Part 1: Baseball Book Goes Wally World

“Past Page Turner Stomach Turner”

Here’s an idea that resulted in a Past Page Turner. Sign a contract with a major New York publisher to deliver a book called Pen Men “Baseball’s Greatest Bullpen Stories Told by the Men Who Brought the Game Relief.” 

I’d (somehow) interview in the neighborhood of seventy five of these unique famous and infamous major league baseball players---relief pitchers, bullpen catchers and coaches. As a bonus I’d toss in first-hand relief pitching memories from the game’s great play-by-play announcers---Mel Allen, Red Barber, Ernie Harwell, Harry Cary and many more. All of this flying by the seat of my pants commitment to bag these celebrities who, spoiler alert, had little or no interest in meeting some unknown writer, who for free, wanted to record their Pen memories. Digging up pen men from the 1930s to the then, early 1990s, it would be a history focused on the Pen that, as it suddenly occurred to my interviewees, might make a lucrative biography when they “got around” to writing it themselves.

Try that one bagging the likes of, along with many others Goose Gossage, Tug McGraw, Rollie Fingers, Dennis Eckersley, Bob Ucker, Tim McCarver, Hoyte Wilhelm, quite the prick by the way, and Jim Bouton. Bouton, who later having read the advanced copy, would call the publisher threatening to “sue our asses” for something he’d said on the record about young “ladies” slipping into the bullpen to give the pitchers relief! Sue? Really Jim! Come on, we read your tell-all best seller Ball Four!

Now, as to the Wally World reference. In retrospect it may not have been a great idea to jack up the pressure of this project by deciding that, since I would be conducting the majority of these in-person interviews in one summer---from Boston’s Fenway Park to San Francisco’s Candlestick capped off early the next year with a run down to Florida for Spring Training, that this might present a wonderful family togetherness opportunity. 

So, why not load up the old Cairns min-van (thanks for the Idea Chevy Chase) with an 80-year-old mother, a forty five year-old wife, who finally showed signs of a nervous breakdown in traffic somewhere near Dodger Stadium. and my two “are we there yet?” kids, ages 10 and 14. 

So, “ALL ABOARD!”  For a triple jointed “vacation” New England, All Points West and then if we all lived, Florida the next spring about the time Walt Disney’s cash registers started to ring) that would, unbeknownst to me, begin by driving into the teeth of a New England approaching Hurricane called (irony) Bob. Oh, having just taken on a bit more excess baggage---a couple of ancient aunts and a dog we picked up outside of Boston---in an effort to heroically beat this gale. 

I would weather-the-storm only to find myself home in a couple of weeks back in North Carolina where, after pushing Florida back until the following spring, I’d launch that little 7,000 mile round-trip swing west. A drive that would suddenly, somehow again, take a family centric back seat to little out of the way stops that had nothing to do with pantsing old ball players and play-by play guys for interviews.  Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon----you get the idea!

My mother from the rear of the van: “While we’re out here why not make a run up to Denver to see my great niece?”  Great idea Mom any follow up requests?  “Well, we could scoot down to San Diego to visit one of my long lost relatives.” This would, had I caved, been a cup of tea with a Susie something or other, a nonagenarian, who wouldn’t know a splitter from a slider. So, with the challenge of bagging the celebrity interviews, just to relieve the pressure, I found myself behind the wheel humping that minivan west between eight and fifteen hours a day. 

 How would those guys scratching and spitting out there in the Bull Pen (had they cared) have described this writing project? How about a cluster fuck! 

Leg one, off to Boston where just before the hurricane hit I managed to pay a visit to an old reliever named Broadway Charlie Wagner, a natural story teller who had some great ones about his days on the road rooming with Ted Williams.  Things were looking up. The next day I would chat at Fenway with Jeff Reardon, the Sox red hot closer, a guy who would wind up his career with 367 saves.

I was on my way. Then Hurricane Bob raised its ugly head and the Reardon interview was lost in the life threatening winds. Oh, we were staying with my aunts, my mother’s sisters, in Marshfield Beach, about a fifty minute drive up Route 3 to Boston’s Fenway Park.  

Problem.  

We hit the beach along with the hurricane, and Marshfield was suddenly under orders to evacuate. My aunt Irene refused to put Coco her schnauzer  in a “safe keeping” shelter and so the writer of Pen Men, van driver, father of the freaking century had to come up with a plan post haste. What I came up with was in, fact, a bad plan.  According to the radio, the storm was moving northeast. I looked at the map loaded, the aunts, Coco, my mother, the wife, and the kids and struck out for safety. Hartford Connecticut---off the storm’s path, was just a two hour jaunt up I-90.  

We’d motel there and ride out hurricane. I’d call Fenway and beg for a reboot of the Reardon interview.  Certainly the Sox would understand. One would think that by now I might have seen a portent of things to come on the western trip. And being of sound mind, I’d just take the St. Martin advance check, and drop it in the mail with a little note to my would-be editor saying “Due to my health (mental) I regret to inform you that the bull pen book will not be possible.” 

The deal beaker should have been on the run to Hartford. We found ourselves in gridlock traffic with the Bean Town populace all beating it west to avoid the hurricane. My question was---after flipping off a horn blowing idiot with a bumper sticker that read SOUTHIE DOESN’T SUCK---how many of these windblown vehicles inching along were stocked with livid kids, three octogenarians, an angry wife, a yapping dog and a driver who was seriously considering giving up the writing project of his life? 

In an attempt at brevity, I will “fast” forward to five hours later slogging in to our safe haven---a rain soaked motel off interstate I-90. I made my way through the lobby, trying to ignore the NO PETS SIGN on the front desk, noting that the place looked a bit dark and dank for early evening. The manager quickly informed me that we were very fortunate to bag the last two rooms within miles and although there had been a power outage, that things would be back to normal before we knew it.  Before I grabbed my credit card, I stole a quick look back into the parking lot. Sheets of rain. The mini-van appeared to have been blown several parking spots over. “The two rooms, we’ll take them,” I said.

Sparing my readers the details I will say this. It was damned fortunate that the lobby was pitch black because otherwise I don’t think my aunt Irene could have made it to her room past management without explaining her yapping purse. In fact, we all were in for the longest, darkest evening of our lives. Somewhere around eight O’clock, the power came on. The motel’s idea of power being one candle per room.  Just settling down, the kids, who were rooming with me, had gutted the motel’s snack machines for their candle lit dinner. There came a knock at our door.

Aunt Irene. 

It seems that she had been constipated since early in the week, and that Coco was suffering from quite the opposite affliction. She said, according to the night clerk at the front desk, there was a pharmacy just a few miles up I-90. And….she was wondering if I might brave the storm and get a dose of Dulsolax for her and some Imodium for Coco.

So, with Jeff Reardon lost in the wind, I’d now be driving back into the teeth of a howling gale to a pharmacy where I would be asking the druggist to show me two potencies aimed at making one go and the other one stop!

Here’s the (mixed metaphor) pisser. I’m going to wrap this up by saying that yes, two days later we all---bag, baggage and Coco---landed back in Marshfield Beach. I eventually got the Reardon interview and we made it back to North Carolina to launch phase two of this ODDessy.  Now as to the pisser, when I drove over a hill less than a quarter of a mile from THE LIGHTS OUT MOTEL, what do you think I saw? A freaking town lit up like a Christmas tree---so there would be no power outage in the Walgreens when a puzzled druggist led me to the purchases that would please aunt Irene greatly when one of them opened her and the other plugged up that *^%&ing Coco.  

