The Animators: Enduring Friendship

When Thomas Wolfe used his home town of Ashville, NC in his first novel Look Homeward, Angel his portrayals of its residents were offended. You Can't Go Home Again, his posthumous novel, describes the less than warm homecoming he received afterward.

The artist's problem of how to use one's own life experiences in one's art remains a problem. Because we don't live or grow in a vacuum, telling our story necessitates talking about our relationships--and other people.

Where is the dividing line between an honest memoir and harming others? Do we have an obligation to tell our truth, unvarnished, or must we gloss over, alter, or lie to protect the innocent? Can we live with the consequences when we cause pain?

Kayla Rae Whitaker's novel The Animators is about two women who use their life stories in their animated films and bear the consequences.

The novel took me on a journey with unexpected twists and turns as I followed the friendship and working partnership of animators Sharon and Mel over ten years.

Sharon has escaped her Kentucky childhood when she wins a scholarship to an Upstate New York college,and  never looks back. She is internal, diffident, and controlled. Mel is a city girl, a party girl--talented, unvarnished, unpredictable.

They quickly bond as outsiders, becoming best friends and artistic partners. It is a relationship that both reinforces their darkness and supports them in their need.

Their animated movies flay open their souls, which Mel insists is therapeutic.Their first movie is Mel's story growing up with a mother who sold tricks or drugs to get by. Mel insists their second movie will be Sharon's story, beginning with a traumatic childhood incident, going on to her stream of bad relationships, to the stroke that nearly ended her life.

The first pages were so funny. Sharon's parents are resigned to life and their failing marriage. As she leaves for college her father thumps her on her back as if she were another guy; her mother hugs her too hard while whispering, "don't come back pregnant."

Sharon feels disassociated from the wealthy students at the private school until she meets Mel and feels a kinship to her forthright honesty, come what may. They love the same things and recognize in each other a talent for animation.

Sharon is the grounded one who keeps things in order, the clean-up lady when Mel crashes. Mel is the idea girl, the wild kid whose addictions to women, alcohol, and drugs wears Sharon down. But it is Sharon who suffers the health meltdown, and Mel reels herself in to become caretaker.

As the women deal with the burdens of their childhood, the struggles of the artistic life, and a series of failed relationships the reader is pulled into their world like a boat in a whirlpool. We don't always like Sharon and Mel, but we come to learn their burdens and respect them for their strengths.

The path to adulthood, which takes some thirty years, is hard. Sometimes we survive growing up. Sometimes we do not.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Animators
Kayla Rae Whitaker
Random House
Publication January 31, 2017
$27 hard cover
ISBN: 9780812989281

75 Years of Little Golden Books

It is the 75 anniversary of Little Golden Books. The first book was Pokey Little Puppy published in September, 1942.

My first books were Little Golden Books. Mom brought them home from the grocery store.  They cost 25 cents at the time. We did not have much money, and sometimes Mom had trouble coming up with money for the paper boy and robbed Dad's coin collection! It is a testament that Mom would buy me books when she really shouldn't have spent the money. I grew up a book lover.

I collected a long shelf full before they were passed down to my little brother. Years later I only had a few left of my original books so I recollected them to share with my son.

The books had engaging stories and amazing illustrations that captivated me. I loved J. P. Miller's art. Lucky Mrs Ticklefeather was one of my favorite Golden Books. I felt so bad for Little Galoshes when the farm animals would not recognize him without his galoshes.

 Pantaloon was another favorite story. I adored the art work in I Can Fly, created by Mary Blair who became famous for her art work for Disney. The Blue Book of Fairy Tales had beautiful illustrations.

I thought the children in Frosty The Snowman were me and my cousins Linda, Elaine, and Stevie. Dogs, The Sky, and The Moon are some of my original books. I always had an interest in science. Donald Duck's Adventure included his being bit by a turtle! I liked the Autumn trees in the illustrations.

This is a later edition of A Child's Garden of Verses illustrated by Eloise Wilkins. I am sure my copy led to my lifelong love of Stevenson's poems. I have a collection of different illustrated editions now.

There are over 400 Little Golden Book titles available now and over 1000 titles have been punished, amounting to billions of books.

My love of story and of art are rooted in these books.

What were your favorites?

Eugene Gochenour's Memoirs: Working at Chrysler's Road Test Lab & Installing a HEMI for Petty

Dad's first job at Chrysler was in Road Testing. His initial pay was low and he took a temp job--working on race cars! No wonder he loved 'muscle cars' and was proud of the HEMI engine in his RAM-1500.

