April 12, 2024

I'm excited because yesterday I received my very first licensing permission to publish outside material. The source is another book, excerpts of which I'm going to use in my upcoming book. I sent the permission request to the author's publisher a month ago, and had just about given up on hearing back from them, but yesterday I got an email saying "permission granted", with a signed form to make it official. Man, I'm stoked! Now if I can only get those lyrics approved. I may have mentioned that I have two songs I want to use, both of which fit perfectly into the story at a certain point, but I've found - so far - that getting permission for lyrics is a lot harder than for excerpts from books. For one thing, it's difficult to even find who to contact. The copyrights of songs, especially old ones, have often changed hands over the decades. Some songs have multiple publishers. I sent emails to the two biggest music publishing houses (Hal Leonard and I Don't Remember The Other One) but I never heard back. If necessary, I can "write my way around" the lyrics, but it would be so much better to have them. I even thought of a gimmick: adding a footnote to tell readers to Google the lyrics when they come to the asterisk....but that's kinda cheap. Oh well. I'm just happy to have received permission for the book excerpts.

I'm a caveman when it comes to anything outside the actual writing. All the business stuff has been trial and error. And the tech stuff, the computer stuff? I didn't even know how to use Google Docs until recently. And now I'm trying to figure out Adobe so I can create a book cover. Oy! I'm monkey-see, monkey-do when it comes to tech. I can figure things out myself, but it takes me a while because I don't have the patience and I'm not made for this gadget-oriented time period. I don't like the images available on Adobe, so I think I'm gonna draw my own book cover, with colored pencils, then take a picture of it and upload it onto Adobe and make my cover that way. It'll give the book a personal touch, even if I'm not the world's greatest graphic artist. 

I hope (hope, hope) to have my first book out by the end of Summer. With good fortune, the second one will follow in less than a year. It was actually the first of the two I wrote, and was completed last September. Since then, events have conspired to make it the second release. It needs material added to make the story what it should be, and man, is it ever a shocker. 

The story overall is beautiful, but how it came to be is shocking.

Fingers are crossed that when publishing time comes, I will know how to create the proper file to upload the first book to KDP or Lulu, or whatever "platform" I end up using. If the tech world would just use plain English, and not words like "platform", it would be a whole heck of a lot easier for us troglodytes to get the gist. I mean, "platform" is an easy one (if stupid), but while researching the matter, I came across an instructional video on how to "flatten" your document. And because the narrator was a Gen Z person, they may have assumed that everyone knows that term. I did not and had to do a separate Google. Instead of "flatten" (which makes no sense), why not just use plain English and say, "make unalterable" or "fix in place". Well anyhow....adventures in self-publishing. I don't think I'm gonna put my book on Kindle because I believe in real books made out of paper and cardboard (or whatever book covers are made of). Nothing against Kindle or Kindle readers, it's just that I'm militantly old school when it comes to books. I've got to be able to hold a book in my hand, and - most importantly - turn the pages. So there you have it. Wish me luck.

On to other matters:

When my family moved from Reseda to Northridge in January 1968, I transferred from Lorne Street to Prairie Street Elementary School, which - before they turned it into a parking garage - was located on the edge of the CSUN campus (and CSUN was SFVSC in those days). I remember sitting in an office while my Dad filled out the paperwork and talked to Principal Fisher. There seemed to be a dispute over whether I would be accepted. Before we went in, Dad told me, "just sit still and keep quiet". He meant sit upright with my hands folded like a good boy. Dad and the Principle spoke in low tones. I heard what they were saying but didn't fully understand. Mr. Fisher said something like, "We don't want any trouble here. Northridge is a conservative town." I didn't want to change schools but I had to. And 56 years later, when I consider it, I don't think they wanted me at Prairie. The principal asked for Dad's assurance that there wouldn't be a repeat of whatever had happened at Lorne.

Recently, I remembered an incident that occurred right after I started at Prairie. It might've been my first week at the school, or even my first day. I was in 3rd grade (second semester), and didn't know anyone. A few classmates introduced themselves, but at that point I was still on my own. And after school, two older boys approached me by the gate. They were taller than me and tough-looking. And they said something like, "we don't want your kind at our school". I was scared. I think a teacher ran them off, but not long after that, I was either riding or walking home, down Sunburst, just below the orange grove, when the same two boys rode up behind me, pedaling as fast as they could. I ran or pedaled away from them, as fast as I could, and my house wasn't too far away. But they caught up to me, and knocked me down in the street.

