USE YOUR IMAGINATION TO FIND YOUR PASSION

Posted on January 24, 2016 by Raji Singh
Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Please enjoy a piece from the Fiction House Publishing’s most recent work,  The Seasons of My Giving Back.

In the preceding chapter,  I discover that my ‘giving-back to the world’ summer job as youngster would be volunteering on a road kill clean up gang.  How can this help others?  Soon I would see, and it would change my life.  A strange and wonderful sixth sense would awaken.

*   *   *

My parents and I walk along the gravel roadside, amongst Lindia’s most impoverished, to meet the man in charge of the road kill crew.  A crescendo of sound and scent, mixing, becoming an almost indescribable sixth sense, overpowers me.

The Scents:

Carried on a spicy bed of gently warmed cinnamon twigs, propelled by a soft breeze, comes a unique sweet-coconut, sleepy-cocoa aroma that one may smell only in these Lindian Woods.  Quilting it are the sour of lemon drips, the pungent shavings of ginger, earthy cumin, the licorice smell-taste of fennel, and the sharp mint of coriander.

These delicacy scents, are the kinds savored daily by even Lindia’s poorest.

These are all combinations completely new to me.  I would learn all about them that summer and they would remain with me, in my smell and taste sensations to my adult days.

The Sounds:

The scents mix with the sweet, hypnotic strings of sitar music that flow smoothly through the pungent air, mixing, roiling together until they become one –the unknown sixth sense.

Where have I heard these soothing sounds?  So familiar.

I feel I am swept onward by the wave of humanity in which I travel, toward the smell, toward the sound.  The music and the aroma do not get more intense and louder.  Instead, they mingle even more; become even more – as one – if that is possible.

Then I realize.  The music is from an identical, scratchy, yet still beautiful old 78 Victrola record Mother so often played.

From Beethoven’s Ninth – Ode to Joy played in gentle solo by Ravi Shankar.  His echoing strings seem to still the Lindian Wood’s bird whistles and small animal chirps.  Are the creatures studying the tone, so they can later join the serenade?

I tell myself.  This is the most beautiful music ever composed; and played at its most beautiful.

The Intermingling:

I imagine myself a movie cartoon.  My nostrils flare to breathe in all of the scent that I m able.  I puff up my face as if a hot air balloon.  My body rises, is parallel to the terra firma that my feet no longer touch.  My ears enlarge, as those of an elephant; they flap like wings to take me to the sweet sound and smells even faster.

Not my parents, not the crowd, notice as I soar up and above them.  Airborne, the scents are ever fresher, and the chords of the sitar even more clear.

My sixth sense allows me to smell-hear the crackling sizzle of car and truck flattened monkey, mongoose, and cobra, dropping onto a grill and being filleted and fricasseed.

(In school I learned that in parts of rural America volunteers collect unfortunate deer, cow, and wildlife that wander onto roadways. They prepare their remains for the poor and hungry. Lindia’s population is so much larger, so there are even more people in need.)

Magically, it seems, there is not one shred of gamey meat or melting fur drifting my way.  I realize – it is nothing supernatural.  The Chef’s culinary way, combined with Maestro Shankar’s unparallel intonations creates this never before known sixth sense.

Am I the only one who realizes this?  If so, why?

Have my suddenly acute senses, via imagination, helped me discover my life’s passion?

My chance to ‘give back’?

NEXT WEEK:  ONWARD, TO SAVOR CHEF R.K.’S GOURMET SURPRISE

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2015 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

IMAGINE…DREAMING AS A KING, INSPIRING AS A GANDHI, UNITING AS A MANDELA (or simply – using laughter to lighten another’s load)

Posted on January 17, 2016 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

In celebration of Dr. King, please enjoy a piece from the Fiction House Archives and The Seasons of My Giving Back:

    I am James Thaddeus Fiction, the Fifth – a true Fiction.  Typhoon tears me from my parents.  I alone survive.  I become an orphan foundling, taken in by new loving parents Dr. Ben and Indira Singh.  Now I am Raji.  These are my found and foundling tales.

*     *     *

     At least twice a year – from kindergarten to high school – Lindia bound with my parents.  Away from comfortable home quarters at the Fiction House Medical Clinic in Cincinnati, we’d fly, to some impoverished hospital half-a-world away.

Side by side, they ‘cared for’; with me fetching blankets, ferrying bandages, filling water bottles.

“You are learning of one of life’s greatest and yet simplest gifts,” Mother would tell me after a long day.  “Giving!”

Fa, ever the believer that, “there are good lessons to learn in every situation, son,” would add, as if he were prescribing a long-known miracle drug.  “Every unselfish act, Raji, helps you avoid, septem peccata mortalia, those seven deadly sins that tempt all humans:  Lust, envy, gluttony, sloth, greed, envy, wrath.”

I enjoyed helping the sick by assisting my parents, but a nurse or doctor I’d never be.  Soon, they sensed this.

“Many are the ways for you to help people, Raji,” they agreed.  “You will find one if you use that vivid imagination of yours.  In the meantime, we have just the right thing for you while we are at Hospital.”

As any other ten-year-old – Adventure – that is what I yearned:  I’d just read Robinson Crusoe.

So, as we traveled, to where this mystery assignment would commence, I was allowing my imagination free play, as a way to wile away the early morning hours.  Never ending are the tales a tyke can create while riding alone in the back seat of his parent’s sedan.

I smiled broadly and said to myself.  “My parents will sense my desire.  They’ll let me ‘give’, by allowing me to work on a cobra-milking farm – where the venom is transformed into healing medicines.  I’ll become the Number One Squeezer in all Lindia.”

I hear a deep ‘Hah!  Hah!’

Did Fa hear my thoughts; or sense my thoughts?  No he and Mother are chit chattering about illnesses.

Poppy Sol, bouncing brightly along the treetops of the Lindian Woods, looks through my window.  He’s nearly out of breath from trying to keep up with our vehicle’s pace, but still he’s able to sputter.  ‘Hah, lad.  Kidding ye must be.  Never would your Fa, let alone your Ma allow you to become a Squeezer.’

My aspiration of adventurous altruism skids to a dead stop.

But one of Poppy Sol’s stray rays allows a flickering rebirth of hope.  ‘Holt on a minute now, me young bloke.  Just perhaps, I may have a gra-a-a-nd way to bring about a change of mind in them.  Let’s say we…’

I am so excited, but I cannot understand the rest, so, to the glass I put my ear, to, better hear.  Sol can be a mighty prankster – at least in my tyke imagining.  But I’m just sure this is no pranking.