Gene Gochenour

"On many days two mechanics would work together. One of the mechanics was named Herman Jacobs. Herman was old. he had worked for the Oakland Car Company when he was young. As old as he was, he was a very hard worker. He would work all day without taking lunch or other breaks, then leave about an hour before everyone else. Herman was the Police Chief for the town of Frazer, and when he left he went to work there. I don't know when he slept! Whenever we finished a job and took [the car] for a road test he always insisted on paying for the coffee because he said he had an expense account. Herman retired soon after. He had worked for the company for fifty-two years!

Another mechanic I worked with was John DiV***. Whenever we were on a job, John would work for a few minutes then say he would be back in a few minutes and leave. I would continue working. In a while he would come back and work a few minutes and leave again. This went on all day long and he spent more time gone than working. I later found out he was selling numbers, gambling tickets. I soon decided working with John was like working alone. Even though this always went on, I never heard a foreman complain.

Working at the Road Test Garage was an African American floor sweeper. His name was Sam. His job was to keep the floor clean of oil, grease, and water and other spills. Sam and I often talked and he was a fairly well educated man. He told me he had always sold the numbers because he knew he would never earn much money on the job because of his color. He said the money he made on the side had put his son through college and that he was a doctor.

No one ever approached me at work to sell me a number for gambling, and I never did buy one.

Ed Kasky was a very large Polish mechanic who worked in the Engine Buildup Room. He was pretty old when I started working at Road Test but was an expert at anything to do with engines. One day I was given a work-sheet and Ed and I were given the job of installing a Chrysler six cylinder engine into an American Motors car. This meant making special engine mounts, exhaust system, and other adaptations. It took a while but when it was completed it made a good submission. I don't know if Chrysler sold them the engine, but everyone liked it.

One day the foreman asked if any of us would be interested in assembling some race cars at a private conversion company as an after work job. The job paid ten dollars an hour, and about four of us said we would.

So every day for a week, after our day job, we would work at a shop in Birmingham until ten o'clock at night. When Saturday came we felt like zombies. We were all worn out. These cars had a big Hemi engine and plastic body parts. They were on a tight schedule, and Saturday they had to ship the cars to California, even though they were not completed. Richard Petty thanked us for the work we had done. After we left that Saturday we went to a bar and had a drink to celebrate the end of the job. I had to pay because the others had no money on them! The place where we had worked on the race cars normally converted large cars like Cadillac into hearses and ambulances.

At Road Test every day was a new experience. Sometimes we would spend all day auditing new cars as they came from the factory. If we found anything wrong we were to fix it. At other times we would go to a competitor's dealer and pick up one of their new cars, bring it back to the garage, and completely strip every part from it. The parts were measured, weighted, and cost evaluated, then displayed for anyone to check out. We were always picking up competitive vehicles for comparison and to find any new ideas or features they had.

Many of our own [Chrysler] cars were stripped of their parts and stored to be put back on later. Experimental parts were installed and tested, then later the original parts were reinstalled and the car was taken to a lot where it was sold as a used vehicle.

If we installed a new engine in a vehicle we had to drive it at least a hundred miles to break it in, so we would usually drive to Port Huron.

One day another mechanic and I were asked to go to where a retired executive's car had broken down, take him home, and wait for a dealer to come and pick up the car. When we got there the other mechanic took about fifty pounds of meat and groceries from his trunk and took the man home leaving me with the car until the tow truck came. When it came I went to the dealer and I waited until my buddy came, and then we went back to work. This guy had some pull even after he retired!

When I went to work for Chrysler I started at the lowest pay for a mechanic, and after a few months of work I thought I had proved my worth and went to my foreman and asked him to see if I could get a raise. His name was Pete and he and another foreman named Al Ferrari went to the department manager and tried to get me a raise, but he would not give a raise to anyone. but a few days later they told me of an opening at the Air Conditioning Lab.

I went there and talked with them and got transferred there. This put my pay to $113 a week. On top of that they were working overtime, so I was finally drawing a decent pay."

*****

Herman Jacobs was indeed a Frazer, MI chief of police. In the 1950s he was asked to patrol the village after his days working at Chrysler. Later he was promoted to Constable and then Chief of Police overseeing six officers and two patrol vehicles.