Oh, since this is a Past Page Turner book blog, readers will be “relieved” to know about the writing of a book that is now ancient history that as I awaited the Reardon interview in a rain soaked Fenway Park, I found myself in the middle of a scene that (me with ever the eye out of this kind of action) could only be described as bull pen behavior. The stands were empty. I was sitting behind the dugout when a PR lady brought a group of “challenged” children down and seated them right behind the dugout.  She said, “Now some of the players will be coming out to warm up soon, and just call to them and maybe they will autograph your scorecards.”  

Minutes later, Tony Pena, the quintessential bullpen catcher came out and started to long toss right there in front of the kids.  Seconds later the kids were screaming at the top of their lungs, “Mr. Pena, Mr. Pena can we have your autograph?” (Or words to that effect). 

Now my guess is that Tony may have been a bit hung over from the Hurricane layoff, and screaming kids wasn’t exactly what he needed to hear!  So without looking at the little catcallers, he spun around and shouted to them, “Shut the f*%# Up!”  Bullpen behavior of the highest order, I thought.  But then Pena, who obviously had not been given a heads up by the PR lady, looked at the kids and realized.  Well, he signed everything in sight but me!  So, as suspected, bullpen guys are pretty good guys---just a lack of communication in this case.

As to the Reardon interview, that went well---compared to the “family” Hurricane Bob effort that led me to it. I learned a thing or two about his joining the great relievers like Gossage and Eckersly in the 300 Save Club. I thanked the big right hander and was on my way, more than pleased to throw my tape recorder in the bag, and point the mini-van South

Westward Ho in part II!

Part 2: Wally World West

One would think that after the New England beginnings---riding on the winds of Hurricane Bob, that any sane person would just tell his family, “Look, this Wally World--THE CAIRNS GO WEST--- summer vacation will just be a big disappointment. I have a book to write, dozens of interviews, I’m working under a contract with an actual completion date.  Sooooo…family stays at home for this one and when I get all this interviewing and writing tied up and done, then----next summer----we celebrate by all heading west together.  Who knows maybe there will be a book tour, and I’ll be chatting up Pen Men in Hollywood on ESPN’s UpClose with Roy Firestone!”

My wife: “Bob, your mother is 80 years old this might be the last time that we as a family. . . (Fill in the blank!)”

The “Are we there yet?” twins:  “You promised. You promised!”

Liz: (the 10 year-old) “We went though that awful hurricane with you and that pooping machine of a dog of Aunt Irene’s so you could write your old book!”

Matt: “You promised me that I’d get to meet all those ballplayers, see a game in Dodger Stadium and Candlestick Park, and be your ‘assistant!’”

Alyce:  “I’ve given our MasterCard to every freaking Embassy Suites Hotel from here to the Pacific Ocean. We are packed, loaded, and locked and so you might as well crank up that Mini Van, right now mister!” 

California Here We Come!

And, by the way, what better way to kick off a good old fashioned family fun adventure like this than to have Elizabeth, again the 10-year old, just as we’d pulled out on I-40 west of Raleigh, eye-ball the pasture of an NC State University cattle breeding farm and say, “Hey, Dad, look at those two cows playing wheel bower over there. What’s up with that?”

Sadly, all I could think was what a perfect jump start for the writing of a book about the Bull Pen.

We were headed to Nashville, Tennessee.  Why? Because Alyce’s cousin Susan lives in Nashville! Did her husband Charles pitch several years in the pen as a closer with the Cleveland Indians?  Actually no he didn’t. Charles is an engineer, a great guy, but if the catch we had in his backyard was an indicator, then he has a fastball that wouldn’t break wind.  Now, he does love baseball! And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I had a chance to “interact” with some of the game’s great bullpen pitchers during this out-of-the-way stay in Tennessee.

When I say interact, what I mean is that I---sitting at Charles’s kitchen table knocking back a few beers---made copious notes on some of the game’s great bullpenners.

Charles has a world class gathering of gum cards---Topps, Bowman, Fleer and Red Man!

And so with pad and pen in hand, I was able to grab research from the backs of his incredible collection. It’s not that I hadn’t been doing my due diligence, research wise, on relief pitching for the past few months. But there were some new and interesting factoids here on the cards. Nice ice breakers when I interviewed these players. I mean, who knew that Tug McGraw landed the nickname Tug because he was an aggressive breast feeder? I had no idea that Lee Smith enjoyed hotdogs at the Ruthian level before crossing the white lines to save a game.

And to Top (s) it all off, Charles, realizing that he and his cards were making a contribution, was showing a great deal of interest in my project. Would I actually be talking to Harry Cary, Mitch Williams, Lee Smith, Larry Sherry, etc? Yes, I would and no offense to Alyce’s family---great people and a nice time during our two days there—but if, in fact, I was going to get these players pen memories on tape, then I had to be dealing with the real live players.

Gum cards and some of the obscure facts they brought (usually in a little cartoon blurb on the backs of the cards) were nice but don’t bring much to an interview.  I had ballplayers to stalk and so the following morning we---bag and baggage---were headed to St. Louis---the Cards were playing the Cubs.

Now we might as well get right to the bag and baggage issue.  If one were to     grade me on the chasing down of these ballplayers, I will, with some pride, take my place at the head of the class.  But when it came to the bag and baggage I probably wouldn’t be inducted into the Porters Hall of Fame. That said, I left Raleigh with a plan and somehow (usually soaked with sweat on departure mornings) made it work. 

I purchased a huge Carry All bag which we called The Bump.  Inside said bag---every morning while my family was waving bye-bye or destroying an Embassy Suites Breakfast Bar---I hefted and loaded seven suitcases in that bag perched atop the mini-van. Each suitcase was numbered and had its own special location---kids in the back, Alyce and me in the middle, and my mother, who clearly had packed for the distant future, in the front.  When in place, they were zipped up, then snugly bungee corded to the roof for the ride west.

This might be the place that a reader would enjoy an anecdote or two about me gripping the steering wheel, barreling across the country and glancing in the rear-view mirror to see bags flying off the back of the van like shingles leaving a roof in a windstorm.

That didn’t happen!

But I’ll tell you what did.  There were constant, seemingly nonstop---requests for some obscure item buried in let’s say, bag number 4 or suitcase number 7.  “Dad, can we pull over? I need my Orioles cap!”   “Well, while you’re getting Matt’s cap, then I think I packed my purse by mistake and could certainly use some lip gloss!”

There were no GPS’s, no Alexa in the early ‘90s. So during these unpack, repack breaks, Alyce and I would typically fight over the distances to the next hotel. In this case, as I recall, St. Louis was well within striking distance, less than four hours from Nashville. But we were going to a night game, and I had to bag my interviews before the game. So my mother’s lip gloss and Matt’s Oriole’s cap weren’t dead center on my driver/bell captain/father/writer’s radar.

I can’t say this trip mirrored Chevy Chase’s Family Vacation perfectly, but there were times when it came damned close. I did not get ghosted by a hot blonde (Christy Brinkley in a red sports car) or get trapped by vandals in East St. Louis, Illinois. But we did, thanks to a last minute, “Turn here!” from my wife, find ourselves almost out of gas, asking directions in a St. Louis neighborhood on the north side of town, a place called College Hill, which I would later learn is considered the most dangerous area in the city.  How did that go?  Well, it’s about 110 degrees and I’m leaning out of the driver’s window looking like Clark Griswold’s twin brother asking what had to be either a pimp or a coke dealer for directions. And by the look on his face my location in question might as well have been Buckingham Castle.  “Excuse me, Sir but I’m running low on gas, and need to get to the Embassy Suites at (Alyce/Magellan is shouting the location in my ear) 610 North 7th Street.  Can you help me?” 