Luny Mum’s beam enters, right through the window glass on the other side of the vehicle.  She taps my shoulder.  ‘Don’t you be believin’ a word that fabricatin’ ol Sol be tellin’, Raji.’

Loving Mum, she’s readying to bid adieu to the day, but still she takes time for me.

‘Raji, as your earth mum says, “use your imaginin’.”  Dream like a King, mi lad.  And Think.  Of how might you inspire?  How might you unite?’

Hmm!  I wonder.  How?  Then a flash of brilliance comes.  ‘I know what I’ll do Luny Mum.’  Poppy Sol glares through the window at me, anxiously awaiting my decision.  This time I know he won’t guffaw.  My great idea burns in my thoughts hot and bright as Sol.  I sniff.  I think I smell my brain afire.  Burning brain:  It smells rubbery.  I never took time to notice the acrid scent of smoldering synapses in the hospital, if ever there was an occasion to notice such a thing.  I look around:  No smoke billowing from my ears.  Look up:  My cowlick isn’t a red flame lick.

‘THUMP!  THUMP!  THUMP!’    

The sedan hit a pothole, causing a flat tire.  That’s what I smell.  Fa retreats to repair it.  Mother keeps him company.  As we sit, a line of chauffeured silver and gold Rolls Royce and Bentley pass us.  I blink.  No, I’m not imagining this.  I see it – with my own eyes.  I just hope not all those well-dressed passengers had my grand idea at the same time I did.  And now they’ll beat me to the punch; or in their case, the champagne.

Luny Mum interrupts my thoughts.  ‘Tell us your plan, young ‘un.’

‘I’ll become a tiger trainer.  We’ll take the big cats to the hospitals to entertain the sick.’

‘Whaat ho, lad?’  Queries Poppy Sol.

I look out; think I see laugh lines creasing Sol’s glow.

‘Hah!  Hah!  The patients are there to be cured.  Not get eaten.  Don’t be daft, lad.  They wouldn’t let your creatures past the front doors.  Hah!  Hah!’

     ‘Sol’s right, Raji.  You must think of other ways to help.’

But I thought it was such a good idea.

My parents get back in and we’re off.  Curious, I ask.  “What are all those fancy cars doing so far from Lindia City?  On such a desolate road?”

Mother turns, squinting to see me midst Sol’s glow of curiosity.  He also wants to find out why.  Mother’s soft face is aglow with compassion as she explains.  “Often these days, Raji, such royal caravans may be seen.  They too make pilgrimage, for a sole purpose – to give food to poor people.”

“HA!  HA!”  This time the laugh isn’t from Poppy Sol, but Fa.  He looks briefly from the road ahead to address Mother.  “You know well as I Indira, why they journey.”

“But at least they do, Ben.  That is enough for me.”

Fa begins carrying on a ‘prescription’ conversation with me, glancing at me in the rear view mirror almost as much as he does at the road.  “As Goddess Nardesha proclaims, Raji.  It is easier for an elephant to traverse safely through an active beehive than for gentry to enter the glorious hereafter.”

Mother laughs.  Luny Mum joins her.  I wish the two could meet.  I know they’d enjoy the others company.  Maybe one day they will.  Mother says, “Goddess Nardesha has an irascible sense of humor that your Fa likes, Raji.  And she is right.  To appease Nardesha:  That, I believe is why the royal caravans have come into existence…

“Watch the road, Ben.”

As their front seat chit chattering focuses on elephants, beehives, and gentry, Luny Mum’s gentle beam strokes my shoulder.  ‘Other ideas lad, other ideas.  You’ll not want to become one of Nardesha’s pachyderms.’

‘I know just the thing, Luny Mum.  To the sea, I could sail.  Train otters to catch fish for me.  Then I’ll bring the nets-full, to the poor.’

‘Never,’ glares Sol.  ‘Fish!  Where’s the ADVENTURE?  Besides, those you mayest ‘elp be land bound.  In your journey, the floppers would half-bake in me heat.  Would do more hurt than ‘elp.’

‘You’ll have to imagine another way to help the earthbound,’ Mum glows.

“Ben, watch the roa…”  ‘SCREECH!’  Fa swerves to avoid creating road kill of a mangy mongoose.

I’m pushed against the door.  The jolt frees the answer that must have been in my thoughts all along, but trapped.  ‘I know Poppy Sol.  I know Luny Mum.  I shall give back, by helping.  This solution will be unbeatable.’

The celestial glares and glows show that Sol and Mum are interested in this latest proposal.

In unison.  ‘Go on lad.  We await your decision.’

I am so excited I talk so fast I hardly stop for breaths.  ‘Poison tip dart artisan for tribesman to use in their blowguns.  To defend their forests from foreign tree rustlers who ravage the land for selfish profit motives.  Those, elephants, care not a whit about the people, animals, and plants they displace and destroy.’

Sol glistens.  ‘Blimey, lad.  Poison tips.  An excellent idea to rid the undesirables.’

Mum’s stern reaction.  ‘Nonsense you two.  Never ‘ave I heard anything so ridiculous.’

‘No, no, Mum.  Fa has medicines that deaden but do not kill.  The rustlers are unconscious, just long enough for the tribesman to inform authorities to come and jail them.’

I see I’ve convinced Sol, but Mum, she still needs work.

“Watch the road, Ben.”  ‘SCREECH!  THUMP!’  Fa slides into the back Rolls of the royal caravan.  To protect from injury Mother braces her hands against the dashboard, and Fa holds tight to the steering wheel.  I am tossed, over and into the front seat, landing, jostling safely onto Mother’s lap.

‘Youch!  That’s gotta hurt lad.’

“Not really, Sol,” I say aloud.

“What say, Raji?”  Mother asks, gently stroking my cheek.

“Oh, just imagining,” I say.

Luny Mum strokes my other cheek.  ‘It is time I take my leave, lad.  Glad everyone is safe.’  With no fanfare, Mum fades, disappearing into the blue.