*****

Richard Petty's Plymouth with a Hemi engine won the 1964 Daytona 500. Sadly, the Hemi engine was boycotted by NASCAR and in 1965 his Barracuda with a HEMI crashed and killed a child, leading to a lawsuit against Petty and Chrysler. Read about the HEMI and Petty at

http://www.allpar.com/history/inside/plymouth-11-nascar.html

http://www.allpar.com/racing/petty-plymouth-racing.html

Coretta Scott King Tells All

In her later years Coretta Scott King shared her story with her chosen biographer, Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds, resulting in the posthumous autobiography My Life My Love My Legacy.

Most remember Coretta as the wife of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Coretta wanted us to know who she was, not only as the supporter and partner in her husband 's work but in her own right as a life-long pacifist and human rights leader.

Coretta's courage and determination was sustained by her deep Christian faith, which gave her strength to endure what would break those of us made of baser metal.

From her childhood she was cognizant of racism; as her father endeavored to run businesses to support her family he was victimized, his businesses destroyed. The family home, built by Coretta's grandfather, was burned to the ground, and her uncle lynched. Her education was sub par and yet she won a scholarship to Antioch College.

Coretta had the gift of song and music and planned to pursue a career as a concert singer. Then a friend introduced her to a young minister who wanted a wife; his standards were very high and he was frustrated that he would never find his perfect helpmate. Until he met Coretta.

At their first meeting Martin Luther King Jr. identified Coretta as the woman of his dreams--a woman with character, intelligence, personality, and beauty. She quickly found herself falling in love. Leaving her dream of performance behind she instead graduated with a music education degree. Coretta, raised Methodist, found herself a Baptist minister's wife with all it's obligations and limitations, living in a parsonage.

Martin and Coretta shared a commitment to pacifism and a dream of social justice in America. Coretta was a strong, independent, and committed woman who sometimes chaffed at Martin's expectations to be wife and mother and keeper of the home fire as he went out to slay dragons. She considered herself an equal partner in her husband's work and not just a helpmate. She aided in fundraising through Freedom Concerts and speeches. She offered Martin a safe haven were he could grapple with depression and dejection, seeking renewal through prayer and introspection.

Coretta covers the harrowing stories of non-violent protests met with hatred, murder, beatings, and police brutality. That the freedom fighters were able to forgive these actions can only be attributed to their deep faith. At times I had to put the book down; at times I found myself in tears. I know about these events, yet Coretta's words affected me deeply.

The later part of the story, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., we see Coretta blossom into leadership on her own. She tells about her work creating the King Center, establishing Martin Luther King Day, her anti-war work and support of feminism, and attacking Apartheid. We learn that she makes mistakes and learns from them. We hear her anger when she and other women leaders in the movement were sidelined. She shares her feelings about presidential support, or lack of support, of her causes. She rejects stories about her husband's infidelity as lies and holds a belief that government agencies were behind the murder of her husband. And she talks about her children.

The publication of Coretta's autobiography is timely, a lesson in how resistance movements can alter policy, raise awareness, and impact cultural norms. On the other hand, we now also understand that the battle is ongoing; each generation must commit to standing up to injustice in all its forms.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

My Live My Love My Legacy
Coretta Scott King with Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds
Henry Holt & Co.
Publication January 17, 2017
$30 hard cover
ISBN: 9781627795982

Mini-Reviews: Another Brooklyn, Eight Hundred Grapes, and The Rosie Project

The Rosie Project by Grame Simsion was my book club's January pick. My hubby read it before e, and frankly, his constant guffaws and laughter reverberated throughout the house, and he frequently interrupted my reading to share a scene with me. He was having a great time. So, I knew it was a funny book before I opened it up.

And it is a very funny book. It is a romantic comedy with a happy, tied-up-with-a-bow ending. It is a nice anodyne to the worries of the world.

Still...I have to say the ending seems too idealized and improbable, and I had great concern about laughing at a man with Asperger's syndrome. I felt it was in bad taste to laugh at Don.

If the author hoped to make Asperger's a relatable and charming personality trait to promote understanding I might feel differently, but I don't know his motivation for creating Don Tillman. I wondered how the book would be received by those who treat Asperger's or have a family member with Asperger's. At book group a friend shared the story of her daughter who has Asperger's. She loved the book. Frankly, she admitted a lot of things her daughter did were funny.

The group gave the book high ratings and discussion was lively.

I had heard so much about Another Brooklyn by Jaqueline Woodson that when I saw it at the library I brought it home. The librarian's eyes shot up--did I have time to read it? she asked. Its a small book; I'll fit it in, I replied. 

