Front Porches to the Picture Window - Randy Mink

Front Porches to the Picture Window (eBook)

Randy Mink (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
208 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-4483-9 (ISBN)

Follow Randy Mink in this autobiographical anthology as he takes you through four different periods of his life. His book, Front Porches to the Picture Window, will bring tears to your eyes with his heartfelt stories as he writes in his Hemingway style, writing the simplest and truest sentences he knows. Then, he'll change those tears of sorrow to tears of laughter with his humorous stories written in a style that has been compared to Lewis Grizzard. He will take you from his youth to later years filled with darkness, depression, and suicidal thoughts as he pursues his dream of becoming a writer. He bears his soul for all to see during his misdiagnosis of Early Onset Alzheimer's and a massive heart attack where he was clinically dead and visited heaven, only to be sent back to finish his work as a writer. He does all this through faith, persistence, and never giving up on his dream of writing, all the while being the caregiver to his mother, who also has Alzheimer's. After the death of his mother, he retired from his job of thirty-eight years to return to the front porches of his Appalachian roots to finish all the books he had been writing throughout his life, now as an old man himself. Randy returns to his old home of his youth set for demolition. As an old man now, he gives words of wisdom to the young boy who was once him, to never give up on his callings and gifts as they stand together looking out the picture window where he had stood years before looking and wondering what the future held. He finds the innocence of his youth in the young boy, which he has been missing his whole life. It's a story of faith, hope, and love from which all readers can relate and draw encouragement for their own struggles and dreams.

Follow Randy Mink in this autobiographical anthology as he takes readers through four different periods of his life. His tear-jerking book, "e;Front Porches to the Picture Window,"e; features heartfelt stories written in his Hemingway style, writing the simplest and truest sentences he knows. Those tears of sorrow will change to tears of laughter with later humorous stories written in a style that has been compared to Lewis Grizzard. Randy takes readers from his youth to his later years filled with darkness, depression, and suicidal thoughts as he pursues his dream of becoming a writer. He bears his soul for all to see during his misdiagnosis of Early Onset Alzheimer's and a massive heart attack, where he was clinically dead and visited heaven, only to be sent back to finish his work as a writer. He does all this through faith, persistence, and never giving up on his dream of writing; all while being the caregiver to his mother, who also has Alzheimer's. After his mother's death, he retired from his job of thirty-eight years to return to the front porches of his Appalachian roots to finish all the books he had been writing throughout his life, now as an old man himself. Randy returns to the home of his youth set for demolition. As an old man, he gives words of wisdom to the young boy he once was, teaching him to never give up on his callings and gifts. As they stand together looking out the picture window where he stood years before, he finds the innocence of his youth again. This is a story of faith, hope, and love from which all readers can relate and draw encouragement for their own struggles and dreams.

Chapter 1

Maud—Where Life Began

Crossroads Grocery (ca 1960s, photo courtesy of Tim Reese)

I’m southern, having lived most of my life in the cracker country of south-central Florida. It’s the natural Florida of cattle, orange groves, and phosphate mines. Not the tourist Florida of beaches and amusement parks as seen in TV advertisements. I’m a Kentuckian by heritage, but I was born in Hamilton, Ohio. After my birth, my parents took me home to the little white house with black trim and a small detached garage with an outhouse behind it, located on the curve of Grove Street and Third Street in Maud, Ohio. This home is the place of my earliest and some of my fondest memories.

I have yet to learn about the beginning of Maud as a community. It’s an unincorporated area in what’s called West Chester nowadays. When I was born, it consisted of less than a dozen streets lined with many other tiny frame houses just like ours sitting close together. To most of the people in the surrounding communities, Maud was just a hamlet full of poor, ignorant hillbillies who had moved north after World War II and the Korean War to escape the hard life and poverty of southeast Kentucky. They found work in factories around Cincinnati that paid better wages and offered an easier life than farming the rocks and red clay on the hillsides back home in Kentucky. They worked in factories like Proctor and Gamble, General Electric, all the car manufacturing plants, or Stearns and Foster in Lockland, where most of my uncles and my dad worked.

Perhaps in our old age, our fondest memories of our youth are due to our childhood innocence. I prefer to keep it that way. Growing up in the 1960s, Maud had its share of problems, but from my perspective, my family protected me from them, and I was allowed to be a kid. My earliest childhood memory was sitting in a high chair in that little kitchen; I’m not sure what age was, but I was small enough to have the neighbor’s child, Timmy Stevens, sitting with me.

Timmy’s dad, Claiborne, worked driving trucks with my dad. His mother, Yvonne, the first crush I remember having, was my mother’s friend. While our parents sat talking and drinking coffee, somehow Timmy and I reached the salt and pepper shakers and unscrewed the lids off. No one noticed as we smiled at each other, dumping the pepper all over the high-chair tray until we got it in our eyes and both started screaming from the burning pain. I remembered that pain years later when I was pepper sprayed in the face by a policeman. And I remembered it once again, when I was a mayor in Bowling Green, Florida. While riding with a police officer, on the right side of the law this time, I accidently sprayed myself in the face with pepper spray. Always check which direction the wind is blowing from and the nozzle is facing; if not, pain is always a great teacher.