We get out of the car just in time to see the train-like chain reaction of Rolls and Bentleys slowly bumping, one at a time, undamaged into the car preceding it.  Their natty sarong and dhoti-attired owners are too occupied to notice, or care.  They’re quite conspicuously appeasing Nardesha by directing their tuxedoed butlers to distribute, from porcelain tureens, sweet smelling delicacies, to the unending lines of raggedy passers-by.  Some of these poor stop to taste, but only for a moment.  Most continue the ongoing movement forward, as if some holy destination lays ahead, some nirvana worth passing up the caravan’s mere morsels.

As Mother, Fa, I, and, Poppy Sol follow, I notice dozens of youth, around my age.  They load unfortunate road kill onto carts, then they also move forward.

I squint upward.  Anxious in my curiosity I query Sol.  ‘From your position, you can see what is ahead.  Where is everyone going?  Is the reason they’re not stopping to eat the gentry’s food, does that have something to do with it?’

‘HA!  HA!’ is Sol’s reply.  ‘Raji, I can see quite clearly from here the job your folks have arranged for you.’

‘Tell me.  I am so anxious to know.  What it is?  Tiger tamer?  Cobra Squeeze?  Poison tipper?  Otter fisher?’

‘You’ll not like it, young bloke.’

‘You’re wrong Sol.  Any helpin’ kind of daring-do adventurin’, ‘ll do me fine.’

‘Well then, brace yourself, lad.  Your ‘elpin’ ‘ll be…

‘On the road kill gang.  Surely that’ll ‘elps ya from becomin’, a elephant.’

It’s a good thing our whole conversation took place in my imagination:  Because my mental shout of ultimate disappointment would have deafened all within a mile.

What possible good for humankind could the road kill gang provide, I ask myself?

And, just where, oh where – are all the poor, bound?

NEXT WEEK:  ONWARD, TO SAVOR CHEF R.K.’S GOURMET SURPRISE

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories. My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2014 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A FOUNDLING’S LIFE: FROM TRAGEDY TO LARK TO TRIUMPH

Posted on January 10, 2016 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

From the Fiction House Archives…

I am James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction – a true Fiction.  Typhoon  tears me from my parents.  I alone survive.  I become an orphaned foundling, taken in by new loving parents, Dr. Ben and Indira Singh.  Now, I am Raji.  These are my found and foundling tales.

I. The Tragedy

THE FOUNDLINGS

We are left writhing by roadsides or under trees.  We are dumped in trash heaps.  We are cradled in now rigor mortised but once tender arms of parents killed by war, plague, inferno, flood, or scores of other tragedies.

We are the foundlings.

Welcome to the Lindian Woods Where I Was Found (Image ©2014 Raji Singh

Welcome to the Lindian Woods Where I Was Found
(Image ©2014 Raji Singh

Around this big world, we, the tiniest, are the most helpless.  We are abandoned to the whims of the elements, animals, sometimes, worst of all, to the wrath of humans.

We come into the lives of others naked, or nearly so.  Those other babes and toddlers in our predicament, thousands, maybe millions – no one knows – most never survive.

Sometimes wild animals nurse, feed, protect and raise us as their own.

How do we cope?  How do we survive our beginnings then thrive?  Through the goodwill of others, by mere chance, but finally and ultimately, by fantasy we spin in our feral yet developing minds.  As we grow, unbeknownst to those around us, we retreat to a blissful make-believe of serendipity and lark to keep us sane so we can flourish in a life in which we are given a second chance.

Now cometh our stories and those of whom help and hinder us – our, Tales of the Fiction House.  For all those ‘WE,’ of whom I am one, now do I speak for they have beckoned me to do so —           Raji Singh

Calico, the Butterfly, My Gentlest Friend (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

Calico, the Butterfly, My Gentlest Friend
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

II. The Lark

Little Known Famous Foundling Facts (LKFFF)

A.  MOSES: (nicknamed ‘Nile’s Basket Boy’ by his intimates) Ancient publisher. Initiated move away from cumbersome tablets, to innovative strains of lightweight papyrus rolls.

B.  JAMES THADDEUS ‘BLACKJACK’ FICTION: aka ‘The Carper’ 19th century publisher (FICTION HOUSE) and abolitionist. Popularized the now banned (yet still-practiced underground) ‘sport’ of gloved, Cat Boxing along the Ohio.

C.  LIL’ TOM – alias ‘Puss ‘N Gloves’: First and foremost of the cat boxers. Two of his three gloved,  posing posters are known to exist. Hoped for third: whereabouts a puzzle; is considered the “Holy Grail” of the Cat Boxing collectibles. Estimated value if found, in even fair condition – TWO MILLION DOLLARS.

III.  The Triumph

(Here is my four-year-old great-great-grandfather’s triumphant foundling beginnings.

In 1826, he’s taken into a crusty ancient mariner’s riverside wharf shack. )

“This is Ol Tom, Carper. Ol Tom, this is Carper.”

Ol Tom raises paw in welcome and the boy instinctively takes it.

“Ol Tom,” Carper quietly says.

“Meow.” The sleek, one-eye gray feline looks approvingly over their guest then leaps to his usual perch, Mariner’s stooped left shoulder.

“He likes ya Carper. If he didn’t he’d been out the door. He can tell a young sailor who’s worth his salt,” Mariner says, stroking the cat’s glistening fur. Ol Tom is handily the cleanest thing in the wharf-shack. A bed of greasy straw and a seldom-used tub for washing is on one side; a chair that long ago lost its stuffing, the other. Sailor clutter- periscope, scrimshaw, bottled ship, swamps the top of a rotting bureau. Conch shells are all about. Dominating the middle of the room is a bottomless bucket over a hole in the floor – toilet to the river. Surrounding it are piles of corncobs and wrinkly newspapers.

“Ol Tom’s a Cincy legend. Fathered most of the cats on these docks, he did. Nears I can tell, not done yet. I reels him in as a young stray, just like I did you. Hiszen’ line will one day rule this fairen’ city.[1] How ‘bout you boy? Got ideas liken that for youren’ self?”

Mariner’s look locks Carper’s; makes Carper feel an equal. As he prattles, Mariner goes to stir bubbling clam chowder he had put on a small coal-burning stove earlier in the morning. He sweeps dried peas off a rickety wooden table. Carper listens to their hypnotizing ‘tick, tick, tick’ as they spatter to the floor, then ‘blip, blip, blip’ into the Ohio.

