by Kathy Brasby | Feb 11, 2013 | Hope
To understand this story, you need to know about July heat in northeast Colorado, when the temperatures would melt dashboards and western skies flexed purple and green while threatening hail.
 I worked at a farm implement dealership that year, in the middle of thousands of acres of pickups, apple pie, and shimmering wheat. In July, the wheat ripened to a golden color that rippled like ocean waves in the heat. When the wheat was ripe, the frenzy began.
 Farmers had waited since August of the previous year for the seeds to sprout, grow and ripen. But July thunderstorms were common, meaning that a single evening of wind and hail could wipe out the year’s crop. The wheat had to be harvested now.
Against that backdrop, the fellow employees where I worked knew that harvest meant long hours for us, too. We had to be at the shop if a combine or truck broke down. The farmers depended on our inventory of parts and our experienced mechanics.
But sometimes nothing broke down. We sat in the hot evenings like a teenage girl hoping for an invitation to the dance. Waiting opened the door to shenanigans involving  water fights, high-powered squirt guns and factions.
The problem with answering machines began with my primary responsibility: ordering parts. One of my suppliers used an answering machine to receive orders in those days. I would call and listen to a long description of  how to place the order followed by a beep. After the beep, the answering machine recorded my order.
I had the information memorized so I had time to daydream before I placed an order. Â On such a day, I stood beside my desk, phone in hand, ignoring the instructions.
Then I saw one of my fellow employees creep out of the back shop, knees bent, head swiveling from side to side like a deer hunter on the prowl. No big deal in the July heat except for one problem: the plastic squirt gun he gripped in his hand was mine.
“Hey!” I shouted at him. “You give me back my gun!” And then I realized that the answering machine had beeped.
I didn’t place an order that day.
And the next time I called, I asked for a salesman instead. Well, yeah, I changed my voice, too. Just in case.
by Kathy Brasby | Feb 8, 2013 | Stories
Thanks to a couple of star-gliding teenagers, our family has been lured into watching the most current Doctor Who television series from BBC.
 Doctor Who is a science fiction series, continuing on and off since the 1960’s, about a Time Lord who is able to cross time and space to rescue people from a wide range of villains. The story lines range from creative to bizarre but the creators of the series included a helpful wrinkle with the Doctor. He occasionally dies in action and then renews himself in a new body.
This new body is really a new person, with a new personality and mannerisms and interests. The favorite food of one Doctor may be disgusting to the next, for example. Favored clothing and even goals change with the new Doctor.
The idea is brilliant because, from a practical point of view, it allows the series producers to glide from one actor to another without a glitch. Â New actor, new Doctor, new personality. All’s well as long as the Daleks show up at least once a season.
Fiction writers don’t have this privilege. I’m tired of reading novels in which the main character can’t decide who he or she really is. We might start out with a strong-willed female who is willing to take risks and challenge the status quo. A 100 pages later, she’s cowering behind her new boyfriend, afraid to enter the dark room and screaming at cobwebs.
I know strong-willed women. They don’t change like that.
Or the story opens with the wise-cracking hero who confidently follows his hunches. By the midway point in the story, he hasn’t had a hunch in several chapters and is suddenly afraid of his father. Or boss. Or neighbor.
What’s with introducing traits that evaporate?
A memorable character carries a story. Authors need to trust that fact and craft characters so vivid that we allow them to carry the story rather than allowing the story to craft them.
Only Doctor Who can turn from a handsome heart-throb to a stumbling nerd and we’re OK with it.
by Kathy Brasby | Feb 6, 2013 | Stories
A smartphone is a gift to writers and here’s another reason why.
We had just finished a guitar-led round of folk songs for the local nursing home when Mary turned to me. “Remember the old cassette tape recorders? That sure would be helpful when we learn new songs. We could listen to them over and over.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “I always have a recorder with me.”
She stared at it. “I have a phone like that.”
“Then you don’t need a tape recorder.”
It’s easy to forget the tools we already carry with us. Not all writers use smartphones – and a few refuse to carry a cell phone. But most of us carry our cell phone all the time. And if you do, check out the voice recorder on your phone.
