Sometime around 2009 I spent a couple of nights primitive camping at Lake Sangchris in central Illinois. One of those stays involved trying to fall asleep despite a young female who greeted a fellow camper along the trial and could literally (and admittedly…) not stop talking for several minutes. Another time I was trying to get an early start when a horrible noise blared out from under the hood of a well-worn Toyota, and by the time I got to Danville I had no choice but find a shop. The mechanic came out in response to the noise and ended up cutting the belt to the A/C compressor, best ten bucks I’d ever spent.
For whatever reason, not long thereafter the first inklings of of this collection began to hit and over several years the story more or less unfolds, somewhere among that campground and the communities along the great National Road in a typical town along a tributary.
For the record, I am by no means a professional writer, as I understand it, since a professional writer exercises the craft on a regular basis whereas I just respond to the urge as it hits.
The takeaway, for me at least, is that it’s fruitless to re-imagine the past in terms of what-ifs and would-be mulligans; but given the chance to explore similar ingredients with a different recipe, life starts to make a bit more sense.