He is in a daze. Barely can he feel or sense as Mariner half-sings – half-bellows. “Time ta swab yer deck, Matey. Gotta be ship-shape for galley call.” With a wet washrag he mops the boy clean. Where once was soot, emerges sparkling ivory skin. Where ashen sameness of shape existed, appears definition – lithe fingers, willowy legs and arms, sharp shoulders, carnation pink cheeks reflecting in charcoal-hue eyes. “Handsome lad ya are,” he barks, brushing soot from Carper’s straight, black hair. Mariner’s resolve hardens. “No do-gooders’ll get our Carper into an orphanage. Eh, Ol Tom?”

Ol Tom adjusts his-self to his comfort level on Mariner’s shoulder and winks good eye, inches from ship-shack master. “Meeeooow.”

Mariner ladles two bowls. Carper runs to one, sits, and devours. Mariner layers the Cincinnati Daily Opine on the stove as a chopping block. He whacks off his catch’s head and tosses it on the floor. As Ol Tom leaps for it, begins batting it around between bites, the famished boy pushes away empty bowl and begins on the other.

“Eat your fill son. None go hungry here.”

Carper pulls a red silk handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his chin. Mariner breathes the silk’s sweet perfume. He knows the scent, but from where? Then, as he tosses the carp into a salt bucket to preserve until dinnertime, he notices an artist-rendered picture of a woman in the newspaper. He wipes away fish blood and squints closer at it, then at Carper. He sees the resemblance. Instantly he knows from whence the handkerchief came.

Mariner knows-from now on, this must be the boy’s new port of call.

[1] LKFFF: There is a famous marble statue in Cincinnati’s main library – a one-eyed cat reading a book. It’s been in different locations in the city for over a century and a half. Its origin is unknown.

Carper will grow up to become James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction, publisher and abolitionist. (See picture)

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Children, Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

BOOKS: A NATIONAL CELEBRATION

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)FrLast week: It’s 1826, Cincinatti.  4-year-old orphaned foundling Carper is taken in by a sea-crusted ancient mariner.

On January 11, the American Library Association will honor books for youth.  From the archives of Fiction House Publishing, here is the tale of one boy’s discovery of reading.

*     *     *

In only a few minutes Mariner and Carper are at Mariner’s isolated ‘STATEROOM.’ A barnacle on the backside of an abandoned warehouse, the ten-by-ten foot wharf-shack juts out over the Ohio. It’s built of rancorous vegetable crate-wood. The river’s fishy odor is less offensive. Two nose-smudged porthole windows peep out. The oilskin tarp door groans a tired welcome when Mariner moves it. Inside, Carper scrunches his face and breathes cautiously.

One can see the sloshing water between inch-thick gaps in the planked floor. The structure sways like a ship in even moderate knot breezes and this makes it truly home for the Mariner. “I built ‘er seaworthy, Matey. Can launch this ‘skiff’ if I’ve a mind. Sail away wheres I choose iffa the city starts overtakin’.”

Firmly anchoring the wharf-shack are shelved books. They line the walls. Mariner can’t read, but pretends. For hours, he will stare at the print and mouth words he believes should accompany pictures.

You stare intently, entranced by the array of Mariner’s exotic objects never before this moment have you seen. BOOKS – bound in leather dyed blue, black, and red. The bindings’ wild animal pungency – primal; the pulp pages emit sweet, pleasant mustiness of the forest. These soothing scents overpower the wharf-shack’s odor. These scents, intoxicating, will draw you under their covers. Soon you will sleep. Dream. All their pages of excitement, knowledge, mystery will awaken a passion for life’s grandeur in you that never will dull.

There is no way that at this moment can your child’s mind perceive all you feel so deeply. You only experience…

The BOOKS: They begin leaping from the shelves. They slide down Harpoon. Its long face, snaggled with sharp-barbed tooth, is still gleaming with the sweet ardor of some past battle glory. When they reach the floor, BOOKS, in cadence begin marching round a three-legged stool and toward you. ‘Hup! Hup! Hup, hup, hup!’ In parade. Voices echo in unison, ‘JOIN US, CARPER. DON’T LET US PASS YOU BY!’

How do they know your name? Other books are open on rickety stands and on the floor. You smile as an artist’s drawing of a wiry pooch ‘WOOFS’ at you. On the page next to him, a little wooden boy dances clip-cloppity. You want to tweak his funny, ever-growing nose. But, ‘Ouch!’ You are afraid of splinters.

On the pages of a floored book, a pretty, golden-haired girl in a silver gown looks down from atop a leafy tree. She reaches for you. She has wings of silver, ruby, and gold. She reminds you of the butterfly that spent the night with you under the cart. You whisper, “Calico?”

‘COME FLYING WITH ME CARPER!’ she sings. She swoops down, takes your hand, and off you go go go, landing on the picture’s cloudy mountaintop. You lock hands and sing, skip and play ring around rosy, pocketful of posy. Ashes, ashes… all…fall…

‘No! No! You fist your hand in defiance. The fire-breathing monster won’t eat me,’ your thoughts shout, as you partly remember the nightmare. You blink. No longer do you hold her hand. You’re still clasping Mariner’s.

“Ouch! Carper, you got a clam’s grip there,” Mariner says as he bends creakily and closes the fairy tale book. Butterfly girl winks good-bye. Carper doesn’t feel scared or sad. He feels protected by Mariner and this place. He can visit the butterfly girl any time he wants. He will find many joys like her in – BOOKS. Carper will have read and absorbed each one in this dry-dock library before he turns eight.

BOOKS. They will become his life.

Carper will grow up to become James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction, publisher and abolitionist. (See picture)

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

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Like the New Year, Life is Full of Beginnings

Posted on December 27, 2015 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Out of the Fiction House Archives: THE CARPER’S TALE   (From Tales of the Fiction House)

1826 

Daylight for just 15 minutes and already summer’s heat has dried dew from the Cincinnati pier.  A stoop-shouldered ancient mariner in an age-cracked slicker gamily trudges the seemingly un-ending stretch.  Alone.  Sunken jaw ratchets, way to below Adam’s apple, as he grumbles,

“How long I gonna live?”

These would be the first words my great-great grandfa, four-year-old James Thaddeus Fiction, would remember hearing for the rest of his life.  From beneath an abandoned fish cart, he mimics squeakily, “How long I gonna live?”

Mariner looks about, swigs Kentucky stump juice to relieve an aching molar.  “Ahh!”  He squints curiously down at his fresh-caught carp wrapped in yesterday’s Cincinnati Daily Opine.