I had no idea who these boys were, or what they had against me. I was just the new kid in school. They had rough, petulant faces and lank hair. Fortunately, I wasn't alone that day. A teenager who lived in the yellow ranch house on the corner of Osborne and Sunburst saw what was happening and came to my rescue. He was a "surfer type": shirtless, tan, blonde and muscular, about 17 or 18 years old. He knew the mean boys' names, and told them to leave me alone or he'd kick their asses. He shut the situation down and sent me home, and after that I don't remember. But I forgot all about that incident, and it wasn't until earlier this year that I remembered it.

And I remembered who those two boys were. Both of them still live in Northridge and would now be about 65 or 66 years old. I know a lot about one of those boys and a little bit about the other. The one, of whom I know a lot, is a bad person who's affected my life.

He comes from an evil family, with a secret history in town. 

There have been some very evil families here in Northridge. I know of two that remain (though there are probably more), and the weird thing is, you'd think they were progressive democrats because that's how they present themselves. The thing about evil is that it puts on a good face, and it's not just banal, it's dormant. It sleeps a lot and doesn't show itself unless it has to. The rest of the time, it operates below the surface, away from the actual good guys, because evil does not want a fight. It's a scaredycat. Evil's a chicken. It picks on little kids. It gangs up on people and never fights fair and square. In the case of those two boys, I saw them again in 1989. By that time they were over 30, and in a confessional moment they told me that their Dads had told them to chase me and beat me up on that day in 1968, and I believe them now because my research shows that their Dads were a-holes who had high connections in the California state government.

But yeah, evil is a chicken. It doesn't want a fair fight because it knows it will lose. It's lost every time against me.

And sorry folks, but evil is much more likely to present itself as "your friend" - a liberal, animal loving vegan. A Rachel Maddow democrat. Evil doesn't express as Donald Trump because that's too obvious. Trump's a destructive asshole but he isn't evil. Evil doesn't show it's cards.

What you have to do with evil, is get rid of it. But first, you have to make it an example.

I say this from experience, because people like this bad guy have sought me out and ganged up on me for my entire life. They've known things about me - through their families and through rumor - that they have used to take advantage. But I am their punching bag no longer.

Then, there was this:

Before I became Pearl's caregiver, I was a house sitter in Reseda for a year. I worked at the home of a woman named Diane, who had recently passed away. She was the sister of a close friend of one of my relatives. In addition to watching the house, my duties at Diane's included cleaning, organizing, taking care of the yard, and finally, painting the interior. I did that part in January 2010.

During the late Spring of 2009, and throughout the Summer and Fall, I occasionally worked alongside Diane's sister (aka, the close friend of my relative), who flew in from her home in another state. I've known this woman since I was a small child. The earliest I can remember her is from the Summer of 1966, when my family vacationed in Laguna Beach. If I were to concentrate, I could probably remember her from earlier than that, but it's not important at the moment.

At the time she gave me the house sitting job, I was broke and therefore grateful, not to mention relieved. This woman came to Reseda several times in 2009, mostly in the Summer, to hold garage sales of Diane's belongings. The woman in question had lived in this house herself in the 1960s.

In December 2009, she came down to hold her final garage sale, which was due to take place the weekend after Christmas. Because Christmas was on a Friday, that meant the sale would be the very next day, a Saturday, or maybe Sunday December 27th. Her husband flew down before she did, to evict a renter who was squatting (he had not paid his rent). The husband arrived on December 19. I know this because I wrote it in my diary. The recalcitrant renter cleared out when the husband arrived, avoiding a confrontation, and I continued my daily housework. At the time - Christmas week - I was prepping the interior of the house for painting. I taped off windows and molding, pulled picture hooks, spackled holes. And on December 21, I picked up Diane's sister from the Van Nuys Flyaway. I know this because my diary says so.