Well, now having taken a quick survey of the clientele there in the minivan and finding a grandmother, two white as the new driven snow kids and a couple of yuppie parents not exactly what you might call his “target” audience for sales, (perhaps for shooting!) he responded appropriately, saying, “If I was your white ass, I think I’d be getting out of here. You run out of gas in about an hour or so all that’ll be left of this shit machine will be the fuckin’ cement blocks it’s sittin on!”

And as I (thank you God) watched the light turn green and hit the gas Matt took time out of his busy day to shout, “Well, guess what my dad’s writing a baseball book, and we’re going to Bush Stadium to meet major leaguers tonight!”

The response which I feared would be gun fire wasn’t. The pimp/drug jockey actually shouted after us, “If you see Lee Smith, tell him he cost me a hundy large last night when he gave up that dinger to Sandberg!”

There are details that beg to be skipped and checking in to a big city hotel when you have a pressure packed night ahead of you clearly makes the list. Matt and I showered, braved the mid western heat, hit Will Call at Bush Stadium, picked up our passes and in a matter of minutes I had Matt in his seat.

Suddenly I was on the field and found myself standing behind the batting cage talking to none other than Steve Stone, the man whose curve ball made him a twenty five game winner and Cy Young Award winner with the Baltimore Orioles.  Stone, bless his heart, was the radio/TV sidekick of the Great Harry Cary.  Hell, forget the Cy Young Award, Stone deserved broadcasting’s medal of honor.

Imagine sitting through 162 (not counting spring training) games watching Harry load up on Budweiser while listening to him promote every swinging restaurant and bistro in Chicago. That name Harry Cary comes with alliteration but Comp Cary would be just as good.  There was a comic, a great impressionist, who was a regular on ESPN’S UpClose with Roy Firestone. This guy, whose name escapes me now, not only did a great impersonation of this broadcasting icon he framed the picture of Harry to perfection. 

Cary:  “High inside fast ball to Dawson, a little chin music following that homer he hit the last time up. You know, Steve, I’ve had some great seafood in my life but the best in Chicago for my money is Eddie V’s Prime Seafood on Rush Street. Another high inside fastball and this time Dawson goes down in the dirt. He’s up now staggering a bit but he was clearly hit by the pitch. 

You know, Steve, another great one for surf and turf is my friend Ditka’s, a great meal at a fair price. Both dugouts have emptied, and we have ourselves a real donnybrook on our hands out there now.”

This was the Great Harry Cary and so with that in mind, I asked Stone, “Do you think Harry will talk to me about relief pitching? I’m working on a book about the bull pen and . . .”

Stone took a drag on his cigar and said, “Well, it really depends on which Harry shows up tonight. He’s sitting over there in the Cubs dugout shooting the shit; take a shot at him and good luck!”

As I scurried over to the Cubs bench it occurred to me that perhaps, had I been thinking ahead, knowing that Buds were off-limits on the field, that I would have been wise to have at least offered him a handful of coupons for one of those eateries he frequented back in the Windy City. 

It wasn’t just the dragging of the old family boat anchor along on this project, which (excuse the term) didn’t exactly make this project smooth sailing. I was barely into it here in St. Louis, lurking in the Cubs dugout planning my approach to Harry Carey for a bullpen tidbit or two, and as I stood there in the early evening shadows, I came to the realization that this project alone may be a bit more than I could chew.

Why did it take me this long to come out of my creative cloud?  Well, I wasn’t just standing there in the dugout watching Harry conduct a local radio interview. As I looked around me, I realized that I was in line.  There must have been six or seven radio, TV and print reporters---all with recognizable call letters, you know little eye catching logos like ESPN---waiting for a sound bite or comment from the great Harry Carey.

When the last of this pack had had their way with Harry, he simply stood up and said, “Gotta get up to the booth. Almost game time!” 

It was like he could smell his first cold Budweiser. I’d whiffed on Harry Carey.

Then just as he tried to step by me, I blurted. “Harry, I’m a friend of Jeff Odenwald, and I’m writing a book called Pen Men, about the bullpen. Could you give me just one of your favorite bull pen memories?”

I actually heard myself say that. Beforehand I hadn’t for even a second thought about playing the Odenwald card. Jeff was a great friend. He was the Cub’s Director of Marketing, and we had talked about the book but made no promises were made from Jeff on Harry. In fact, the week before I headed west, in a phone call he’d said almost--to the word-- what Steve Stone had suggested.  “Harry’s Harry, if you see him, tell him I said hello and Cairns….!”

“What?”  I’d said.

“Good @&%#ing luck!”

And that’s exactly what I got, good @&*%ing luck! because Harry sat back down and said, “Turn on that recorder. I’m going to have to make this one quick!”

Now here’s something you won’t read in the book. Harry Carey, not unlike Dick Vitale, speaks in a normal voice; if you heard him in a non media conversation---no mikes, no recorders, and no cameras---you wouldn’t even recognize his speech as Harry Carey.  But, boy, when I hit Record on that min-cassette of mine, here he came. It was Harry doing Harry.  The story was a great one.  Palmerio, the Cubs beloved first baseman, had been traded in a five player deal to the Rangers for Mitch Williams, the reliever, who was justly called Wild Thing.

Here’s Harry in full Harry voice: “So, the Chicago fans are really pissed because they loved Raffie Palmerio, and now the first time Williams comes out of the pen, it’s the ninth inning (Cubs leading by one) and all he has to do his get three outs, and its! ‘Cubs Win!’ Cubs Win!’” So what does Williams do? Well he walks the first guy, hits the second batter with a wild pitch, and then proceeds to walk the third guy to fill the bases.  And the fans are really giving it to him because we’re playing in Wrigley. And that’s when I saw the greatest bullpen action in all my years in the booth because Mitch Williams stuck out the next three hitters to win the game. And Chicago? Well, boy, we all enjoyed a Bud or two that night because now we had our closer!”

Wow, thank you, Harry; thank you Jeff, and speaking of Mitch Williams, well, he’d agreed to talk to me earlier and so on the wings of Harry’s story, I was off to the Cub’s pen for a word or two with The Wild Thing!

Part 3: Wally World Whoa

As to my blog (this advice to writers), the question is how can I drive 7,000 miles, carryout about a dozen crucial baseball interviews, stories that can make or break my first contract for a non-fiction book with a big time publisher, and not make this blog, When Harry (and a bunch of  ballplayers) met Bob?

Well, for the sake of this writer’s blog, I’ll just let the reader assume (and since you must be reading and have figured that out) that this---taking a grandmother, wife and two antsy kids along for the ride, in fact, was no way to write a book.  Maybe put me in line for bus driver, father, porter, money machine, referee and Family Man of the Year. But trust me, no way to write a book dependant on interviews from major league--we really don’t give a crap about your little project--- baseball players.

So, again, should anyone still be reading at this point with an interest in the baseball piece of this story, then I’d highly recommend Pen Men “Baseball’s Greatest Bullpen Stories Told by the Men Who Brought the Game Relief,”  St. Martin’s press.  You can have your very own copy from Amazon for (either hardback or paper, used for pennies)

https://www.amazon.com/Pen-Men-Baseballs-Greatest-Bullpen/dp/0312088736/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=Pen+Men&qid=1592261477&s=books&sr=1-4

Now, back to the blogging/heads up to any parent/writer who might be presented with an “opportunity” like the one that I’ve set up here.

