Better, stronger, faster

With the passing of Neil Armstrong this week, scores of people are reminiscing about the beginnings of the space program and of course, that electrifying moment when the first moonwalk was televised for the world to see. In my own family, we were talking about this but also about my grandfather, who was the Director of Flight Operations for NASA when Armstrong was a test pilot, prior to his time in Florida and eventually, space. Notably, they ran tests on the X-15, a rocket-powered aircraft that set speed and altitude records in the early 1960s. In fact, the X-15 still holds the official world record for the fastest speed ever achieved by a manned aircraft. Here’s a story about a test flight gone slightly wrong: “Neil Armstrong’s X-15 flight over Pasadena.”

I grew up in Lancaster, California, where many families are associated with aircrafts in one way or another. Edwards Air Force base, where my grandfather worked, is located beside Rogers Dry Lake, a clearing amidst the desert terrain that provides a natural extension to the man-made runways. Because of this large, pre-existing landing area and the mostly clear weather year-round, the base is ideal for flight testing.

My grandpa died when I was eight years old. I remember him as a well-dressed, serious man with a tough veneer. He seemed to withdraw into the house whenever all of us were gathered—me, my siblings and cousins, 10 kids close in age; my mother says he would turn his hearing aid down so as not to hear us. (He had sustained hearing loss as a pilot). I remember that he took some satisfaction from his vehicles. They had a silver-bullet-shaped camper and a truck. They had a small, cart-like motorcycle they called the Tote Goat, a name that for some reason became attached to my youngest sister Theresa for many years.

We knew that he worked at the base with airplanes, but it wasn’t until his death that we began to understand the importance of his work. He knew local heroes like Joe Walker and national ones like John Glenn. On a wall in her spare room, my grandmother displayed a letter from President Ford, thanking her for his service. But there was one character from this cast that loomed larger than the rest: Bruce Peterson.

I’m sure you’ve never heard this name, but maybe you know another: Lee Majors. In 1974, The Six Million Dollar Man debuted on ABC with Majors as its star. The story centered around the character Steve Austin, an astronaut who had been injured in a crash and rebuilt with assorted bionic parts which made him “better, stronger, faster.” What many people don’t know is that the grainy footage at the start of each episode was actual NASA footage of a crash involving a Northrop M2-F2 “lifting body” craft and a pilot named Bruce Peterson. Unlike Steve Austin, Peterson did not have any bionic parts. He eventually recovered from his extensive injuries but lost the sight in one eye due to an infection. He passed away in 2006 in Laguna Niguel, which is very close to where I live now. Read Mr. Peterson's obituary here.

Footage of actual crash

Intro of the television show

But my brother and I sort of believed that maybe he had bionic parts, and when he came to my grandpa’s funeral wearing a black eye patch, we were awestruck. For many years, we bragged about shaking the “Bionic Man’s” hand.

I think Mr. Peterson, at least the way we thought of him, bridged the world of my grandfather’s work with ours. We were eight and ten, a time when television, stories, and real life seem to jumble together. A time when men were important and tall and did exciting things. So as the world mourns for that exuberant period where mankind reached beyond earth and built machines that would take them faster, higher, farther, I mourn for that, and for my grandpa, wishing he was here and could tell me all about it.

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What I learned on my summer vacation

Most writers tend to be solitary, introverted types and even if you’re not, the work inherently requires long periods without contact from the outside world. We write and we spend our free time with family and friends, many of whom may share our habits, experiences and views of the world. Every life can become somewhat sheltered and there are dangers to staying in your homogeneous group, never forcing yourself to confront “the other.”

I just spent seven days on a cruise ship with 2500 others. We were crammed into the long hallways, queued up in the buffet line, streamed into an Egyptian-designed theater for a musical tribute to New Orleans. And there are some things I learned about people (or at least was reminded of), and the ways we’re different and the ways we’re the same. Here are a few:

1)      Some people like to get up early and go to bed early. Some like to stay up late and sleep late. Some people sleep too much; some sleep too little.

