Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

Willing to Work

By Mort Castle

There are nearly 400 member colleges in the Associated Writing Program, 400 schools turning out BAs, BFAs, MAs, MFAs and PhDs in writing. Teachers at many of these fine institutions have been heard to complain that, unlike previous generations of American writers, much of the current crop has done little but be students, which tends to not only prolong their adolescence, making them more prone to cell phone injury, but makes for their having little real world experience about which to write. That is, a guy like Jack London foreign corresponded, Dashiell Hammett private eyed for Pinkerton, Edgar Rice Burroughs wholesaled pencil sharpeners, and Ralph Nelson stomped matzo (this before his near Olympic winning fame as the originator of the Patagonian Bathtub Stroke).

Me, I have no writing degree; indeed my BSE resulted from my sending in the wrong form and not receiving my “Learn Meat Cutting at Home” correspondence course materials. Unlike many of today’s writers-in-training, I have been a practicing free enterpriser/wage slave on occasion and did indeed take from such endeavors certain knowledge and attitude which have in ways both subtle and pronounced informed my writing.

I therefore share the following selected reminiscences of vocationalizing in the hopes that they will provide action templates for today’s classroom confined writers.

As a yout’ I found summer employment at a non-franchise drive-in/walk up/get ptomaine restaurant. From the first, I was intensely goal-oriented: I wanted to earn enough money for a guitar. At this job, I learned about the necessities of proper sanitation; I had the task of scraping off the layer of black bugs inside the soft-serve machine. I learned to deal with boredom by watching George, the chef, a recent justifiably proud parolee, toss grasshoppers onto the griddle to watch them jump very high and very fast. And I learned something about the power of words, ordinary words, on people, ordinary people.

This latter epiphanous instant occurred when a lady of overly-ordinary face, wearing a wilted print dress, dragged an ordinary porcine toddler to the order window. She hesitated a moment, and then, ah! Literacy! Had she been unable to read, all would yet have been well. But …

There in plain sight were the advertising display rubber hot dogs my fellow indenturee Scott had neatly stuck in a plastic cup. No less neatly, he had provided a small explanatory sign:

GET YOUR FREE DORKS

STEP TO THE REAR FOR FITTING

Language is always evolving, so please understand, once upon a time, dork did not mean “rather a foolish, inept fellow, a schlemiel” but … dork. You know, like, “Get your hand outta your pants and quit playing with your dork!”

And so ordinary lady with ordinary fruit of her loom goes an ordinary shade of apoplectic puce and gives forth a most extraordinary scream, running backwards until she and backward schlepped progeny disappeared.

In four weeks, I earned the $110.00 required to buy my Kay guitar. It was not a very good guitar.

You see a kid with a guitar like that today, you’d say he’s some kinda dork.

The guitar led to a career in show business. Some would deem entertainment far preferable to gainful employment, but it is often not gainful. It was hootenanny time! The Brothers Fours, The Kingston Trio, The New Christy Minstrels … The Jolly Huntsmen, The Prairie Seekers, The Watermelon Skillet Flickers, The Laetrile Brothers and Mama Lulu … If you have seen A Mighty Wind, you have a solid idea of the kind of music I played and the people I performed with–except that our matching sweaters were from E.J. Korvette’s (the Wal-Mart of that era, only without the stylistic flair) and they itched. The Innsiders were a trio and the most successful of the musical aggregations with which I aggregated: one album, which went directly from the pressing plant to the cut-out bin (recently listed on EBay as “Totally Obscure Artists on Totally Obscure Label”), the national tour that got trimmed back to several clubs and radio stations between Alton, Illinois and Whitewater, Wisconsin, as well as a Prime Time Appearance on the only TV station in Chicago still broadcasting in black and white … Then The Beatles happened.

It seemed a natural leap for me to give standup comedy a shot. I had written the between songs comic monologues for the Innsiders (meaning I ripped off Lord Buckley, Lenny Bruce, Pigmeat Markham, Jackie Gayle, and Adlai Stevenson). I developed a sense of audience. I performed for a lot of people who grew to appreciate my talents, that appreciation growing the more they drank, people who knew how to express their appreciation: “You said dirty words in front of my precious wife, the mother of a number of my children!” bellows a guy who looks like he just drank a truck load of beer and then ate the truck, as Precious rips the leg off a chair and hands it to him so that he might set her moral universe once more in order. I was convinced: I wanted no career in which the audience could reach me.

There were other jobs that followed. Some of them proved not nearly as successful as those I’ve chronicled. They all served to convince me, I did not want to work. Not as podiatrist, patrolman, or paparazzi. Not as a puppy repairman. Not as dentist, day camp director, dignitary. Working Not. Not.

Everyone here at Storytellers Unglued knows the closest thing to not working: Writing.

So, guess what I do?

But that is not to say that my adventures in careerdom do not inform my writing. This is how the publisher described my short story collection, Moon on the Water:

This collection chronicles the American nightmare with tales of losers, the lost, the lonely and their personal monsters.

All of you writing students, nestled safe in the halls of AWP and arms of student loans, now you have something of the saga of how I developed my not-work ethic.

And you know, why, too, that upon reflection, I advise you: Stay in school.

The world is filled with willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them. –Robert Frost

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Work is love made visible.

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