Eating a whole bowl of butter is a great teacher too. Well, not that great, but it will make you vomit. At about three years old and constantly curious and adventurous, I wandered into the garage behind the house. I was good at getting lids off things, especially pepper shakers and gas cans. I got the cap off my dad’s metal gas can in the garage. I bent my head down and took a few whiffs of gas. It smelled good to me, so I took a few more whiffs. I put the cap back on and staggered back into the house.

My mom smelled gas all over me and freaked out. She thought I had been in the garage drinking the gas and called the doctor. I didn’t understand her concern. I might have looked like I was a high three-year-old from the gas fumes (which might explain the loss of a few brain cells and my drug use later in the 1970s), but I wasn’t stupid; I knew not to drink gas. The doctor assured my mom on the phone that I probably hadn’t drunk any gas, but he suggested feeding me butter until I puked to make sure. I sat there at that same table where the pepper incident happened, buzzing a little from the gateway drug of gas fumes, eating a whole container of butter until I puked. My mother then inspected my vomit, as only a loving mother could, and saw that all in my stomach was melted butter and some oatmeal. Surprisingly, I love butter and pepper today, but only as condiments, not the main course. And I still really enjoy the smell of gas. Occasionally, I’ll even take a whiff or two while pumping gas. But oatmeal, I still don’t care much for it.

By the time I was four years old, the outhouse was gone, and we had indoor plumbing, thanks to some of the hoodlums in the neighborhood. One Halloween, some teenagers decided to go around and tip over all the outhouses in Maud. It was the hot topic of conversation for weeks in Maud – everyone kept guessing who had done it. The list of suspects would change every time I overheard the grown-ups talking about it. Sometimes it must have the Phelps boys, sometimes the Shepherd boys, and other times the Bussell or Horton boys. I’ve always thought some Minks may have been the perpetrators, namely my oldest brother, Gary, and a couple of first cousins, Bill and Greg. Whoever did it probably wouldn’t have toppled their toilet; well, except my brother Gary probably would have. It should have been a pretty straightforward case to solve.

My dad and Claiborne hid in the garage with a pistol for several nights after the crime spree in case they returned to the crime scene to upright the outhouses. That was their story to my mom and Yvonne anyway. Mostly, they just wanted to sit outside, drink beer, and swap stories and took the pistol along as a ruse to convince their wives they were hot on the trail of the toilet tippers. No one ever confessed or was caught; by Christmas time, it was all but forgotten. Still, I wonder all these many years later if some rookie detective will come sneaking around to match DNA found on a gas cap left at the scene.

My paternal grandma, Cordie Mink, lived three houses from us on Third Street. She may have been the last resident of Maud to get an inside bathroom because her outhouse didn’t get toppled over. When I graduated from high school in Florida in 1977, I hitchhiked from Florida to Maud. I planned to take a year off from school, hitchhike around the country to gather stories, go to college and get a journalism degree, become a writer, and write about my adventures traveling around the country. It didn’t quite work out that way, but I made it to Grandma’s with a few change of clothes and a kilo of marijuana. That’s how I can remember she still had an outhouse in 1977. I would go out several times a day and smoke pot in it while I was staying with her during that time.

One day, I came in through the backdoor, all red-eyed and happy after about my fourth or fifth trip to the outhouse, and there was Grandma standing in her kitchen, her hand on her hips, giving me the stare down.

“What’s the matter, Grandma?” I asked.

“I know what you’ve been doing and why you go out there so much.”

Oh crap! I thought. The gig is up. She has gone through my bag and found my pot. The one fortunate thing I thought of was that she couldn’t flush it down the toilet because there wasn’t one in the house.

I asked, “Why’s that, Grandma?”

“You’re going out there playing with yourself,” she said.

You could have pushed me over with a feather. If I had a list of a thousand things my grandma could have said, that would not have been on the list. It took me a few seconds to realize if my stoned ears heard what I thought they heard. And now, my little stoned brain had to make a decision. Do I let my grandma think her grandson is a pothead or a pervert? I thought for a minute and remembered my older brothers, Gary and Terry, had lived with Grandma when they were teenagers, so I chose the obvious choice.

“You got me, Grandma. Ain’t no one can pull anything over on you,” I answered, busting out laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.

“But you’re a Mink, just like your brothers, your daddy, and your grandpa, so I should have known.”

By then, I had to sit down. I had tears streaming down my face, and my stomach was cramping. I was laughing hard. The buzz from being stoned only made it worse. Grandma started laughing and sat down too. My laughing was making her laugh. Finally, after we had regained our composure, Grandma asked if I’d like some hoe bread. That started another round of laughter, but eventually, we sat there eating hoe bread; she put blackberry jam on hers, and I put maple syrup on mine.

Grandma Mink was one-fourth Cherokee but looked full-blooded. I’m unsure if it was a Kentucky thing or a Cherokee thing or both. But, ever since I could remember, she always had hoe bread sitting on a plate, either on the table or on the stove. If you are wondering what hoe bread is, it’s as if fried corn bread and a pancake had a love child. That’s hoe bread, and Grandma made the best.

During that visit, Grandma and I sat at her kitchen table and talked for hours every day and night. She told me details about her life that I could never imagine growing up. She explained how her stepfamily had abandoned her. When you’re young and look at older people, it’s hard to picture their lives when they were young. She was a child when her father died and her mother remarried. Her stepfamily didn’t want her, and she was forced to move in and be raised by her older siblings. When...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	1.2.2024
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
ISBN-13	979-8-3509-4483-9 / 9798350944839

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