As the years have passed, and the book (which eventually did get excellent reviews from the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune to USA TODAY and Booklist, thank you very much) my favorite memories  aren’t of the one-on-ones with the games’ great players. The recollections of this project are from the Keroucian On The Road, Chevy Chase Wally World, and Steinbeck Travels With Charlie, moments that took place along America’s highways:  Kerouac had drugs and poetry, Chevy had Christie Brinkley, Steinbeck had a poodle, and I had baseball and family.

As I fall to sleep at night now, it’s rare when one of these moments doesn’t bring a smile to my drooling face. Where a normal man might find himself counting left handed relief pitchers jumping bullpen fences, I drift off to netherland, in the “arms” of my loving family.

• I like beer, and after 8-15 hours on the road a six pack of Bud Lights can be a welcome bed fellow, unless your 80-year-old mother and daughter are right next to you snuggled in to their Embassy Suites bed, with the elder of the twosome reciting a family history of alcoholism and retelling the story for the 100th time about how my Grandfather Cairns didn’t have a drink until he was fifty and died and alcoholic!

• Young then, in my 40s, it was my habit to run at least three miles every morning while my family chowed down at the Embassy Suites breakfast buffets. One would think that after I’d run and showered that they’d be pleasantly packed full of bagels and cereal, perched there in the van as I bungeed down their last suitcase---waiting for the next exciting USA moment.  Actually no!  I’d typically find them lounging around the room, watching TV, complaining to Alyce about how many miles it would be until we saw their cousin Kristin at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.  Then I’d hear their mother or my mother say something like, “Well, if you’re father doesn’t have to stop every ten minutes to interview some old baseball pitcher, then we should be there in about ten hours!” 

• Oh, and speaking of stopping every ten minutes. Writers, try this one on for size.  Take your family/kids across the country (forget that you have interviews to conduct) and see how many times (think big here) you are badgered from the back seat to stop and see The World’s Biggest Ball of String; The Caves of Curious Creatures; The Wax Museum of the West; Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Art Museum; Leila's Hair Museum; the UFO Watch Tower and (my mother’s request) the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum! Final thought here:  Had I made a really wrong turn and ended up in Cooperstown, New York, would I have had one request for a quick look-see at the National Baseball Hall of Fame?  Probably not!

• Oh, staggering into an EARLY BIRD DINNER SPECIAL at a Winnemucca, Nevada Embassy Suites, following a neat little nine hours behind the wheel, I decided that instead of having the “traditional” evening meal with the family that I would opt for a couple of beers and go play the slot machines in the hotel’s bar.  I tossed my credit card to Alyce to cover the “eager eaters” and as I turned to make my escape for some peace, quiet and entertainment, I heard my mother say, “Alyce, you might want to keep an eye on him.  You know his great uncle had a horrible gambling addiction, brought his entire family down!”

San Francisco is a beautiful city---no news flash there.  Beautiful unless A.) you are trying during your jog to sort out your early morning thoughts, preparing for an interview with Steve Bedrosian, the Giant’s closer, a Cy Young Award winner and  a guy who had a back story involving his son, that I knew would make a unique contribution to my stories from the pen. 

In short, the hills were murder on my cramping (ten hour cooped up in a car) legs and those famous and lovely streets so crowded that I must have run into, or dodged about 200 angry vendors. All the while---back at the downtown hotel---my entourage was planning my bus, boat/tour of the Golden Gate City---everything from Telegraph Hill to Alcatraz!

With the day behind me and the ladies off to shop and then dine, Matt and I cabbed to Candlestick so daddy could conduct three important interviews, Bedrosian, Norm Sherry (bullpen catcher and brother of Larry Sherry, the Dodgers MVP for the ’59 World Series.) Norm’s claim to fame and story was that he’d caught Sandy Koufax in the Spring Training game that Koufax overcame a control problem that changed his career. And, if I was in luck, I’d pick off a few comments from Larry Anderson, a classic Pen Man, who had set a Guinness World Record for, while sitting in the Astros bullpen, attaching Sunflower seeds to his face.

Thanks to a family matter, I went two for three that day---got the Sherry, Koufax story, talked to the great Sunflower seed record holder. But when Steve Brodsian came out of the locker room for our scheduled talk where was I?  Well, I was in a panic, racing around the ballpark looking for Matt who was told to stay in his seat behind the Giant’s dugout and not budge until I came back.  And where did I find him?  Well, he noted that a lot of home run balls were being delivered down the leftfield line to the bleachers during batting practice and, “Just thought I’d cruise out there to see if I could bag myself a couple!” he said.

So no Brodosian---but Sherry and Anderson.  And then there was the little spot of family bother when Matt and I returned to the hotel from Candlestick late that night---having to pay a limo driver in the dark of night for the trip as there were no cabs in site.  Matt runs into the hotel room and shouts at the top of his lungs that we came home in limo.

Daughter, his little sister, goes silent on me for three full days!

But wait there’s more---bad directions from Alyce Magellan Cairns and I, an hour late, race into the hotel lobby in St. Louie Obispo just as the hero of the ’59 series, Larry Sherry is bagging the interview---heading to the parking lot.

Bullpen luck is with me. Evidently he had talked to his brother, who I’d interviewed two days before. And Norm liked the idea for the attention to the bullpen and hadn’t found ME as his brother quoted, “…all that bad!”

Oh, a few more lowlights, reasons to never mix family with a writing project, and then I’ll give you my blog bye-bye.  Promise!

On the day I was supposed to meet a mid-level retired left-handed reliever near the grand canyon, where he and his wife had RV’d in for a bit of vacation, I, running late as usual revved out of our Las Vegas Hotel, (two days of R&R there where the exhausted “alcoholic/gambler” had stayed in the room and watched old movies).  So, I’d finally load up the passengers, take off ---well mapped with directions to The Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon and suddenly find myself in the damndest traffic jam of the trip. We make bad turns on top of bad turns and forty five minutes later I find myself sitting back in front of our hotel. I storm in to get “better”directions from the front desk, and as I pass my mother’s mini-van window she offers,  “Robin, if the breakfast buffet is still open I could use a banana or two and maybe some packets of Sweet and Low,  just for the road!”

I will spare you the story of the air conditioner blowing up in Oklahoma; the call from our neighbors in Raleigh saying that Augie, our Weimerheimer, is at the Vets with some kind of stomach problem from something she ate; the no show in New Orleans, by a former pen catcher; and the fact that my eighty year old mother---a candidate for sainthood---who had been sleeping with our daughter and in the bed next to our son for the past 16 nights, came into our adjoining room about midnight and said, “I love them both, but that’s it. I’ve had it. You’ve got them both with you two for the rest of the trip!”

           As to the Florida piece of this horror story---Disney vs. Pen Men---the following spring, with the same cast of characters? 

         Don’t ask!

So, in summary, my fellow writers, you have several choices in regard to the writing of books that are interview dependant when your family is, oh, I don’t know, within 50,000 miles of you. In retrospect, my thoughts are, after the excitement of the positive reviews from all those major newspapers and magazines, the ego kick of being flown to Hollywood to ESPN’s Up Close With Roy Firestone, the radio, TV, bookstore readings, the way your fellow writers look at you---Don’t do it!

Unless of course you, like me, have a bit of Chevy Chase in you. And in the end, come to the realization that maybe, just maybe, you’re a better parent than you are a writer! 

Catch 'Em While You Can

No need for a show of hands here, but how many of us have heard ourselves say, “I wish I’d have done that?”

Right to the point here.

None of us are getting any younger and the older members of our families have our history between their ears.  While these memories are still functioning our job is to record these recollections.

It’s our last shot at our family’s history, the story about our past to be passed on to future generations.