The boy echoes, “How long I gonna live?”

The sing-song reminds Mariner of albatross he heard while sailing around the Cape of Good Hope.  He clunks down his bamboo fishing pole and peers under the cart.  “Why, you little carper.  You just parrot me?”  He reaches for and reels into the sunlight a soot-covered boy still trembling from the night’s chill.  Mariner’s knobby knees blink at him through dungaree holes.

Our Friend Calico (©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

Our Friend Calico
(©2013 Image by Joseph Rintoul)

A calico butterfly of silver, ruby, and gold had lit on the youth’s head.  “I see one of my friends been keepin’ ya company.”  Mariner winks at it as it flits away, “Happy sailin’, Calico.”  He bends to the boy. “So what’s youren name?  What you been rollin’ round in? And what in the name of Poseidon’s ocean you doin’ schoolin’ here?”  Sniff.  “Eew!  Yer rank as my giant pal Turt after e’s swum the Atlantic.”

Boy wants to say, “How can you smell me over your owen’ self?” Manages only, “Umm…”

Mariner squints at his first catch-of-the-day and grumbles to it.  “Likes that one too, I do. Don’t think I’ll throw ‘im back, either.”

Boy’s face crinkles prune-wrinkly as he flinches; not so much from being level with something looking so like the fire-breathing monster of the nightmare he’s just awakened from – wild silver hair, blood eyes, warty cheeks and knife nose – but from  the sour smell reeking from pebbly-textured mouth.

Everything before this moment – who he is, where he’s from, how long he’s been here – is blank, dark as his previously alabaster torso.  He wears only short pants with pockets hastily stuffed with childhood trinkets, marbles, tin soldiers, a spinning top.

Escaping bed and building during the fire.  His mother ferreted away.  Wandering aimlessly.  Collapsing here from fatigue.  36 hours have since passed.  For him it easily could have been 36 days or 36 minutes.  The wrenching scars his memory – as happens with most foundlings.  Yet, after all that, he doesn’t fear this living monster.

     “I said, what you doin’… Oh never mind.  I start you carpin’ and you look like the type’ll never clam it.”  He engulfs the boy’s hand in his bony fingers – arthritic from a lifetime of casting nets and setting sails – elevates him, until toes are level with his whale-bone belt buckle; surveys him as he would a catch.

A passing paddle-wheeler on the mucky Ohio steam-whistles out a baritone ‘ahoy’ to old salt and young dawg.  “Let’s sail, Carper.  My stateroom – she’s up the way.  I’ll get ya cleaned and chowed.  Then we can find youren.  Unless yer a stray.  You stray from the orphanage, Carper?  If that be, well…all the more power.   Believe me,” he rasps, angrily clenching fishing pole, rap, rap, rapping its hard butt against the dock….”I know first-hand how’s ya don’t wants to be in a place like that!”

The boy’s thoughts are blank as they walk and he clutches Mariner’s hand:  No happy or sad as he looks up into a face equally expressionless as his, only a primitive gratitude for the presence, for the touch of another human.

Next Week: The Carper’s New Life in the ‘Stateroom’

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Children, Fiction House Publishing, humor, Short stories, whimsy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

YOU WILL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT, RAJI – A LINDIAN CHRISTMAS LESSON

Posted on December 20, 2015 by Raji Singh
Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

I hope you’ll enjoy this Christmas tale from Fiction House Publishing’s latest book, The Seasons of My Giving Back, by Mark Rogers.

   *     *     *

Chapter 6

YOU WILL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT, RAJI – A LINDIAN CHRISTMAS LESSON

Just like the bespectacled Ralphie in the movie A Christmas Story, as a youngster I yearned for a Red Ryder BB gun.  Growing up in Cincinnati’s Lindian community – not big meat eaters or hunters – no one truly listened when I said I wanted this.

I dreamed of making grand safaris into the magical, mysterious Woods not far from home. Many long hours I’d spend in congratulating myself, ‘You will be giving back to your beloved Cincinnati by helping keep it safe.’

“With my Red Ryder…” quite often I excitedly boasted to a kindly, yet unsympathetic old Uncle or Auntie.  “…I could fortress in the wilds and protect the city from errant tigers.”

They’d reply, all the while laughing gently at their own impromptu humor.  “Pshaw!  Precious Raji.  50,000 Bengals fill the football stadium every other week.  You could never keep enough BB’s in stock.”

Then these wizened elders, the tiny bells on their sarongs jingling, the beads on their shirts beating as they jiggled from the laughter, would add something like, “Cobra and Mongoose from our homeland have yet to find a way to traverse the oceans.  So we need no protection from them.  What then remains, Dear Boy, for you to save us from – the furry little rabbits and squirrels?  They are not so vicious.”SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

Then, just as Ralphie’s teacher, his mother, and even Santa replied to Ralphie, the Uncles and Aunties guffawed to me, “You’ll shoot your eye out.”

But Ralphie’s fa, ‘the old man’, had a Red Ryder when he small.  He surprised Ralphie with the pump-style air rifle on Christmas.

An equally understanding – at least, seemingly, at the time, old Uncle came forward for me on my Christmas.  He always dressed nattily, in starched, pressed cotton pants, and a vest over a dhoti shirt white as his wavy hair.  Every glance, every eye flicker, and every movement of his lean body professed to the world his philosophy of life: ‘To stand on ceremony is the duty of all.’  (He must have come from generations of British Colonial influence.)

The BB gun –

He presented it to me as ceremoniously as if he had been a Royal Brigade officer back in Lindia, and he was pinning a medal of valor on my jacket.SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

I remember vividly to this day standing as if frozen briefly in time, a new recruit in front of Colonel Uncle.  The lofty emotions I felt – They are indelibly imprinted in my thoughts: That day…That day…  

The Red Ryder isn’t shiny and new like Ralphie’s.  The wood stock is worn and faded.  Nicks, gouges, and dents tattoo the tarnished barrel.  But I feel just as lucky as Ralphie.

I run my fingers over the cold steel and splintered wood.  All my childhood senses absorb the ardor of battle my Red Ryder must have encountered over the decades.  I smell the decaying rot of defeated cobras saturating the stock.  I can almost taste the dank of the fur of a charging tiger, “brought down by just a single BB”, I imagine someone bragging over ale at a bistro.