I read it in an evening. 

What a beautiful book. I loved it. Woodson wanted to write about growing up a girl in this country, drawing from memories of her teenage years. She created four girls whose friendship creates a safe haven.

August came north to Brooklyn with her father and little brother. She watches and envies the girls who play on the street below their apartment. When she finally meets them, they claim her, saying, "You belong to us now."

 "And for so many years, it was true," Woodson writes. 

"What did you see in me? I'd ask years later.

You looked lost, Gigi whispered. Lost and beautiful. 

And hungry, Angela added. You looked so hungry. 

And as we stood half circle in the bright school yard, we saw the lost and beautiful and hungry in each of us. We saw home."

And with that scene I was caught in Woodson's story-web, wishing I had been one of those girls who had so early found a home in a threatening and changing world.

Adult August returns to Brooklyn for her father's dying and death, the memories return of growing up, of changing bodies attracting men, the discover of hidden talents and gifts. It is a story of 'white flight', addict war vets lurking in hallways and accosting young girls, and of parents who want the best for their daughter or who are incapable of caring for their children. The girls grow up, imagining 'another Brooklyn,' another reality to be claimed.

Woodson writes. "Creating a novel means moving into the past, the hoped for, the imagined. It is an emotional journey fraught at times with characters who don't always do or say what a writer wishes...in many ways, the characters a writer creates have always existed somewhere." 


These girls will live in my heart for a long time.

When Off the Shelf offered a giveaway for a book they promised would make me feel good, I entered. I really, really needed an escape for a bit. They understood, and I won Laura Dave's Eight Hundred Grapes.

So many on Goodreads call this novel a "beach read,"  which usually sounds an alarm for me, being (in my head) short for a plot driven romance with little staying power, the literary equivalent of hooking up. 

Instead I discovered a solid Literary Romance with good writing, nice characterization, an interesting family, and a heroine who at the tender age of twenty-five discovers what her "has to have" is in life. The importance of family is the enduring message. 

Eugene Gochenour's Memoirs: 1963: Test Driving Chrysler Cars

Dad's memoir recalls his early days working at Chrysler in Highland Park. Here he talks about test driving new and modified cars, including the protoype Barracuda with a V-8 engine.

Dad and Mom around 1969. Yes, I had an Avocado green piano!

 My sister Alice and her husband Ken came to visit us during the summer and while they were there we got to talking about an interview I just had at Chrysler. I had previously been hired, but that job fell through because one of their existing workers was transferred to that lab. This time I was quite discouraged, though, because while they said they would hire me the starting salary was only $98 a week. But Joyce and Alice and Ken talked me into going back and accepting the job

So once again I told Harvel that I was quitting and went to work for Chrysler at their Road Test Garage. They pay was so small I would not even look at it. To make more money I got a part time job at a nearby Shell station as a mechanic where I worked evenings and Saturdays.

Road Test Garage* was in a very old building that was originally used by the Oakland Car Company at the beginning of the [20th] century. I enjoyed working there because all the cars were new, and before we worked on the, they had to be washed, and then road tested after we worked on them. No more rusty cars! When we took them for a road test would usually stop for a coffee break and on paydays we were allowed to take a care to cash our checks at the bank.

There were about seventy-five mechanics that worked at the garage, and there were two shifts. i worked the day shift. Some of the mechanics worked on boats at a marina on the Saint Clair River at Algonac, some worked at the proving ground at Chelsea, and many worked at Highland Park where I worked. Probably the total number of mechanics at that time was about 500.

The work was interesting because I never knew what I would be working on from one day to another. One day I had a job on a Chrysler turbine car and when I finished I got to road test it. Chrysler had made 250 of them as test vehicles. Before I took it out on the road I was told to turn it off if the temperature exceeded 1500 degrees. It was a strange car to drive and it got a lot of attention.

To me, the traffic at Detroit was quite intimidating. I had not worked there very long when they gave me a brand new car that had just came from the factory, and a map of the city of Detroit, and told me to drive the 22 mile course marked on it. The object of the drive was to put 50,000 miles on the vehicle as fast as they could. I drove the car all day in the city, then another driver would drive to Chelsea, drive it on the high speed track, then back to the garage so I could drive it the next day.

The first day I took the vehicle I had white knuckles from watching the cabs, buses, and other vehicles, and watching for the streets marked on the map. But after a few days it got to be old stuff, and I became at ease driving [in Detroit].