Now, just to let you know that I have practiced what I’m preaching here, I did this with my family but I’ll also refer to my books, Pen Men “Baseball’s Greatest Bullpen Stories Told By The Men Who Brought The Game Relief, “ and V&Me “Everybody’s Favorite Jim Valvano  Story.”

In writing those oral histories—equipped with my hand-held recorder—I interviewed several hundred people.  Of those hundreds at least fifty are no longer alive.

From V&Me, well Dean Smith just passed away last week.  And the week before we lost Don Shea, my old friend the WTVD TV sports reporter, who became one of V’s business partners.  Yesterday it was Jerry Tarkanian, the UNLV coach.

Like the voices of Pen Men these folks’ stories (in many cases), had I not captured them, would have been gone forever.  If my premise had no merit the National Baseball Hall of Fame wouldn’t have asked (and received) all 72 cassette tapes of the voices of Pen Men.

Oh, pardon the transition, but that said, how many of us have living memories of WWII in our family?

Better get them!

Okay, point made.  Now let’s get busy.

• Purchase (should you not have one) a hand-held recorder and a number of mini-cassettes. There are some excellent digital recorders (which I use as well) but sometimes the recordings get lost in the technology and so I’d recommend the use of tapes—which you can label and keep—that’s what the Baseball Hall of Fame now has in their archives—-my cassettes labeled with each announcer, player or baseball guy’s name.

• Okay, if you’re looking for a hand-held recorder (good old Amazon), click here. If you’d rather use a hand-held video camera that can work as well but bring the recorder as a backup because some people (“Oh, how do I look? Etc.) clam up when the little red light comes on.

• Identify the oldest and most lucid members of your family, the folks who know the stories and have the history. Shake your family tree until the names of these people fall like acorns. They don’t have to be elders; any of us might have stories that have been passed along over the years.

• Make a list and add to this list when Cousin Mary says (during your interview), “Oh, you have to talk to Katherine, she has the best stories.” For the most part you’ll get and enjoy important, meaningful pieces of your family history.

Who knows, Katherine may even come up with something as fun and as trivial as this!!!!

My uncle Chub (90) told me this one last year and now Chub and I are the only ones who know the story about my Grandfather Roop who, as the town’s butcher and saint, fed the little mill town of Union Bridge, Maryland, through the Great Depression.  “So, on Halloween his son Johnny (my uncle who was later killed heroically in the Pacific in WWII) hooks a manure spreader to a pickup truck, waters down his load and as he’s fertilizing main street with the town cop on his tail, Johnny slams on the brakes, the cop rear-ends something that came from, well a rear-end and tears up the front end of the police car.  When the officer arrives at my Grandfather Roop’s meat market he hands Grandy a bill for $265 for damages done to the car.  My grandfather calmly walks to the huge basket where he kept the town’s IOUs pulled about a dozen of the cop’s unpaid bills and counting them out says, “Here you go, Donnie, this should cover it!!

• Back on task. Place these names of potential interviews (or anything you ever heard these relatives relate at reunions, etc.) on a note pad in preparation of your interviews. For instance (me talking to my older sister here about our grandparents) “E.A. I have a vague memory of Popa and Nana’s Georgetown town house, in Washington, DC. I know the address was 2733 P Street and I remember staying there in the late 1940s—there was a little cafeteria nearby, where we walked down a flight of stairs to eat. I remember the kitchen in the town house had furniture painted a bright green and that Nana had a fox stole that we called, ‘Na Nya!’ but that’s all I recall. Oh, except that from their bedroom window we could see a red light flashing off in the distance and that it was atop the Capital. Tell me everything you remember about 2733 P Street and our visits there.”

• It’s time to turn on that hand-held recorder, and with pen in hand open a loose leaf tablet, and to sit back and listen. If the storyteller triggers another memory that you might have or even one that isn’t in your notes, make a note and then use that note as a follow-up question. “You just mentioned our trips to the Smithsonian when we visited, I don’t recall that at all. Any specific stories from our trips there?”

• If you have old family photographs (may not even know who the people are) bring then along for the interviews as they make a wonderful catalyst for conversation.

• Okay, say your great aunt Sue lives in California and you’re here in North Carolina. How do you interview her? Through a series of phone calls or e-mails arrange to carry out the interview on the phone. There are neat little ear pieces for your recorders that make this possible. I interviewed Goose Gossage, the Hall of Fame pitcher, at three in the morning from his apartment in Japan where he was playing at that time. Ryan Duren, the great Yankee fastballer, the one with the thick wire rimmed glasses talked to me via the phone from a bathtub somewhere in Wisconsin.

• Oh, look for surprises. That’s one of the many joys of this process. I was talking to Mace Brown, the man who threw one of the most infamous pitches in baseball history, the one where Gabby Hartnett took a Mace fastball into the dark of the night costing the Pirates the pennant. It was called The Homer in the Gloamin’ I was prepared for this story, knew it down to the pitch count. And when Mace gave me it from his perspective he suddenly turned to his wife who was washing dishes and said, “Hon, do you remember that little movie camera I bought you that you used to film Babe Ruth’s last home run?” And then he told the story of the Babe’s last three in Forbes Field in Pittsburgh and how after he’d hit the last one (Ruth was with the Boston Braves then) how the Bambino touched home plate and came right to the Pirates dugout to go down the runway to the Braves locker room. Then just as he was ready to make his exit, he suddenly plopped down on the bench next to Brown, a rookie Pirates pitcher, looked down the bench at the Bucs players and said, “Boys, that last one felt good!”Now, that’s history and thanks to Mace Brown we know what Babe Ruth said after hitting his last home run. You may not have any Babe Ruths in your family but trust me you will, through this process, record some home runs.

• When you’ve interviewed everybody and anybody (it doesn’t have to be family, it can be close friends or neighbors) there are technical ways to take the spoken word and put it in writing.

• I sit at my computer and type every word that’s said into a document, going back and forth with the recordings—rewind, type, rewind, type. This is a very tedious task but it pays dividends in the end because by the time you’ve finished—although a great deal of the conversation may be unusable—you know what was said. Trust me repetition is a tremendous teacher.

• So you have it word for word transcribed. Now, don’t be shy about this, when necessary edit the heck out of it. Don’t change it; just make it make sense conversationally. Let one story lead to another to another until you have a “chapter” called, again for instance, “My Sister E.A Remembers Our Family.”

• When the identifying, the questioning, the recording, the transcribing and the editing is done, read each piece carefully and if you see anything that might merit a follow-up question (again, sometimes a phone call will do) go for it. You want the gathering to be complete!

• The presentation of this oral history is the easy part. Any and every printer or printing store—KINKOS—can take a disc of your work and present it to you in bound copies that will look like you’ve been published by Random House.

• About those old family photographs. Drop them into the copy. It will only enhance the history.And, hey, the finished product makes a great gift but the gift we’re talking about here isn’t limited to a package being opened by your great aunt on Christmas morning—it’s the life story of your family, something to be enjoyed and appreciated for generations to come.

Like Rithmetic---Readin' and Writin' Adds Up

If adult readers dig deep enough into their past they’ll find a writer to whom they owe a debt of gratitude.

A bit overdue but I’m here today to say, “Thank you, John R. Tunis!”

A lousy little grade school student, I loved lunch, recess, and hated everything else, especially fifth period, which we called library.

Hey, for forty minutes a day you had to be quiet and read.

It was my habit to grab anything off the shelf that had pages, find a nice warm spot in the sun next to a window and eye-ball Jane Duncan who was outside playing right field in an older girl’s gym class.

So it wasn’t all bad. But then one day it got better. Taking a break from my fixation on Jane I happened to glance down at a book I’d randomly snared.