As if it were a seashell, I put my ear to the barrel hole.  Instead of ocean, I hear the calamitous trumpeting of a herd of elephants scared away from an isolate village’s garden, and back into the jungle.  I stroke the splintered teeth marks of a vicious mongoose that tore wildly into the weapon before being subdued.

After a ceremonious pat on the shoulder from crater-faced old Uncle and the even more ceremonious statement, “Now go forth young Gamesman” –

Into the Woods, I foray, to take my place among the tribe of humankind known as, Intrepid Hunter.

Welcome to the Lindian Woods Where I Was Found (Image ©2014 Raji Singh

Welcome to the Lindian Woods Where I Was Found
(Image ©2014 Raji Singh

I dribble a handful of copper BBs into the holding chamber.  I pump the cocking handle.  I take aim skyward, at Poppy Sol.  He glares, reprimanding me with a stinging ray.

So I move my point, toward a gluttonous cloud.  ‘I’ll pop that belly.’

I feel like Papa Hemingway readying to bag his first Rhino.  My hands sweat as I pull the trigger.

The loudest cannon fire BANG!

That is what I expect.

A…phht!  is what I get.

The BB arcs like a rainbow, for not more than 20 feet.  I see where it goes…toward the pond…toward the rubbery lily pad where the Frog Brothers, Frer and Brer, rrriibiit on about the daily news of the Woods.

Plink. 

The BB lands between them, breaking their conversation, and then it bounces off, plunking into the water.  Their sudden stares and immediate deep CRROOAAKS indicate they mock me.

‘There’s that Raji kid again.  The one who almost shot his eye out with the slingshot, last week,’ says Frer.

‘A nuisance he can sometimes be,’ replies Brer, sticking his tongue out at me and simultaneously nabbing a fly.

In unison, they croak loudly, ‘You’ll shoot your eyes out, kid!’

Again and again my shame heightens among the Woods inhabitants as the velocity of the BBs lessen with each shot.

(Seems the relic Red Ryder can’t hold the charge of hand pumped air for more than a few seconds.  But I wouldn’t discover that cold fact until later in life.)

Another shot strays into the water, splashing between a circle of ten napping otters, who hold hands as otters outta whilst sleeping, to keep from floating away from each other.  Seemingly, one at a time their eyes open and they berate me for disturbing their slumber.  ‘You’ll shoot your…’  I get a feeling they’re readying to turn together on their sides, like a wheel, and roll over the water to chase me from their Woods.

I quickly scamper to a meadow where birds are singing joyously.  I shoot the Red Ryder skyward.

POP!

The singing abruptly ends and the birds scatter.  Out of nowhere, the Woods Sky Patroller, Hawk, barrels in from out of nowhere, grabs the BB mid air, flies, just feet over my head, and flings it down hitting me on the head.

“Ouch.”

That is the fastest one of the projectiles flew that day, or would ever again fly from that dilapidated Red Ryder.

‘Never do that again,’ I know is Hawk’s plaintiff cry.  Hawk eyes me viciously and then missiles out of sight.

Sigh!  I guess I may now know just why we Lindians are no hunters.  Likely, we’d starve.

O.K., I will shoot at trees.  Not one barks at me as I take aim.  So I fire.  Relic Red Ryder suddenly takes on a life of its own – but unfortunately, it is in the form of a death gasp.SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

The BB spits weakly from the barrel, barely going two feet before it drops.

I hear a screech.  In animal parlance, I believe it means – “Hey, whattaya think yer doin!”

I look down, just as the BB bounces off the head of a rabbit, then ricochets as the little fella jerks its head.  The BB flies five feet horizontally, and nearly takes out the eye of a squirrel.

The rabbit’s screech, the squirrel’s angry, loud ‘CHHIIRRP!’ tells me, “Run, Raji!!  Like your life depends on it.”

As angry as the critters sounded, I am sure my life really did.  (Harmless creatures, as Uncles and Aunties claimed; Hhrmph!)

The squirrel and rabbit give chase.  They’re on my heels, snapping, grr-ing, for hundreds of yards, until I am well clear of the Lindian Woods and onto a city street.

I near my Lindian neighborhood, out of breath, and I see my ceremonious old Uncle.  He is sitting cross-legged, on a small rug under a Lindian Fan Tree.  It is as if he has been waiting, patiently, for me. “And how went the hunt, young Raji?”

Wait, is that what some would call a ‘knowing smile’ that slightly crescents his face.

I return the gun as ceremoniously as it was given to me.  I summon enough breath to say, “Take it Uncle.  Never bring it back.  No matter how careful, it’s only a matter of time, before, I shoot my eye out.”SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

Thank you, Uncle, for giving back to me, of course not only my eye before I might lose it, but also the simple importance of respecting our feathered flyer, slick swimmer, and furry four-leg friends.

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

Posted in archeo-apologist, Children, Children's stories, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

THE ART AND HISTORY OF BREWING STUMP JUICE – FROM THE PHONECIANS AND THE ANCIENT MARINER, ONTO THE SILK ROAD, THEN TO BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Posted on December 13, 2015 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

From the Archives of the Fiction House…

I brew up stump juice with the passion of an oenologist. That’s a fancy-schmanzy name for a winemaker. As with the nectar of the vine, there are endless styles and varieties of the juice-de- stumpe. To make merry with your senses is but the drink’s only desire: Infinite bouquets waltz the olfactory; tantalizing piquancy tango the taste buds; biting textures fandango live-ely down the throat; this slow, close dance caresses your heart. The resulting rhythmic, “thump-thump”, resonates hypnotically in your thoughts.

Nirvana!

Tenille tells me, often, kindly. “I’ll buy my vino at the store, thank you. Just be sure, Raji, that you keep your juice-de stumpe in the basement well above the childrens’ reach.”

“Yes, Dearest.”

A vintner practices vinification; a stump juicer – stumpification. To participate in this fine art one need only a hollowed out stump, preferably one naturally age-weathered, and of hardwood origin – oak, or softer omega 3 rich walnut; and, yeast, a small fire, clear water (rainwater before the days of acid rain), plus any number of ingredients Mother Nature has borne.

For residents of the Fiction House, brewing the combination beverage-elixir-aperitif is a culture and tradition dating back over 200 years – from the forest outskirts of Paris, to the Lindian Woods – from the mid-west Flint Hills, to Kentucky mountain hideaways. Each region’s unique wood, climate, and water, creates different tastes.