My iPhone 4s will transcribe messages as I speak into the microphone. I have collected story and article ideas while on a walk, allowing the phone to write down what I’m thinking. It will convert spoken words into text messages or grocery lists.
Obviously, I can record interviews for articles. Once at a workshop, the speaker announced he would do a special poetic reading. Although I didn’t record the entire workshop, I did record his poem. And I’m glad I did, for he did an eloquent interpretation.
There is a bit of a learning curve but it’s worth experimenting with the feature. Very few of us carry a cassette tape recorder with us all the time but most of us have a cell phone.
Have you checked into your cell phone’s features? Do you have favorites?
by Kathy Brasby | Feb 4, 2013 | Stories
I love a good story as well as any one and a good character is even better.
So let me tell you about Barney. Just for the record, I have changed his name although he’s passed on now. I worked with him over 20 years ago. I was still trying to get life figured out and he was hanging onto whatever life he had left.
White-haired with a big belly and a gruff retort, he was dedicated to his work. And his opinions.
One day, Barney settled into a chair at break time and announced loudly that Major League Baseball games were fixed. “You know that somebody decides who’s going to win every game all season. That’s why I don’t watch baseball. And I can prove it. Ever watched a double header? How often does one team win the first game and the other team win the second? Because the fix was on!”
Um, OK. I leaned forward. “Well, they use different pitchers for each game.”
He snorted. “What the world difference could that make?”
I let him win that one.
Not long after, his opinion gave him another opportunity. Barney had worked in a Ford dealership most of his career and was devoted to Fords. In our shop, we had one Ford delivery pickup and it caused our service guys many problems. It was a chronic lemon. But Barney believed in it because of the Ford thing.
One day he was asked to run some parts to a town about 90 miles away. Barney, of course, opted to drive the Ford. Our service manager told him they’d been having some recent issues with it but Barney squared his shoulders and let his white hair shake back. “It’ll be just fine,” he said.
Our service manager wasn’t going to tangle with that glare.
So Barney and his wife headed out to deliver parts and enjoy an afternoon on the road. Two hours later, our shop got a call from Barney. The Ford had broken down on the road.
The service department guys, once they got done laughing, sent a semi truck and trailer out to haul the Ford home. When the truck returned, we all rushed to the big window to see Barney’s face. Instead, we saw the Ford strapped on the trailer with Barney and his wife still inside the Ford, staring straight ahead.
A little breakdown hadn’t dampened his opinion of Fords one bit.
by Kathy Brasby | Feb 1, 2013 | Stories
If it weren’t for apple pie, I’m pretty sure I would have been a high school dropout and begun a checkered career involving recycled bicycle parts and horseshoes.
But that’s a story we won’t have to write because my mother was an ace pie baker. None of this thawing a pie and sneaking it into the church potluck. My mother wouldn’t even use canned pie filling.
 She would buy 30 pound cans of frozen cherries at the end of summer and re-package them into pie-sized bags, sprinkling the cherries with corn starch and sealing each for the winter pie season. That was as close as she got to prepared pie fillings.
Her children were devoted but naive fans of her pies. If we ever got a bowl of the cherries during re-package day, we’d sprinkle our cherries with corn starch just like Mom’s pie filling. Even though the corn starch squeaked against our teeth as we ate the fruit, we couldn’t imagine cherries any way but Mom’s.
Our Thanksgiving feasts were not much about the turkey and a whole lot about the arrangement of pies, from pumpkin to apple to mincemeat. We saved room for an afternoon of dessert.
Mom baked a pair of pies the day before her stroke. Now her left arm hangs limply at her side and we don’t know if she’ll ever make another pie.
I am going to learn to make pies. I have avoided that arena because Mom’s pies are legend in our family. They were beauties with a  golden crust sparkling with the sugar sprinkles. Mom’s pies were the reason to invite  family and sometimes a lucky neighbor over for dinner.
It seems right to learn. Not to replace Mom’s heritage, for I can’t begin to do that, but somehow to honor it.
