Big Shoes To Fill

My dad was a real writer.  He actually got a weekly paycheck for pounding out a couple of stories a week for his bylined column in the Baltimore Sun.  It is basically all he ever did.  After he worked for the Sun, he worked on a couple of magazines where he edited other's words and wrote a few stories of his own.  And in his last few years he was a freelance writer.

Dad also liked to drink.  In fact, he may have been more famous for his drinking than his writing.  I have many memories of him nearly passed out over the typewriter but continuing to peck away at the keys till his story was complete.  He may have been drunk as a skunk, but his deadlines were met and he always told a good story.

I was suppose to follow dad's footsteps.  I, too, was suppose to be a great writer, at least in his eyes.  The thing is, words never came easy to me.  Yes, I can share my thoughts in the written word and can tell a story.  But I have to work really hard at it.  In the time it would take him to put together an entire column, I might have a sentence or paragraph, and that is only if I can come up with an idea what to write about.  And so I spent my working years bouncing around several careers and never quite living up to Dad's expectations.

Today I'm retired.  I've moved back to my home state of Maryland and settled in on the Eastern Shore.  And I've got the urge to write.  I think some of that urge is fear that if I don't write it down, I'll forget it.  But a bigger part of the urge is I do have stories to tell and the words are flowing much easier now that I'm doing it for fun and not a paycheck.

So follow along if you'd like.  I'm clueless where my thoughts and writing might wander.  Will I ever tell a story as good as Earl Shelsby?  I doubt it, but I launch this blog in his memory.