Our Fiction House pride, joy, and specialty are the Kentucky stump juices. They are clear, rich, and potent – whether they’re the alcoholic or non-alcohol line.

A Perfect Vessel for Making Stump Juice (Photo by Mark Rogers, 2014)

A Perfect Vessel for Making Stump Juice
(Photo by Mark Rogers, 2014)

Doubtless, the culture of brewing stump juice dates back thousands of years. Archeologists for Fiction House Publishing continually find evidence of its practice among humankind’s ancient ancestors from along the Nile, and among our Phoenician sister and brethren. Phoenician sailors took portable stump juicers along on their boats – to brew it in transit. On the Silk Road, accounts of smoking camel backs, are prevalent – ‘demonstrator’ stump juicers used by traders to help market the liquid, the juicer, and ingredients.

     By next week, the Archeologists will have their research complete. Then I will be able to introduce everyone to the Ancient Mariner. He was one of the highest-respected residents of the Fiction House. He is the seaman who took in my great-great grandfather, James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction when great-great granfa was an orphan foundling. (Mariner too, had been a foundling.) Mariner’s stump juice recipe – via Dr. Benjamin Franklin.

NEXT WEEK: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN HAPPENS ONTO STUMP JUICE AND THE WORLD IS FOREVER CHANGED.

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2014 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Uncategorized, whimsy | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

THIS COULD BE THE BEGINNING OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Raji Singh
Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

by Raji Singh

From the Archives of The Fiction House…

Benjamin Franklin strolls the woods near Paris. He’s taking a break – from his duties as emissary of the united American colonies to France – of trying to finagle francs from the aristocracy to finance the colonies’ Revolution. Franklin meets an American mariner whose ship’s in.

The ‘Mariner’ is brewing stump juice.

“Give ‘er a gulp and return temerraw, Benny,” Mariner says. “She’ll cure yer gout quicker than a hoi’ class Champs-Elysees whure cans prop-y-zition a foine gent.”

Franklin tastes… and tastes. “Ahh! The nectar of the Gods is your juice-de-stumpe, Good Sir. With your brewing know how and my marketing savvy, together we shall reap righteous bounty from the Paris elite.”

The next day…

Entering the woods, Benjamin Franklin shouts“Ahoy, Mariner.” The sky is greyly overcast. Thunder claps. Lightening sizzles a steady rain.

“Greetings Ambastard-dor Franklin,” Mariner harpoons in a friendly joshing. “Didn’t figger on seeing you this foin’ day. Supposed you’d be portin’ the impendin’ storm in some West Bank cafe.” Though in his early 20’s, Mariner’s already a seasoned salt of the sea. To him, the inclement weather – barely noticeable. “You’re sailin’ right along without your walkin’ stick just 24 hours after your first dose-a-the-stump, Benny. A tad list to the starboard side. That’s not nothin’ another tankard won’t cure.”

“Right you are good fellow,” Franklin says, twisting his three-point colonial cap so the rain drips onto his shoulder and not along and down his bulbous nose. (Cannot have anything interferring with the sweet-sour bouquet of juice-de-stump.) Franklin carries packages. He adjusts his cape to keep them dry.

A Perfect Vessel for Making Stump Juice (Photo by Mark Rogers, 2014)

A Perfect Vessel for Making Stump Juice
(Photo by Mark Rogers, 2014)

Mariner hears a chortling echoing from one of them – a small box covered with a dark cloth. The cloth moves as if something is trying to escape. ‘A ghostly appyration?’ Mariner ponders. ‘Maybe Benny’s a magician along with bein’ an inventor.’

Franklin notices Mariner’s curiosity. “With the help of these,” he says, “and this weather, I’ll demonstrate to you how we can get our business venture launched much quickly than we anticipated.” Franklin slowly imbibes the concoction Mariner ladles. “Mmm, sumptuous! As I always say, ‘Wine – in this case juice-de-stumpe – is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy’.” He swirls it in his mouth, trying to decipher which fermented fruit of the stump provides the tangy, which herb supplies the bitter, which fruit the sweet, and just what gives it that devilish poke, poke, poke at the tongue and throat.

“I can hear that silent wondering of youren’, Benny. No use you tryen’ to map out the recipe. Mama Lucy taught me to blend the mixins’ just, so fine, that a dozen flavors become just one.”

Mariner spits onto his ship-calloused palm and holds it out. “I do the secret ingrediaten’. You do the marketin’. 50/50 split. Deal, eh”?”

Franklin ignores the spittle hand. He takes from his vest pocket a scroll and unrolls it. “I worked up a basic contract to protect us both, Mariner. Losin’ the patent on my Franklin Stove taught me a great lesson. I intended it to be a gift to warm the downtrodden of the world. Not to line the pockets of the scalawags who absconded with my idea. As I always say, ‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.’

Mariner briefly peruses the print. His eyes water and he wipes them with a gnarled handkerchief. He’s overcome, for the first time in his life with a deep emotion he’s never before felt – SHAME. He sniffs with the pretense, “Some of Mama’s spices is steamin’ up from the mix, Benny.” How could he reveal to the great Benjamin Franklin – the man helming the building of a nation, one whose simple yet life-saving invention, the Franklin Stove, kept him from freezing to death a hundred times over, in the icicle Boston orphanages before he finally escaped to the freedom of the sea – How could he reveal, ‘I cain’t read Ambastard-dor Franklin. Not a lick.’

Mariner rips up the contract, seizes the back of Franklin’s hand, spits onto the palm, and then clasps it, so hard Franklin winces. “Don’t need cold words on paper to tie brothers of a cold world together, Sire, though one be a land hound and ‘tother a sea dog. Flesh to flesh binds us. Brothers!”

Franklin starts to say, “As I always say Mariner, ‘Honesty is the best…’”

“Put an anchor to those adages ‘a yourens, Benny. Had me a snootful of em from San Fran to Singapore by a loafer who leaned againt the mast seems the whole voyage, spoutin from your Poor Little Richie Almanacky. Let’s set sail for truly the important ports in life. That bein’ stump juicen.”

Another Worthy Vessel(Photo by Mark Rogers, 2014)

Another Worthy Vessel(Photo by Mark Rogers, 2014)

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2014 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, whimsy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

THANKSGIVING AT THE HOME OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S NE’ER DO WELL BROTHER

Posted on November 22, 2015 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Happy Thanksgiving!