2)      Some people are able to eat sweet n’ sour chicken and egg rolls at 10:30 in the morning and swallow it down with a mug of hot chocolate.

3)      Some people haven’t put on a swim suit in a very, very long time.

4)      Some people prefer to whisper, hunched over a table. Some people are more comfortable hollering across a crowded dining room to let their husband know they will be out by the dome pool.

5)      Everyone thinks their child/children are the funniest, cutest in the world.

6)      Most people are indulgent of other people’s children, to a point.

7)      Some people dance like they don’t care if anyone’s watching.

8)      Most people stare and wish they were dancing.

9)      Most people are long overdue for a good laugh.

10)  Some people will talk about anything that occurs to them, uninterrupted, in a nightmarish stream-of-consciousness fashion, if you let them.

11)  Most people have a hard time saying no to dessert (myself included).

12)  Some people are very anxious to put on a full body snowsuit, even for just a day of glacier viewing, even when it’s only in the forties or fifties outside, even when they won’t actually be coming into contact with snow.

13)  Some people have very attractive feet. Or hands. Or figures. Or hair. Some people don’t.

14)  Everyone appreciates a stunning view (except children).

15)  Some people like wet, cold climates where other people can’t imagine living.

16)  Most people are afraid to speak up.

17)  Everyone is willing to help, if you ask them.

18)  Some people will give up their seat for an elderly person. An elderly gentleman will give up his seat for a woman.

19)  Most people probably aren’t entirely themselves on a vacation.

20)  Most people are very happy to return to their homes after being away.

I found it alternately comforting and daunting, the variety within our species. But as a writer who enjoys, first and foremost, writing about people, the experience provided fertile ground for character farming. The woman who threw a fit because she had to remove her silver bangle bracelet for security. The man with the long ponytail who danced alone to a Michael Jackson medley. The older man who stared at the rugged mountains and green-blue water, jotting things down in a notebook and mumbling to himself. Watch for them. You never know when they may appear again.

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Storage Wars

Have you ever seen that show Storage Wars? It airs on A&E and is described on their website as an “original real-life series…which follows four professional buyers and their teams as they scour repossessed storage units in search of hidden treasure.”

The episodes begin at a storage facility in southern California. The entire operation is run by an auctioneer and some sort of overseer. Many people show up to bid on the units, but everyone is allowed just a quick glance inside before each auction begins.

Prior to seeing the show, I suppose I hadn’t considered what happens to items in storage units that go unclaimed. Units are repossessed when owners disappear, but they’re also repossessed when someone can’t pay their storage bill for a period of time. Or, I suppose, when the owner dies and no one comes to claim the stuff. An aside: I get preoccupied with this aspect of the show, the wondering about what happened to these people? Sometimes, the unit seems to hold someone's every possession and yet…where did they go? A&E should have another show tracing these disappearances, in my opinion.

After the auction, the “professional buyers” (two own resale/consignment shops) enter the units they purchase and start to dig. Sometimes they find interesting, potentially valuable items and sometimes they don’t. At the end of the day, profits and losses are tallied.

The appeal of the show stems from two aspects: the personalities of the buyers and the chance that we could watch them find a million dollars, basically. This last thing far outweighs the personality part, which is mostly editorially enhanced, I think. But once in a while there’s a true surprise and that’s exciting, the thought that each of us could have, among our belongings, something immensely valuable.

I bring this up because like most things, it reminds me of the creative process. Our brain is a storage unit full of thoughts and memories and we are the professional buyers, pulling up the big metal door to excavate for possible riches. At times, there’s something obvious. If one of the buyers of Storage Wars is lucky enough to buy a unit that contains a safe, and if, when they crack open the safe and find a load of gold coins…well, you can be pretty certain it'll be worth some money. But if they find a strange, engraved box which plays music when you open it and seems to have some German writing on the bottom…you won’t know until the end of the show whether this might make the buyer’s day/week/year.

