The writer’s brain comes alive at midnight

           Why is it that every night, as I am about to go to bed, knowing I should be going to bed, an idea shows up in my head and I have to sit back down at the computer and type it in because I can’t trust myself to remember it till morning — even if I leave myself a note. I’ll set down whatever streams out before I’m ready to call it quits, then leave myself a Post-it note to remind myself to look at what I wrote when I wake up, to see if it makes sense.

           It doesn’t always, but I won’t delete it because more often than not it can be fixed. And if it can’t right at that moment, I save it for another day. In the case of this particular work of literary art, all I managed the following morning was to finish the first sentence, and then I sat there pondering what else to write.

           As I pondered, I recalled some of the things I’ve written about in the past. I considered many of them to be in the public interest. Once, for instance, I raised several important questions about auto racing in a column called “Southern Culture on the Skids.” To this day no one has ever answered them, although NASCAR fans stopped talking to me.

           In another, I examined in depth a phenomenon known as “dust” in a column called “Dust: A Fact of Life,” and concluded that we just had to get used to it. In a similar vein, I took a look at horizontal surfaces in the home and how they often are “Junk Magnets.” We often rue how these surfaces become cluttered, but where would we put our junk otherwise?

           Columns often provide me with the opportunity to commiserate with my fellow consumers. Anyone as frustrated by useless cents-off coupons as I am probably appreciated “Very Helpful, Thank You,” and anyone who’s ever lost a sock in the drier found “Black Holes, Bermuda Triangles, Missing Socks” informative. And if you’re as overwhelmed by the supermarket cereal aisle as I am, you would have nodded knowingly at “Cereal Killers.”

           I’m not above uncontroversial political commentary either. “From the Surplus Screwy Ideas File” was a prime example of that. Mostly I stay away from politics though because I don’t feel like getting hate mail.

           As I mentioned earlier, I don’t always use everything inspired by a post-midnight idea. I scrapped the first version of this literary masterpiece after Clarke told me it wasn’t funny. However, the first paragraph remains intact, which is a relief because it cost me a half-hour’s sleep.

The thing about winter...

           Everywhere I’ve ever lived, winter has always been accompanied by cold weather. Even when I was stationed in Southern California, I wasn’t in subtropical San Diego. Nooo — I was on a mountain about 70 miles east of downtown, where it snowed in the winter and they issued us parkas. San Diegans would come up dressed in tee-shirts to fill their pickup beds with snow, and we’d pull them out of ditches, shivering, when they slid off the road.

           Winter isn’t this way everywhere. Second cousin Harry used to send Christmas cards from Hawaii with Santa on a surfboard, and Uncle Henry would send cards from St. Petersburg with Santa in swim trunks putting gifts under a decorated palm tree. Henry migrated there with Aunt Marie after too many winters in the Catskills.

           January is usually the worst. If winter is the depth of annual despair on ice, January is the Mariana Trench. I was born on a day in January, 1943 (happy birthday to me, thank you), and it was a cold, snowy morning. I nearly froze to death on the way to the hospital. My son was also born in January, and it snowed that morning too. In 1972, however, I was wearing more than my mother.

           I shouldn’t kvetch. I follow the national weather, and I know winter this year has already been insane in the Northeast — and it wasn’t even officially winter yet. Upstate New York had more than a winter’s worth of snow over nine days a week before Thanksgiving. My friend Clarke, who lives in southwestern Massachusetts, entertains me with enough bone-chilling tales about her white-knuckled drives to see her grandchildren to remind me of why I moved south decades ago.

           Except not south enough, I guess, because the cold still finds its way into my bones. Never have I thought about moving to Florida, though. Uh-uh. Hawaii maybe, but who can afford Hawaii? Cousin Harry apparently could, but then he’d been living there at least since the 1940s. By the ’60s Harry was living in San Diego, which is almost Hawaii on the mainland, climate-wise. But before you ask, California is out too. If you’ve ever driven the freeways, you’d know why.

           Winter always makes me feel old. Okay, I am old, but it makes me feel older. When I was a kid it was fun. When it snowed I built forts and had snowball fights. I belly-flopped on my sled down a hill. I shoveled walks for 50 cents. Today it’s not fun. Which is why I so look forward to spring, and the thunderstorms that were once rare but now seem like daily events. I can’t wait.

Product placement as a career option

           Not long ago I heard a report about how product placement fees helped pay for the latest Superman movie, and I’m thinking “How can I get a piece of that action?” When you think about it, in real life we’re surrounded by stuff with brand names. It always bugged me when a character drank a beer from a can adorned with a red-and-white design, but you couldn’t see the name. C’mon — it’s a Bud, so why shouldn’t Anheuser Busch pay a little to have one of their fine beers to be shown? It could always be Miller, another fine beer. And why not have characters get pancakes at an IHOP or make calls on an iPhone? After all, IHOP makes good pancakes and the iPhone is very popular. And nothing is crazier than showing a retail store that looks a lot like Walmart but has a name like Shop-Mart.

           I know after I leave the house to go to Ingles (a great supermarket) in my 2001 Honda Civic (which I love, by the way), along the way I will see some familiar logos — Dollar General, for instance, since my town isn’t big enough to have a Walmart, and BP, which is good gas but a bit more expensive than the generic gas I usually get. Sadly, generic gas doesn’t have a budget for product placement, and I don’t know who to call about it.

           Hmm. I see that I’ve placed a number of product names in this column, which has to mean that before long the man from the US Postal Service (a great mail delivery service) will be dropping a few checks in my mailbox. I’m looking forward to it. I will endorse them with my Paper Mate gel pen before depositing them in Fifth Third.

Rufa makes an encore

            With a book finished and finally in ePrint, and no serious plans to write another, the thought occurred to me to resume writing a column for the Black Mountain News if they’d have me — and new editor Paul Clark has graciously decided to grant me my wish. At my age I find writing to be more fun than fish oil for good brain maintenance, and while my body might be showing its age, I’ll be damned if I let my mind go to seed. Hence this encore in as many installments as I can squeeze into the rest of my life.

           For those of you who don’t write for either a living or for fun, it’s both a curse and a blessing. It’s a curse because you can’t not write, which puts it in the same category as drug addiction. It’s a blessing because you won’t get thrown into jail for writing — at least not in this country. Yet.

           The book, if you read this paper regularly, is “Maybelline Takes a Powder.” It was fun to write, and a few people have told me it was fun to read. That was our intention — mine and my collaborator’s, that is. We thought it was funny, and when we put it out there we took a chance that readers would get some giggles from what we accomplished across the miles.

           If you’re mystified, my collaborator is Leila Willett, who lives in Michigan, and while we never met in person, we wrote the book together entirely over the Internet. Ain’t technology amazing?

           But writing a book can (and did) take years, and I’m running out of those. Columns like this, on the other hand, I can dash off in an hour or two. Leila, meanwhile, is occupying herself with three adorable grandbabies — all born within minutes of one another. The Trips, as her daughter Nickie referred to them when her first ultrasound revealed triplets — Brogan, Ryan, and Danielle. Leila and I might not getting any writing done, but I she sends pictures of the babies from time to time, which is a joy.

           There’s another reason to resume writing a column. Sure I like to write, but what I like more is connecting with you. Whenever I’ve written in local papers in the past, whether here, Asheville, Southern Pines, or Pinehurst, I’ve made new friends. People would say, “Hey — I read your column,” and then express an opinion or two. The best thing anyone could ever say was, “It was funny!”