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

The Ancient Mariner, the scruffy sea salt who raised my great-great grandfather, told this curious holiday story.  It’s been handed down for almost 250 years.  Enjoy!

*     *     *

“To the GOOD life!”  Benjamin Franklin toasts.  A dozen of Franklin’s relatives, and a spiffed up Mariner, all “clunk” tankards.  They gather in the Philadelphia home of Franklin’s half-brother Franklin Ulster.  The men, all finely dressed in vests and jackets:  The women, in best subtle gray long dresses.    

     Ulster’s already woozy having sneaked many-a-nip to help cope with Benjamin’s incessant boasts.

They give thanks, sit, pass the food, and eat steamy sweet potato, tart cranberry compote – all the usual, with all the sweet scents of banquet, but turkey.  No one would dare offer up Ben Franklin’s noble favorite creature, which he backs as the new nation’s symbol.

“BETTER than any ale you’ve had, eh Ulster.”

The host limply nods.  On that, he must agree.

Franklin proudly thumps his chest and sniffs.  “A woodsy scent this batch has.  I must say, this is the BEST stump juice yet that Mariner and I have had the privilege of brewing.  Fitting nectar for the heroes of the Colonies who lie at rest in their Elysian Fields.  A place you shall need not worry of ever residing, being battle shy midst our Revolution.”

Ulster starts to defend his weapons merchant status, but his wife kicks his ankle under the table.  Brother-in-law Benjamin just might be convinced to float a loan to keep the creditors from the door.  The home, though not a hovel, is faked; garish below the surface.  Plaster of paris Louis XIV statues stand in for the real marble.  Sturdy walnut furniture is replaced with rickety pine lookalikes.

“Concerning our stump juice, as with all things in life, as I always say, Ben Franklin says, ‘Good, Better, Best.  Never let it rest.  Until the good is better and the better best.’  That’s what I always say,” Benjamin Franklin says.

“Oh you do,” Franklin Ulster challenges.  Ulster had pre-dinner fumed for an hour as the honored guest told of his Paris diplomatic exploits that help borne a new nation.  Now he’s caught brother braggart in a lie.  He maliciously spits out, “We both know those words you quote were written on the sign at Goode and Betty Bests Bakery when we we urchins.”

Benjamin squints down on Ulster through his bifocals, and calmly honeys a bun.

“And just who do you think sold them that adage.  Moi!  Mr. Ulster.  And for a pretty penny.  That coin built up through the decades made me the wealthy man I am today, Sir.  As I always say, ‘A penny saved is a penny earned.’”

Franklin Ulster grits his teeth, but Benjamin Franklin is just beginning his pillorying.

“I am truly sorry your Shoppes and various ventures failed.  If only you’d listened to my sage brotherly advice instead of wagering at cockfights.  You could very well be in the financial position I reside.  So, there!  F.U.”

Some of the younger ladies at the table attempt to hide their eyes with their handkerchiefs.  Some matrons titter at the bawdy inference.  Elder statesman, Uncle Benjamin smiles pleasantly at each of them.

Ulster abruptly rises and his brass cock belt buckle upends his plate, sending his Thanksgiving fare down the front of his pants.  “Damn you, Ben.  My name is Franklin Ulster.  I demand the courtesy of being addressed as such in my own home.  Not being treated as some bastard kin.”

“My full apologies Franklin Ulster.  In amends, let me personally serve you the escargot I’ve made for our repast.”  Benjamin Franklin nods to Mariner and Mariner kindly returns the courtesy.  “The Mariner taught me his special recipe when we first met in Paris.  It was the talk of all the French society.  The grand chefs of the city paid my friend quite handsomely for his recipe.”  Franklin goes to a rickety sideboard, and gets a clean dinner plate.

Franklin Ulster impetuously grabs it.  “Snails we eat to appease the grand Doctor Franklin.”

Benjamin Franklin responds, “You’d not offer eagle to those who want it for our national symbol.”

Ulster spits out the crawly foreign fare after the first bite and throws the full plate against the wall.  It smashes into a dozen shards.  “I’m off to slaughter a turkey.”

Before he gets to the door, the normally talkative Mariner, who has been quite quiet throughout the afternoon, shouts, “I’ve ‘ad enough of yer performin’, mate.  Show yer respectins’ for the honored Doc Franklin, F.U.”  The wiry, but sturdy seaman quickly intercepts Ulster, and in seconds, from the long sea line he always has in his pocket, keel hauls him, and hangs him from a ceiling post beam.  There he dangles until a leisurely meal is complete.

~ ~ editor note:  (Keel haul – to tie line to each arm and hang from the bow of the ship.)

The accounts that various Franklins relate in memoirs and letters in the archives of Fiction House Publishing tend to back the overall story. The reader must take into consideration, the Mariner, known for his proclivity for tale telling, and this is his telling, after all – he may have embellished his part in the holiday affair.

You may read A Thousand And One more of Mariner’s tellings in Tales of the Fiction House.  ~ ~

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sincerely,

Raji

© Raji Singh 2012

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.  They are completely different stories.  My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

©2015 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, whimsy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

FROM THE THRESHOLDS OF HELL

Posted on November 15, 2015 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’ These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House. I cannot refuse. (Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

Rescued alive!!

33 Chilean miners trapped underground for 69 days in 2010. Antonio Banderas, Juliette Binoche, and Lou Diamond Phillips lead a coterie of first-class actors in a new movie portrayal of the harrowing events. It’s titled, The 33.

Here is a short homage in poetry to miners all over the world who risk their lives to provide precious resources for us.  It is from Fiction House Publishing’s recent novel about coal miners, Seeds of Vengeance by Mark Rogers.

*     *     *

From the thresholds of hell, the miners emerge.

Sluggishly, worn leather boots clapping the earth,

dragging pick, axes and flat shovels –

they leave behind in the dust any hopes for the future.

Another twelve hours in the ‘hole’;

Faces, mouths, and clothes blackened with the gritty soot.

Spirits deflated from crawling like rats underground,

burrowing through areas little wider than their pain-wracked bodies;

                                                             emptying sharp coal chunks into finger-splitting railcars,

                                              hoping rotted support beams wouldn’t splinter and crush them.

©2015 Raji Singh

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, Uncategorized, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment