One Writer's World: April 2018

Thursday, April 26, 2018

My One (and Only) Ride in a Police Car

I began this post intending to write about my first (and only) ride in a police car, but that's not where I ended up. Long before I began writing mysteries, I found myself one dark evening in the back of a police car in Pennsylvania.

When I first began graduate school, my husband and I lived near the Pennsylvania border in a small town served by a single bus once a day and a train station almost an hour away by car. I took the bus into Philadelphia in the morning, returning in the evening usually by train, where my husband met me. This was a long commute, and one night it got even longer.

On a warm evening in the fall, I left 30th Street Station at the usual time, just after five o'clock, and settled in for the ride to West Chester. We reached the last stop, and the remaining commuters jumped off and found the cars that had come to pick them up, or their own parked in the tiny lot. The red-brick station was small, grimy, and surrounded by old buildings abandoned or sparsely used. I stood on the edge of the platform waiting for my husband. And waited. The parking lot emptied out and I waited. The lights flickered and died, leaving only one barely illuminating the platform. And I waited.

Yes, this was long before cell phones, and no, the station platform didn't have a pay phone. I waited. It grew darker, so dark that I began to get worried. Eventually a police car with two officers drove into the lot and pulled up in front of me. I prepared my explanation--I was waiting for my husband, etc.

The officer on the passenger side lowered his window and asked me if I was Susan Oleksiw. He then explained that my husband had four flat tires, had called AAA, and would arrange a ride for me from the local bus station. They would take me there, since it wasn't nearby and probably not the best route to walk at this hour.

The officer opened the back door for me, and I started to climb in but kicked the screen sitting in the well that was used to separate those in the back from those in the front.

"I'm afraid I'll kick a hole in the screen," I told him.

"Don't worry. You can't do it any harm."

I took his word for it and climbed in.

So began my ride. We took the tourist route--side street, back roads, little alleys--the officers were working after all.

When we came to a parked car at the end of an alley, the driving officer slowed, the other shined a flashlight into the car, startling the two sitting together in the front. The officers discussed what they saw, decided the two were benign, and we drove on. For the next half hour, forty minutes or so, we circled through the small city, keeping an eye out for anything. I tried to see what they saw, but all I saw were dark corners and shadows. I don't recall much at all from that evening except that we seemed to be mostly on streets and lanes without streetlights. When we finally arrived at the bus station, I thanked them and climbed out.

I was standing in front of the bus station but I had no idea where it was located in the city. I probably said as much when I climbed out of the car. Throughout the evening ride, the police said almost nothing to me, going about their work as though I weren't there. Or perhaps, they just didn't want to talk in front of a civilian. Either way, it was a dull ride, and not the way I'd like to spend an entire eight hours.

The bus station garage was another story. I stood in the open front of the garage, once again waiting, until a man approached me and asked if I was Susan. Apparently my husband was on the phone (and I have no idea how he found the phone number for the bus company's garage). A man directed me to an office--a closet, really--with a telephone, and my husband told me to look out for a friend of his from work. Half an hour later, an older woman he knew from the University arrived to loan me enough money for a bus ticket. I hung around in the garage, listening to the mechanics tell each other jokes and make suggestions and talk about the upcoming game. More than an hour later a bus left for my town, and I was home before midnight.

This was supposed to be about my first and only ride in a police car, what I learned and how useful it's been to me since then as a mystery writer. Over the years I've chatted with state police when I was gathering information, exchanged a few friendly words with an officer taking notes about a car accident (with no injuries), and met policemen at some of my readings, every one of whom offered to help with details should I need it. Every encounter only underscored how normal police men and women are. I wish I could report some excitement, but I can't. The first and only ride in a police car was dull. What can I say? My real life is dull. Maybe that's why I write fiction.

What this piece is really about is what many of us have forgotten: what life was like before cell phones, Uber, and ATMs.

Today, if I landed at the local train station with no cell phone and no way to get anywhere, the police would still transport me if I asked. According to the information officer of my town, the decision to transport would be up to the discretion of the officer on duty, but the police still helped people get where they needed to go when things went awry. It happens less and less now, but it still happens. I'm glad I asked because I'm still not used to carrying a cell with me everywhere, I have no taxi app on my phone, and there's no pay phone at the train station. For some of us, life hasn't changed that much at all.

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Thursday, April 19, 2018

My Fountain Pen

When I set off for college, in the Dark Ages, I went armed with a green Hermes 3000 manual typewriter and a fountain pen. I still have both though all the other remnants of my college life were tossed out long ago. Why would I keep the pen when I haven't used it in years? I have a reason.

Many of us, writers and other crafts persons, become attached to our tools if they have served us well. An expensive fountain pen doesn't impress me because it has no meaning if it hasn't proved its worth. My Parker 45, made in the USA according to the silver cap, saw me through numerous exams, countless short stories both good and bad, and my first novel, mostly bad.

Most schools have dropped penmanship classes, where we learned the Palmer Method of penmanship for learning cursive. I can't remember how often we had these classes, but I do remember that ballpoint pens were forbidden. Each student was given a small bottle of black ink and a black wooden pen with nib. We dipped our pen in the ink and wrote on lined paper. The pens were not attractive and rarely wrote smoothly. I was glad to leave them behind. Later on in high school, I received my Parker Pen, and never thought about using anything else.

Parker Pen was founded by George Safford Parker in 1888. He began by selling pens to his students, noted how much they leaked, and wanted to create one that didn't. He patented his first fountain pen in 1889, which leaked but less than others. In 1898 he added the slip-on outer pen cap. Until then, and even today in some brands, the cap was screwed on. My pen, the Parker 45, was offered in 1960, and was the first cartridge pen. It was named after the Colt 45 pistol.

I took my pen to India with me, along with the insert for ink just in case I ran out of cartridges. I didn't, but I felt very technologically advanced when I noticed that Indians didn't use inserts or cartridges. They just poured the ink into the body of the pen and tightly screwed the two parts together. The whole thing was messy.

After college I might have purchased a new pen when it became evident how much I'd worn down the body. The heat of my fingers had softened the plastic, my fingertips pressing and reshaping the body day after day. Yes, my relaxed grip changed the tool. But I have faith in this simple device. I used it throughout graduate school.

During the final exams of my senior year in college, I fretted over one course in particular (as I had all year long) and marched in believing I was fully prepared. I'd studied, crammed, practiced questions and answers, and worked myself up into a state. I had to pass. (Actually, I did have to pass or my credits would have been messed up, perhaps affecting my graduation.) I took my place in the exam room and wrote methodically, carefully, determinedly for the entire hour. And then I was done. I could have kissed the ground in relief.

Once again in my dorm room I gave in to a feeling of elation, pushing away the usual post-exam anxiety about all of life as well as exams. I tossed my notebooks and pocketbook, and pulled out my pen. During the exam an idea had occurred to me and I wanted to record it. I pressed the pen nib onto a note pad on my desk. Nothing. I scratched out the word and got nothing but a tear in the paper.

What does anyone do when a pen doesn't work? I shook it and exhaled hot breath on it and shook it again. I put pen to paper and--nothing. There was nothing left to do but open it and pop out the cartridge and look for a blockage. I held the cartridge and squeezed--not a single drop, not even a smear stained my skin. I shook it, breathed on it, held it under a lamp. No matter what I tried, I got nothing. The problem was simple--no ink. Not one single drop of ink anywhere. This couldn't be. There had to be some residue. I just wrote for an hour with the thing. I shook the cartridge again. I blew into the front half of the body. Nothing.

I'm not superstitious. I was lucky at my exam, and even though I went so far as to thank my black Parker Pen for saving my college career (sort of), I know it was luck. And yet, I have a favorite screwdriver that I reach for whenever I have need of one. I prefer a certain pot for boiling water for tea. I will use the same ice scraper storm after storm even though my husband bought a better one. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this.

We surround ourselves with things, objects, to create our known universe, one that is predictable and reliable and demands little of our mental energy, leaving us to focus on whatever we consider more important. What is important differs for everyone. But for me, within this universe I create strange worlds where everything is new and unknown to me, where I seek out the eerie and creepy and unpredictable, and usually a place where I wouldn't go in real life. That is where I expend my mental energy. And I'm able to do this all because of little tools like an old pen, a rusty screwdriver, a pot boiled dry more times than I can count, and numerous other items of clutter.