There were five other drivers with different model cars driving the same course, and most of them knew the city very well. Sometimes we would play follow the leader, and the leader would drive through back alleys and trucking lots, trying to lose us. Sometimes he would and we would find each other going in different directions, or coming from cross streets from which we could not follow. When we became too dispersed we would give up and go back on course.

Second Street was a rough area and prostitutes walked the streets and some of them would even call from the windows of their houses as you passed by. Some of the drivers would stop to talk with them and as the gal was to get into the car, drive off. They thought that was fun.

Every day we would go to Palmer Park where we would eat our lunch at a picnic table, feed the ducks, and take a walk.

Vintage postcard of Palmer Park in Detroit, MI

One payday I decided to cash my check at a bank on Grand River Street. All our cars had a device in the trunk that wrote on a paper disc to show that the car was in motion, so I hoped to just pop into the bank, cash my check, and get back on the route.

Well the line I was in had a lady in front of me, and in front of her was a man talking to the cashier. The man left, then the cashier left, and a man came from the rear of the ban and asked us to move to another line. In a few minutes a policeman came in and then I found out that the bank had been robbed by the man in the line ahead of us. The detective asked if I had seen anything, and I never saw a thing. I wanted to get back to the car because I was worried that the disc record would show I was not driving, and I was hoping the car had not been stolen. I turned the record in at the end of the day and nothing was said the following day, so I had gotten away with it.

It was summer and one of the cars I was given was a convertible and I put the top down and it was great! Each day we were given instructions to run the air conditioner, or the wipers, in an attempt to simulate real life use. If anything went wrong with the vechicle we were to report and repair it. This went on for a month, then we went back to work at Road Test. After a month of driving city traffic I was no longer intimidated.

One day I was given a work order and it said to install a special instrumented and modified automatic transmission into a new car that I was provided with. I was to remove the right front bucket seat, the floor mat, and cut a large hole in the floor board so that the transmission could be looked at. The transmission had a window of Plexiglas at the torque tube so its inside could be viewed. When I was done with the job two engineers and I took the car for a test drive. While I was driving each engineer would get on his knees and look at the window in the transmission. They were trying to find out when and how much oil was going to the real seal. After each of them looked we changed places and I looked. That job went pretty well.

Another job I was provided with a new Barracuda and asked to install a V-8 engine in it. It was the first V-8 engine ever put in that model car. When I was done with the job a different pair of engineers and I took the car on the road to test drive it.

We drove it down Second Avenue in Detroit. It was running along just fine until the driver kicked it into passing gear. When he did this, the car jumped, kicked, and shuddered. We stopped the car, opened the hood, and looked inside. The wiring harness was all burned up. What they had not thought of was that when the accelerator was depressed all the way, the rod in the engine compartment contacted the starter relay, which burned out the wiring harness.

Luckily we could still drive the car back to the garage where I repaired it.

* According to Marc Rozman the Road Test garage "was the first concrete poured-wall building in Michigan a high tech building" with forms in concrete walls. 

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

Last year I read Sarah Pinborough's book The Language of Dying and liked it very much. Since that book had a magical element I early expected that Behind Her Eyes also involved something of the same.

Behind Her Eyes was a fast read, but I did not read it in one sitting as publicity warned might be the case.

The story is rather tawdry: single mom Louise meets David in a bar and they 'connect', but he says he can't and leaves. The next day she learns the man is in fact her new boss. Then 'by accident' the bosses wife, Adele, meets Louise and pursues a friendship. Adele hints at a troubled marriage and a controlling husband. Louise likes Adele, but then David shows up at her door and they act on their mutual attraction; an affair ensues.

Louise struggles to compartmentalize her life between Adele and David. Meanwhile, chapters from Adele's viewpoint reveal she is not what she appears to be, and her backstory is slowly revealed to Louise.

David and Louise are caught it a web, a trap, with a shocking and unpredictable ending, they get what they thought they want.

The novel carries the reader along and the pacing is great, and the reader is kept guessing and sidetracked by unreliable information.

Personally, the strange double coda of an ending seemed manipulative to me. The characters are not people we like, although because of their lack of self determination. So the emphasis is on the complicated and twisting plot.

I expect this new contribution to Domestic Noir will be a best seller. It is better written than several other thrillers I read in the last year.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Behind Her Eyes
Sarah Pinbourough
Flatiron Books
Publication January 31, 2017
ISBN 978-1-250-11117-3