This has been an amazing day. I worked up two chapter’s worth of stories and have about four more things I think I could work on. The amazing part of that is what I’m finding to be a truism. Ever since I started writing these stories one has led to another. I’ll be in the middle of a story and I’ll think about something else. A similar incident. Similar people. There’s something about drawing those connections that is happening organically.
I already cautioned myself that I think I have two books going. One is based very loosely on my childhood. But there are other tales to tell. Some of them polished enough to let others see. I posted one on Friday and have really enjoyed the response.
Today I was writing about the Hideaway restaurant. I happened onto a job there when I was in high school. And my associations with the Montana Hotel (the Marcus Daly to those my age) just started cascading. In the short span of one story, I had four more to work on. That place is a gold mine of material. That one place.
Here’s a couple of things I remembered.
One night, I was waiting on the steps of the hotel after it had been closed for a while. My dad was supposed to pick me up there after a boys choir gig downtown somewhere. Anyway, I was standing there on the steps when three or four bricks sailed past my left ear and crashed on the granite. Literally … another inch and I would have been killed. Was someone throwing bricks at me? Or was the building falling down around me?
In the lobby of the hotel there was a display case of mementos belonging to Wayne Estes. I recall the tragic story of a life cut short every time I see a news story about downed power lines during wind storms. Something deep inside me reacts. I think it’s collective unconscious. I wonder if everyone gets a twinge of foreboding when they see a “don’t go near the power lines” public service announcement.
Shirley Moses worked in my dad’s office after the hotel was sold and renovated. But I remember her being one of the last people to work at the lobby desk. She would always let me look at the register on Sunday mornings when my mom and I would go to breakfast after church with Margaret and Cynthia Bubash.
I remember being terrified of the elevator.
I remember the blue and white wallpaper in the banquet room.
I remember wondering, but never feeling, like the place was haunted.
That old hotel. It was always old, right? How lucky we are to have such a place in our lives. We are so lucky.
We are, all of us, so very lucky.