The Kid From Tomkinsville, by John R. Tunis.

Reading the dust jacket I learned that Roy Tucker would enter the big leagues (a place I still thought I might end up some day) and that this unsophisticated country boy (which I could also relate to) would be overwhelmed by the luxuries of professional baseball (ah, the dream!).  That he’d be taken under the wing of the Dodgers’ veteran catcher Dave Leonard (I happened to be a pretty fair Little League catcher) and that Roy would soon learn that he’d be facing a great deal of hard work if he ever hoped to pitch for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Then, just as Roy began to prove himself worthy to wear the Dodgers flannels, a freak accident would threaten to dash his hopes of leading the team to a winning season.

Hold on to your library cards! Robin Cairns had become a reader.

Hey, I’m not saying that I didn’t still grab an occasional peek just to see how Jane was doing out there in her little gym suit. But that was the moment.  I was in for the long haul from the first page of this book to the final page of Tunis’s very last novel.

This recent find, The Kid from Tomkinsville, just happened to be the first of Tunis’s baseball series—eight novels about the Brooklyn Dodgers. I would read them all, the Dodgers series, then on to the Iron Duke, All American and Keystone Kids.

I’ve since learned (thank you Wikipedia) that the The Kid from Tompkinsville is often cited by sportswriters and commentators as the book that inspired childhood reading.  So I was one of Tunis’s little page turners, one who would grow up to write a number of baseball pieces for Sports Illustrated and SI for Kids,  as well as two baseball books, including a novel called The Comeback Kids. Hmmm, interesting a novel with the word kids in the title!

Having trotted out the above creds, I do so well aware that mine are NOT Hall of Fame numbers when compared to other baseball writers who followed in Tunis’s footsteps. These minor accomplishments are—for me—just a confirmation that writers can and do influence writing and reading.

I mean how else do you explain the fact that I can still name the characters from the Tunis books, with Roy Tucker, the Tomkinsville protagonist a given (hell, the character influenced Bernard Malamud’s hero in The Natural), and that two of my favorites were the lesser known Razzle, a grizzled old pitcher, and Chiselbeak, the Dodgers clubhouse attendant.

So it was through Tunis’s books that I learned about writing—characters, character development, plotting, the setting—all about time and place. All the while these stories of his fueled my passion for sports and at this ripe old age baseball remains one of the great loves of my life.

According to our friends at Wikipedia, Tunis (December 7, 1889 —February 4, 1975) is considered by many to be the ‘inventor’ of the modern sports story. He was an American writer and broadcaster. Known for his juvenile sports novels he wrote short stories and non-fiction, including a weekly sports column for The New Yorker magazine.

After graduating from Harvard and serving in the Army during World War I, he began his writing career freelancing for American sports magazines. For the next two decades he wrote short stories and articles about sports and education for magazines including Reader’s Digest, The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire.

And yet he never really considered himself a children’s writer. That said, all but one of his twenty-four books were published for juveniles and their success helped create the juvenile fiction book market in the 1940s.

Iron Duke received the New York Herald Tribune Spring Book Festival Award for best juvenile novel and was named The Horn Book Magazine Best Book. The Child Study Association of America gave its Golden Scroll Award to Keystone Kids.

I’m positive that the awards were well deserved but more importantly (at least to me) John R. Tunis’s works—and I read them all several times—impacted my life in a way that far surpassed lunch and recess. Given my choice today I’ll take library—the homeroom of John R. Tunis and of reading, and writing.

Book Signings: Fame or Down In Flames?

There have been many misconceptions in my life. High school for instance, sitting there on the bench during basketball games thinking that if I could just drop about 30 pounds that our head cheerleader would come crawling to me like a lonely reptile!

Numerous others come to mind but the in-store book signing experience might just top my list.

At best it’s that 15-minutes of fame Andy Warhol promised us. At worst, well, at least it will be fun.

Not so fast my published or soon-to-be published friends!

Now, I have to be clear about this experience because it applies, in my case, to a published author whose name wouldn’t turn a head if I tossed one of my books in a passing car’s open window.

And to my friends at book stores who do a great job with book signings, this life experience isn’t necessarily directed at you—this is just a heads up to future signers. Regardless of the experiences that await them they should know that in-store signings come with the publishing territory and is something that they all should consider doing.

At least once!

So, your book comes out, if it’s a national publisher or good regional press the publicist cranks out a press release, reviews begin to straggle in and somewhere in the backwash, through the publicity, calls are made from the publisher to booksellers—from the small independents to the Barnes & Nobles— “Bless ’em all, Bless ’em all.The long and the short and the tall”.

Eventually an events person at one of these stores bites and your publicist rings you up to say that they have “… an incredible opportunity for you.”

Thank you Jesus!

It seems that the Barnes & Noble in your hometown wants you to come for a book signing.  “Thanksgiving and Christmas are the big book selling window, so how does December 12 sound?”

“Well, that sounds great, I happen to have that date open (along with every other cold December night).

You learn that you may be asked to read a passage or two from the book, open the floor to a question and answer session and should expect to be signing books well into the night.

Publicist: “Does this work for you?”

“Absolutely!”

And there’s more good news. The book store will not only publicize the event in their newsletter they’ll splash little signs around their store—leading up to this big hoo ha—letting the free world know that Bob Cairns will actually be in the store—from 7:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. on December 12 (or whenever) to meet, greet and sign his new book.

“Wow!”

Let’s make that a small w—how about “wow!”

One important comment here.  No matter how many times you do this you will never, ever be quite prepared for the experience.  And again, I’m not talking about authors with the million dollar advances whose names are twice the size of the book’s title on their latest cover. These writers have freakin’ groupies, boy groupies and girl groupies, readers of all ages, fans who would buy a 20 pound armload of their books just to stand and gaze into the author’s (often) myopic eyes and gush about the book reading like poetry as the author inscribes something in iambic pentameter like, “ To Doris, all the best, Bill Bestseller.”

As an NC State University PR guy, whose job from time to time was to play the role of the publicist (Jim Graham’s Farm Family Cookbook for City Folks, by Jim Graham, the revered NC Commissioner of Agriculture; and then Secrets of Success “North Carolina Value-Based Leadership,” General Henry Hugh Shelton, 14th Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) I saw how book signings can and should go—long lines of gleeful buyers, books in tow, happy to meet, greet and (to the sound of a ringing register) leave with their signed copies.

Now, I’m struggling here, trying to come up with one personal experience that might come close to mirroring the above. Well, there was this one time (long story short) where the publisher kicked in a couple of hundred bucks for Champaign and I, according to Nancy Olson, then owner of Books at Quail Corners, crowned my event as the one that, thanks to my friends who showed up in number, set a rather dubious record—more booze consumed with less books sold in the history of the store.

But, again I’m grasping for a positive here, the one thing that I took from that experience (which was my first) was the fact that after I read from my baseball novel The Comeback Kids, there was this “lady” seated up front in one of the folding chairs, who began waving her hand.  When she spoke I knew she was clearly drunk, and believe me I may not know much about selling books, but I know drunk.  Anyway, she just gushed about the book and announced that her husband was the world’s biggest baseball fan and that “I just had to come to their home and read a passage or two to him!”

Hummmmm!

And then it hit me.  This was the woman who my wife and I had met at a party several months before. And, she, along with her also drunken husband, the fellow she thought I might like to drop by and read to sleep, had been so obnoxious and insulting that night that I had suggested (face to face) that she and her husband could both do something to themselves that would be unfortunately impossible and considerably uncomfortable. Then, my wife and I walked out the front door.