I think all writers begin with the big ticket items. Traumatic events from childhood, people, places and ideas that stimulated and educated us as we grew up, conflicts with parents, our first romantic relationships, our first travels, even styles of writing we found exciting. These, all important, all worthy of appraisal. Later, when you have to dig a little deeper—the time your family was on vacation and a girl was missing, a stunted flirtation you sometimes think about, the reason you quit that job/relationship/belief system. (By the way, none of these are personal; I made them up). Oh, and you can also completely make things up.

Luckily, our lives are continually forming new storage units; items continue to pile up and you never know for sure which ones will bring what you’re looking for. One difference, I suppose: there are no other “buyers’ for your unit. You have to fight with yourself.

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What a Good Book Does

Jess Walter’s new novel, Beautiful Ruins, begins on the banks of a sleepy Italian town once named for its proliferation of prostitutes, while a young man recently returned home moves sand around, trying to make a beach to attract American tourists to his family’s hotel.

This man, Pasquale, has illusions of grandeur, which endears and endangers him equally, and each character in Walter’s book seems to have their own vision of reality which may or may not align with actual life. As though each of us constructs realities which become admirable and yet, impossible. Beautiful ruins. But in this novel, the title works on many levels.

The story moves back and forth in time, from Hollywood of the 1960s and the isolated Italian village where news of movie stars seeps in, to current day, when modern notions of celebrity and success can dilute even the purest of artistic sensibilities.

Walter’s style is vivid and Technicolor, each scene painted with practiced hands. There are moments of wisdom, moments of great feeling. A good book makes you stop and close your eyes, savoring description. A good book will cause you to marvel at its construction, at each diligently crafted piece and the way they fit together. A good book will make you say “I wish I wrote that” many, many times. And a good book will keep you awake after you finish, thinking about the many threads of its tapestry, synapses in your brain firing and refiring. A good book makes you feel like you may not write anything for a while. I loved Beautiful Ruins. You can buy it here. And tonight, I’m going to hear Jess Walters talk about it here. A few tickets still available, I believe.

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Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O’Connor lived from 1925 to 1964, a short life with its share of hardship and tragedy. When she was fifteen, her father died from systemic lupus erythematosus, the same disease which would be the cause of her death at 39 years of age. O’Connor was a fervent Catholic who struggled with religion and belief, and her fiction is largely defined by tragedy, loss and human struggle, and her spiritual contemplations.

I spent many years in Catholic school so I can relate to how a religious upbringing adds color, magic and drama to a childhood. In O’Connor’s fiction, God is a tangible force and biblical stories blend with stories of family until they hold the same weight. It was a blessing and a curse, the way that O’Connor believed, and this curse affected her characters, whether they were believers or not.

The Violent Bear it Away is the story of Tarwater, a would-be prophet kidnapped by his great uncle as a baby. Raised on a steady diet of prophesy, Tarwater finally breaks free and pursues his cousin, Rayber, a schoolteacher who had escaped the uncle to live a godless life. The conflict between religion and secularism (the paths chosen by the uncle and Rayber) are at the heart of the novel, meeting in the character of Tarwater, who now has to choose his future.

This all makes it sound like a dry read, which it is certainly not. O’Connor’s characters are crude and vivid and often, darkly humorous. She seems to bypass the veins of existence and get to the very arteries of human existence—the fear, the compassion, the primal urges. Even when the characters are displaying their worst selves, we can relate to their feelings. The story clips along, suspenseful and eerie. At times, it reads like a mystery or thriller. And throughout the novel, the atmosphere of the South seeps in…the dense, fragrant air, the buzzing of insects. Irony and tragedy and the struggles that define life. If you haven’t read either of O’Connor’s novels--this one, or Wise Blood, or any of her masterful short stories, I highly recommend. More on her life here, and an introductory study of her life and work here, written by the professor who introduced me to O’Connor’s writing.

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