I finished painting Diane's house in mid-January, then began clearing the garage, which was packed with boxes of her things. That took three more weeks, and the house was sold in the first week of February 2010, just hours after the realtor began showing it. I took the quick sale as a point of pride that I'd done a good job to make the house presentable.

However, I'd been living month-to-month in 2009, and my immediate concern was getting another job, to avoid becoming homeless.

Lo and behold, God (and others) were watching out for me, because almost to the day I finished at Diane's, I was asked by Pearl's daughter to become her caregiver. Pearl had broken her hip and - at 85 - could not live alone any longer.

Years later, I thought of the serendipity of that confluence of events, of how I finished the job at Diane's and got the job with Pearl almost immediately. Thank You, God, I said. And Thank You, Pearl and Helen. I also thought about the fact that Pearl had to break her hip for me to get that job, but fate is fate. Or is it? 

During the eleven and a half years I worked for Pearl, I would sometimes think back on my year at Diane's, and once in a while I would recall the day when her sister's husband got mad at me. Boy, was that an Event.

Man, it was downright scary. 

Screw that. It was terrifying.

I was doing something in the house when Diane's sister asked me to come help Bill, her husband, who was working in the walk-in closet next to the dining room. He needed me to screw in a light fixture in the ceiling. I don't recall the reason he couldn't do it himself. Maybe his hands were too big. I started to screw it in, but fumbled a screw and lost it in the ceiling. I felt around, through the small fixture hole, but couldn't find it. Embarrassed, I said "Sorry Bill but I've lost the screw and can't find it. I can go to Home Depot and buy another one." I was ready to buy another fixture if necessary because it was my fault.

But Bill didn't say "okay", or "doggonnit." What he did was explode with a Capital E. He started by yelling the F-word at the top of his lungs, repeatedly. After the first or second F**k!, he threw a hammer that flew past me into the wall. For the record, he did not throw it at me, but it was close enough. I was standing on a footstool, and Bill - who is the size of a linebacker - was in the closet's doorway. I was trapped and scared out of my wits. Why was he enraged over a minor mistake on my part that could be rectified with a trip to the hardware store?

I wasn't sure, and this was only in retrospect because I didn't think about the incident that often. Diane's house was not far from Pearl's. Sometimes I'd walk past there on one of my breaks. Then I'd think about Bill's meltdown, but I never was able to make sense of it.

Until recently. And now it's a huge problem, 14 years and 4 months after it happened. 

You see, I wasn't sure when the Bill Incident occurred, and when I was working on my book - the one that needs revision - I went looking through my journals, which collectively make up the diary I've been keeping for 25 years. I was sure the incident happened around Christmas 2009, since that was the only time Bill came down during the year I worked at Diane's house. In reading my 2009 journal, that's when I discovered that Bill arrived on December 19. Further down the page, in my entry for December 27, I wrote (among other things) that I drove him to the Flyaway that morning so he could return to his home state. Bill was in Reseda for eight days. I read and re-read every journal entry for those days and could not find a single mention of The Incident.

Not One Single Mention.

Now then: I am a guy who details the most trivial things in my diary. A typical entry might include the following: "Went to Vons at 4 pm for chips. Stopped at Libe on way back to return DVDs." The opposite is also true. My life is pretty boring, so when something out of the ordinary happens, you can bet I write it down. I write down my whole day, however boring or exciting it was. My entries are usually compact, because - as noted - not much happens, or differs, in my day-to-day life. But when something like the Bill Incident happens, there's no way I would fail to record it. And yet I did.

How in the world did that happen? How did I fail to write down my terror at having an enraged, linebacker-sized madman throw a hammer past me, in a confined space, while yelling the F-word repeatedly? 

I can tell you how - and why - I failed to write it down, but I won't. Not yet. I'll tell you when I resolve it.

Besides myself, there were two witnesses to Bill's meltdown. And the thing is, I have recently remembered that it did not end with the hammer throw, and it did not end with the screamed profanities.

What happened after those details is so far off the charts - and so reprehensible - that I'm keeping it to myself for the time being. But I'll tell you, I am tired of being taken advantage of, tired of being stonewalled, and I'll never be anyone's punching bag - or play toy - ever again. Judas Priest's "Fight of Your Life" is my theme song.