Well, she didn’t recognize me, obviously had no recollection of our meeting, so I kindly thanked her for the invite and told her that I’d get back to her on the personal reading for her husband.

That my friends, if not the highlight of my book signing experiences, is one of the more memorable.

Others come to mind.

• The flop sweats at a Chapel Hill coffee shop where the high-brow audience (while I read about baseball) traded conversational comments regarding the merits of the latte vs. the cappuccino. I recall, just as I was reading what I thought might be the funniest line in the novel, someone drowning the punch line in mocha, as in “My, you must try this mocha, it’s to die for!”

• The night I sat and sold zero books at a Research Triangle Barnes & Noble, having given up my Duke vs. NC State basketball tickets for this opportunity. Here an apologetic events person bowed and scraped, stating that they’d never (considering all the publicity they’d done) had a writer get shut out (her words) and that perhaps it was because I had written a basketball book (V&Me: “Everybody’s Favorite Jim Valvano Story”) and that I’d agreed to sign on the very night that NC State was (right down the road) playing Duke in basketball. Do ya, think?

• For yet another book store biggie “signing opportunity” I raced home from Pinehurst and the U.S. Open Golf tournament. Here I sat alone at a table, looking not unlike the You Know What in the punch bowl, while passersby refused to make eye contact (think street savvy New Yorker walking down one of Manhattan’s mean streets). It was so bad that I (a technique that I would recommend for any future ignored signers out there) actually left my “punch bowl” and began to look at books on nearby shelves, pretending to be a shopper. And then, there she was. A beautiful young girl was standing at my table looking at the pile of unsigned books. This was a June event and (so said the events lady) promised to be “. . . a natural for Father’s Day shoppers!” I left my faux shopping search, took my seat and asked, “Would you like a V&Me for your dad for Father’s Day?”“Well, no not really,” she said. “I’m an intern with PRSTREET and your friend Graham Wilson (the owner of the agency) asked me to come by tonight and get a photo of people lined up in front of your table with you signing books. He said he promised you that he’d run it in the PRSTREET newsletter. Blushingly, I recalled that I had asked Graham if he could do something like this, and so with the help of the store’s very apologetic events lady wrangled a few employees and queued them up for the photo op. That may have been the only book I signed that night and several weeks later—to add insult to injury— I received a copy of the newsletter featuring the photo from my friends at PRSTREET.

One more—and this was a classic—at the NC State book store they have an annual big percentage off Christmas sale. I was, again, Bic in hand, seated at a table by a very nice guy who had written a children’s book about an NC State Christmas Wolf (or something) and this guy was just killing me. Huge line—lambs to the slaughter—at the Christmas Wolf, almost nobody interested in V&Me.

I had promised to sit and sign until 9 p.m. and as the clock slid into that third hour with my sales at about a book an hour, I, having a two-hour drive home on a Friday night, called my wife and said, “I’m out of here!” And then he showed up. Suddenly here at my table was a man in his early 60s, just the right age to have been there when Jim Valvano and the Cardiac Pack won the National Championship in ’83.“May I ask you a question,” said the fan. “Certainly,” said I, pushing a book forward preparing to tell him what Jim Valvano was really like. “Can you tell me where the john is,” the guy said, “I’ve gotta go like a racehorse!”

I think you’re getting the idea, so I’ll close by saying this: did I ever sell any books at book signings? Certainly, and again, it is something that every author must do. But for me—the no-name author—more often than not those Andy Warhol 15-minutes ended in flames rather than fame.

So go in eyes wide open, aware that this signing deal is just that . . . a deal. And that there’s a bit of legalized prostitution at work here. You want attention for you and for your book. Booksellers, aware that traffic sells other books, aren’t just interested in selling your book.  They rely heavily on you, the author, to help bring out the troops and will ask for names and e-mail addresses of friends, relatives, and workmates, anyone who they might pepper with notices of your Big Moment.

Hey, come to think of it, maybe that was it. Start with a bookseller (emphasis on seller), then toss in my friends, relatives, and workmates, give me, the no-name author a stir, and, well, I don’t wish this for you, but perhaps that’s why more often than not I found myself in full blush afloat in the proverbial book signers punchbowl.

Independents' Day

Okay, even those whose daily reading is limited to road signs and that annoying “Crawl” that runs along the bottom of our TV screens have probably (at least) seen the DVD of the movie “You’ve Got Mail!” Hell, it starred Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan so thanks to these two great actors and a reasonably good (somewhat touching) script we have a nice introduction to the subject of this blog.

The small independent booksellers are getting screwed to their shelves by BIG BOX booksellers, those corporate giants who’ve all but priced (volume, volume, volume) the smaller booksellers out of the marketplace.

So, for the sake of the Tom Hanks character (Mr. Big Bookseller Pants’ viewpoint in the flick) we thought it might be helpful to readers to go to a quintessential independent seller (the Meg Ryan-like store) to remind us what (if anything) makes little “bookers” a viable—-in today’s economic environment—place to shop.

Pat Wilson (our Meg Ryan) manages the Pelican Book Store in Sunset Beach, a beautiful little beach town on the North Carolina coast.

Bob:  Pat, we’ve been to your shop, it’s wedged in an upscale strip mall just off a major beach road, easy access, plenty of parking, etc.  Pelican is a very attractive store with a nice book balance—from the latest bestsellers to older paperbacks. 

Readers can browse the aisles of your small well-kept shop, knowing that you’re perched right there behind the counter ever on the ready to lead them to the latest good read.  That’s all well and good; we love your store but tell us why we should shop the Pelicans of the marketplace as opposed to loading up with a bag of 20 percent off deals at a Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million before heading home or to the beach.

Pat: I think one of the great pluses you’ll find in the independent book store is in the shop’s staff. The person working with you is probably going to be an avid reader. All of our employees read and spend a great deal of time looking for good books to read, keeping an eye out for books for us to recommend.

When you go to one of the cookie cutter stores, a Books-A-Million or Barnes & Noble, you are probably going to be waited on by youngsters who are there to draw their paychecks. That’s not the case in the independent. We are a business but we make it our business to help our customers find that special book and typically when we recommend it we’ve read it.

That’s what we do and when you go into one of the Big Boys they often can’t tell you whether it’s good or not. The odds are that they not only haven’t read it they may not even know where to find it

Bob: How about Amazon, Barnes & Noble or other booksellers on-line?

Pat: If you buy it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble on-line you can see their write-ups or reviews, but they have ulterior motives when they give a review.  Then pop-ups on your computer will tell you that if you liked this book then you’ll like another book they’re selling. And that just isn’t always the case.  A lot of that marketing is ridiculous. They don’t have readers, it’s all computer-based and their computers don’t read anything.

Bob: How about pricing, the independent vs. the corporate giant?

Pat: Our prices in this independent and with many independents, well, we discount our hardback bestsellers at 20%. You can’t find a better price anywhere else.  That’s one of the great myths of the independents vs. the big bookstores, and here’s another fact—if you do get it cheaper at one of the big corporate stores . . . for every penny you save there you may double that savings by buying from an independent where the sellers read, care and recommend.

The savings will be in our suggestions because when you leave you haven’t bought a bad book. You can lose every penny you “save” at one of the biggies by buying a bad book! We have a book on our shelf right now that is so good and I haven’t seen it being recommended anywhere. It’s called I Am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes, and it is so good and we know it because we’ve all read it here.  So we’re selling it and people are leaving with a book that is really, really good. I’ve had people call me back and say, “You were right, it was so good!”

Bob: And oh, we hear that the independent booksellers have an angel; according to a NY Times piece, James Patterson has donated $1,000,000 to help save the independents, saying, “I just want to get people more aware and involved in what’s going on here, which is that, with the advent of e-books, we either have a great opportunity or a great problem. Our bookstores in America are at risk. Publishing and publishers as we’ve known them are at stake. To some extent the future of American literature is at stake.”

Can the Patterson grant make a difference and did any of that cash fly to the Pelican?

Pat: No, but let me say just how much we appreciate the fact that there are so many authors who know that we are out here selling books and the fact that they care about the smaller independents. This is very important to us.

Bob: There are a lot of bad books out there, how do these duds get published?

Pat:  One of the biggest problems with the publishing world right now is simply this:  we don’t have the great editors anymore. And the editors we have aren’t strong enough to tell a bestselling writer that he or she needs to take a piece of the manuscript back and rewrite it.

I’ve read writers that have big names, good writers but you can see that they are writing with big contracts, maybe on a deadline, and, my guess is that they’re beginning to “mail them in!”  And they aren’t being told that they need rewrites.  The editors or publishers are trying to keep their stable of authors happy, ones that name alone will sell the book, writers who have produced bestsellers and so they let them get away with crap.

Bob: Ah, but there are some great books, what are you recommending these days?

Pat: There are some wonderful books, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, Plainsong by Kent Haruf, The Color of Water by James McBride. Mary Alice Monroe, who often writes about environmental issues, has produced some great beach reading—The Beach House, Beach House Memories and The Summer Girls come to mind

Bob: Like most booksellers, you have signings but you’re often co-hosting with Silver Coast, a local winery. This would appear to be a stroke of marketing genius; I mean a few glasses of wine and a good book, not a bad combination.

Pat: We started working with the Silver Coast Winery when we had a Southern author who we wanted to host, an author who we knew would bring out a big crowd. As you know, we have a small bookstore here at the beach and she was coming to read and sign in mid-season—the summer—and this island almost sinks under the weight of the tourists during the summer.

So we asked the local winery if we could have the reading and signing there and boy did it work. We had over 200 people and so we’ve been doing this ever since. I think it’s about $10 admission which includes two glasses of wine and the opportunity to hear and meet a well- known author. So yes, this isn’t something that you will see at a major chain in a big city—-a winery/reading at the beach—and it’s been quite a success.

Bob:  Any other ways that a smaller bookstore reels in the writers for events like this?

Pat:   Well it occurred to me that one of the reasons we couldn’t get some authors interested in what we were doing was simply the fact that authors want to get their sales numbers up, they have to if they want to get on the NY Times Bestsellers List. That’s just part of the publishing game. So I had to agree to become a contributor to the NY Times bestselling list.

Here’s how that works. We have to fill out and file a report on what books we’ve sold weekly and believe me that’s a job. I’m very lucky, one of the ladies that work for me takes care of that. We have a little scanner and that tracks every book we sell and this list goes to the NY Times, so when you see that Times list that’s real—and they, of course, are working with the smaller stores and, of course, the big chains as well, tracking the sales of books with the result being the list you read in the newspaper. They don’t make up the numbers—so we did that and got a lot of the bigger authors to come as a result.

Bob: I’ve been in your store a number of times and I’m impressed with the way you take the time to talk to your customers, sometimes it appears to be like something my mother would have called, “Old Home Week!”

Pat: We know so many of our customers—we might know that their spouse is sick or we may be chatting with a lonely widower who came in simply because they wanted to talk to someone.

We’re like the bartender without the booze—and sometimes I’m really in the middle of something and you know what I say to myself, “set it aside,” and so I’ll stop and talk. It’s what we do; we have to realize that the conversation is more important than anything else we might be doing at that time.

Bob: I’m sure that your clientele is built on word of mouth, so there must be a lot of regulars.

Pat:  Let me tell you about two of my customers. I have this one customer who is handicapped and he pulls up in his Jaguar and parks in the handicapped spot. Typically, earlier that day he’s called me and said, ‘I need two books to read.’ And we tell him what we’ve got and how much it will be. When he pulls up there we take the books out to him and he hands us a check and we hand him his books. Again, he’s disabled and it’s too much trouble for him to get into the store.

And I have another fellow who lives here in North Carolina, about four or five hours away and he writes me letters. He’s often writing something doing research and so he’ll want books on subjects as diverse as clowns, comedians, or Negro baseball leagues.

I find them, order them if we don’t have them in stock, and mail them to him. He sends us a check.  After the last shipment I got a letter from his wife who wrote to say, “Keep it up it’s just like Christmas when his books arrive in the mail.”

So the job can be very gratifying!

Bob: I know that marketing can be the key to keeping the cash register ringing, any other areas of sales that help keep an independent afloat?

Pat: We trade used books for used books and so if you bring in a book I will give you X amount of credit—there’s a formula—toward the purchase of another one. Now I don’t take just anything, I have to think that it’s good for a resale, but people here at the beach are looking for used books because people don’t want to take a new or a good book out on the beach—and they don’t’ want to take their e-books or readers on the beach. So this location is great for selling used books, you can’t really take an e-book out on the beach and read it in that bright sunlight, and then there’s the issue of sand, sun, water which can be harmful to a nice hardback or e-book.

Oh, we also ship for people, we’re a UPS pick up and around the second week in December it gets crazy around here. We’ll Xerox for our customers, fax, print, all ways to keep the numbers up.

Bob: As to actual product, is this just book sales at the Pelican or do you have other “impulse” items that might appeal to your clients?

Pat: Well, we sell a ton of jigsaw puzzles.  Another natural tie-in item is greeting cards and we have great photo cards—from the beach. The photos are taken by a fellow who lives out here on the island and we also have some cards that are painted by a North Carolina artist and he does the poetry (inside) and they are different and unique—designed for customers who are living or visiting the beach.

And our “beachie” Christmas cards are big because if people live at the beach they want everyone to know they live at the beach. So we have to hunt for these specialty cards, there’s a little publisher/printer in Southport that I buy my Christmas cards from and they are  very popular with our customers, very unique.

Bob:  You are a small independent at the beach, how seasonal IS your business?

Pat:   Our business here is unique in that it spikes on July 4th, that’s our crescendo. It starts in late April and builds all the way to the 4th of July and by the 4th the island if sinking from all the people that are here for the beach.

Oh, we have a bump before Christmas and I always work Christmas Eve because (laughs) that day we have all these 50-year-old “children” coming in to see their retired parents, “kids” who have forgotten to get enough gifts or any gifts. So this place is a madhouse on Christmas Eve.

Bob: Well it isn’t Christmas Eve but we know you have customers waiting so we’ll close by asking you to tell any and all potential book buyers out there just what kind of person they’ll likely be dealing with when they shop an independent like the Pelican.

Pat:  Well if they’re like the Pelican and like me and my staff, they are people who love people—all kinds of people—and I tell them you aren’t my customers you are my friends, and I mean that. We love the store and I think that’s what people are attracted to. They get it, it comes across, we care for our customers and our store and we put every book in a special place, our books live in certain places. Sometimes people will say. “Well what’s the order of your books? Why is that one over there?” And I say, “Well it lives there because that’s where it’s always lived!”

I don’t have the heart to move them. Like I said, we are not Barnes & Noble, we don’t have huge sections, we put books in certain places because we think that’s where our books should live

Bob: I better go, this IS beginning to sound like Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail, by the way what did you think of that movie, did Hollywood get the independent vs. the big conglomerate bookstore issues right?

Pat (laughs): Well they got the story right. But I’ll close with this thought as it applies to the independent bookseller; Meg Ryan should have never given up!

* To visit Pat and the Pelican go to: http://pelicanbookstore.com/