doctor called Matt into Hattie’s room. “I’ll tell the children to come in and say goodbye to their mother, and then I’ll leave,” the doctor said. “There is nothing more that I can do.”

Matt held Hattie’s hand and cried as the three children came into the room.

Hattie roused herself enough to ask what time it was, and when Margaret told her, she said, “Did you get Grandpa his breakfast?”

“No,” Margaret answered. “Grandpa didn’t get up.”

Hattie opened her eyes. “That’s not like him,” she said. “Go to his room and find out if he’s all right.”

Margaret knocked at Grandpa’s door, and when he didn’t answer, she entered the room. She couldn’t rouse him, so she went back to her mother and said, “Mama, I think Grandpa is dead.”

Hattie immediately struggled to a sitting position, wrapping her arms around Matt to comfort him. Then, being
practical, she said, “There’s so much we have to get done.” From that moment she began to improve, and a few days later she was well enough to be on her feet again.

I wish that when I was young I had asked my parents and grandparents to tell more and more stories about their lives before I became part of them. I wish I had listened intently so that I could remember each and every word. I wish I had written their stories to keep forever.

There are so many wishes for what might have been. Wishes play a big part in the making of a writer.

It’s not likely to
shock anyone to learn that when I was about five or six I didn’t always pick up my toys or hang up my clothes. It was much more fun to run outside and play, or climb into a high branch of our next-door neighbor’s fig tree to read
Five Little Peppers
or
A Child’s Garden of Verses
, two of my favorites.

Every action has a reaction, and my mother’s reaction when I was not as tidy as I should have been was to recite a certain poem to me.

Margaret Lowery, my mother, was an energetic person with great leadership qualities. She had waited seven impatient years to have a child, so when I came along she became highly active in the Los Angeles Mothers’ Educational Center. This was composed of a group of women whose
intention was to search for the most perfect and modern way to nurture, guide, and discipline their children. Apparently, reciting this poem made their list of recommended activities.

I don’t remember the title of the poem. I doubt I want to. But it began, “
I love you, Mother,” said Little Nell. “I love you more than tongue can tell.”

When I was grown, I came across this poem in a library collection and for the first time learned the rest of it. As I had heard many times, Little Nell told her mother she loved her. But there was more. After Little Nell’s declaration of love, she ran outside to play.

Little Nell had a sister, whose name was Little Nan. Little Nan didn’t go out and play. She told her mother she loved her, then swept the floor and picked up her clothes and did the dishes. The poem ended with a question: Which little girl loved her mother best?

When I was young I didn’t get the message. I didn’t listen to the poem beyond the opening lines because when my mother began to recite it, I heard the words like this:
“I love you, Mother,” said Little Nell. “I love you more than Tunkentel.”

Immediately, my mind was drawn to Tunkentel. What a wonderful, exciting name! No first or last name. Just one name—Tunkentel. With a name like that, he couldn’t be human. He was most likely a troll who sat under a bridge and ate billy goats gruff and stray cattle and chickens and maybe a farmer or two.

But why did this troll named Tunkentel love Little Nell’s mother?

What if
at one time in the past the villagers had been terribly unkind to Tunkentel—all except for Little Nell’s
mother?
What if
he had cut his ugly big toe on a rock and had gone looking for help, and she had cleaned and bandaged it?
What if
she had then sent him home with a bag of chocolate cookies?