“So, do you make bad choices so you’ll have something to write about?” a new acquaintance once asked.
It was an honest
question, one that set me to thinking about my life. I had made
some bonehead decisions. When any sane
person would “just say no,” I’ve often said, “Oh, why not? What the hell.”
Maybe it’s because I grew up in rural northern Idaho in the 1950s, where there were
no fences, and very few boundaries. Besides, how do you know what works or
doesn’t work for you unless you don’t try new things? It’s a good way to evolve.
In the 1990s I
worked in Helena, MT, for the U.S. Forest Service. During this time, I made
several choices that would come to haunt me.
Or, as a former boss would say, “We’d better watch out what we do here,
or this is gonna rise up and bite us in the future.”
One choice that
turned out to have real teeth was this: For the price of a used car I bought a
collection of derelict buildings in an old mining camp about sixteen miles
southwest of Helena. You can see ramshackle buildings like these all over Montana,
slowly returning to nature. My two log cabins and one-story timber frame
structure sat without foundations on the banks of Ten Mile Creek. It was May,
1992, when I first saw the place. The
sun was shining and the birds were singing.
I scratched my
head and said, “Oh, why not? What the hell.”
Soon after signing
the papers, I learned that the two-story building had been one of the seventeen
brothels in the Rimini Mining District. I found a newspaper article in the
walls, How to Turn a Hotel into a Brothel
and Break All Ten Comandments in One Night. Oh, the novelty. And the old girl
needed me. If she didn’t get a new roof before winter, the whole shitteree
would fall to the ground in a pile of kindling.
A new boyfriend
said, “What this place needs is a can of gasoline and a match.”
I stopped dating
him.
I found a local
carpenter, one with vision. He entered
the building, stepped carefully over the rotten floor boards, looked around and
announced, “First you’ll
need all new rafters to support a new roof. But see here? The walls are wowed-out half a
foot on each side. Before we can do anything, I’ll have to use winches, chains and
pulleys to see if we can square the building.”
It worked. Then after the roof, complete with skylights, was
installed, he said, “Now you need a foundation to support the weight of the roof.”
“Oh, why
not? What the hell,” I said.
But I
learned you can’t get a home improvement loan on a pile of boards. I’d have to
pay cash for all materials and labor. As
I poked around my old building, pondering my dilemma, thoughts of Darwin and
his theory of evolution kept entering the picture. I found another article in a tattered
magazine, stuffed in the wall:
WHAT DARWIN SAID ABOUT MUSIC
“If I had to live my life again I would
make a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every
week, for the loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be
injurious to the intellect and more probably to the moral character by
enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”
That sealed the
deal. However, in order to afford my project,
I had to give up my nice apartment in town and move into the brothel. Friends helped me move my bed upstairs under the
skylights. I brought my stereo system, an antique rocking chair, and my two
cats. Winter was coming on, so I had a
wood stove installed and bought firewood. Only a few amenities were lacking--indoor plumbing and running water.
Soon after moving
in, the spook factor kicked in.
This tale of
choices I’ve made that resulted in three different books will continue.
For more info on THE BLUEBIRD HOUSE at Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/7yansvo
For print edition see: http://createspace.com/3772762
What choice have
you made that some might call “bad,” but turned out to be good, or at least
prompted you to write a book?
