Category: Musings

MJ’s Musings: The Watkins Man

If you’ve ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you may recall the heroine’s father believed Windex cured everything.

My father believes in this:

Cold season meant Watkins salve was rubbed on our chests instead of the ubiquitous Vicks Vapo-Rub. When I was injured in a snow mobile accident, Dad had me massage my swollen knee with the salve. Mom smears it on her face when she has sinus headaches. Dad uses it to cure boils, erase zits, and heavens only knows what else. It is the family cure-all.

When I was a child, there was a “Watkins Man” who came around with a suitcase full of products (another favorite was horse liniment). In our small town, the Watkins Man was actually a family. The Schuyler family. I remember them well. There was old Mrs. Schuyler with her frizzy gray hair, Harry Schuyler–I never knew if he was a husband or son–with his round wire-framed eyeglasses (this was in the era of horn rimmed spectacles, so I was fascinated by his “old-fashioned” look) and Norma, Mrs. Schuyler’s adult daughter, who walked with a limp.  Once a year or so, the Schuylers would pay us a visit and Dad would restock his salve.

I don’t remember what happened to the Schuylers. We attended the same church, but weren’t “friendly” with them, not like either of the town barbers, the bank president, or the owners of the hardware store.  All I know is that my father hoarded his last tin of Watkins salve.  He didn’t know what to do. The Watkins Man no longer made house calls.

Years later, I was wandering around the state fair when I discovered someone selling Watkins products. I immediately purchase two tins of menthol camphor ointment: one for Dad and one for me. I still have mine, and I periodically use it for all sorts of things. I am my father’s daughter.

By the time Dad was scraping-the -tin-with-a-fingernail low again, the world of on-line shopping had come into being. He complained he was almost out of salve, so I hopped onto the Internet and my favorite on-line retailer. Lo and behold, there’s my Dad’s panacea. The tin has been updated to a more retro look, but the contents remain the same. And Dad is happy because he has his salve delivered right to his door, just like the old days.

MJ’s Musings: Book Bingo-Single Word Title: BEACHCOMBER

One of the Book Bingo Squares this year was “Single Word Title.” I chose a Karen Robards romantic suspense I had not read before: BEACHCOMBER.

To be honest, I thought parts of this book were silly. Let’s see. There was a female attorney on the run from the mob and her ex-fiance (who turned out to be a mobster), an FBI agent posing as a beach bum, a serial killer, and a cranky stray cat. My favorite character was the cat.

I usually love Robards’ romantic suspense books–I own several–so I was surprised when this one didn’t do it for me.

Two stars.

MJ’s Musings: If Her Nora-ness Can Write…

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I have been reading Nora Roberts’ Chronicles of the One and enjoying every word. Can’t wait for book three, The Rise of Magicks to come out in a couple of weeks.

Book one, Year One, reminded me of Stephen King’s The Stand on so many levels. Of course, every other reader of The Stand said the same thing. That doesn’t make the trilogy any less compelling. After all, there are only between six and 1,462 plots in the world (depending on who’s speaking). Everything else is a variation on a theme.  Story ideas, especially from the best, are going to overlap.

A couple of years ago, I had a disturbingly vivid dream. Upon waking I transcribed  the  dream as the opening scene of a novel and read it to my RWA chapter’s critique group later that morning.  One member said, “It sounds kind of like A Handmaid’s Tale.” I had heard of this book, but hadn’t read it. The series had not yet been shown on TV. It may have been in production at the time, but if so, I wasn’t aware of it.

I wrote the book in a couple of months. It’s a dystopian tale that went through several title changes before I settled on The Eleventh Sybil.  I thought the story was powerful. My critique group agreed. I started shopping the book to agents.

By this time, A Handmaid’s Tale was airing. Sales of the novel surged.  A sequel was in the works. I read Atwood’s book while I was writing mine. They are not the same story.

Yet one agent wrote back: “I’ve read this before.”

If I were Nora Roberts, submitting Year One, would the agent say the same thing?

Okay, I get it: she’s Nora,and I’m not. But that doesn’t mean my story doesn’t deserve a fair reading.

MJ’s Musing: A Halloween Memory

Halloween can be cold in my neighborhood. Some years there’s snow on the ground. The weather can play havoc with costume plans.

One year–I must have been six or seven–my mom made me wear a winter coat over my costume. How humiliating! The matter got worse when the nasty old lady three or four doors down answered her door and said, “Where’s your costume? That’s no costume.” As if she couldn’t see the snow swirling around us.

She had a point. I should have worn my costume over my winter coat.

 

MJ’s Musings: My Log

For many years, my parents heated their house with wood.  One of the many chores my siblings and I had to do involved stacking firewood.

I’ve always been one to notice details. One day, while stacking logs, I noticed several that appeared to have been etched. I asked my father if I could have one of them. He said yes. He explained that insects between the bark and the wood had made the marks. I didn’t care. I was fascinated by patterns.

I carried the log with me through many moves while I was in my twenties. Most people thought I was weird. Then I met TV Stevie, who asked me about the log. Turns out he had one, too. Something about it appealed to him.

We still have both logs, careful not to burn them in our own wood stove. Our logs predated “The Log Lady” on the TV series Twin Peaks. We never received cryptic messages from ours, but who knows? Maybe the etchings on mine reveal the secret of life.