New Jersey Confidential

I've always liked titles that included 'Confidential' in them.  You know what I mean, titles like "Hollywood Confidential", "Park Avenue Confidential", "Palm Springs Confidential"...well, you get the point.  There's the promise of forbidden knowledge contained within the pairing of almost anything with the word 'Confidential'.  Probably some adult content too, if you know what I mean. 
However, the knowledge that I am about to impart doesn't have any of that.  Okay, so it's not forbidden, so how about not particularly well-known...unless you happen to an insider in the small world of Jersey law enforcement?  "What's that to me?" you might ask.  Maybe nothing; maybe a lot, if you happen to set a crime story in the Garden State or have a character that is a Jersey cop.  So wise up and  follow me, if you dare, and remember, no matter what happens, you didn't get this from me.

We do things just a little differently in Turnpike country.  When you're sandwiched between New York City and Philadelphia you've got to do things differently.  It's not easy playing David to two Goliaths, you know.  So here's what we cooked up on the law enforcement front just to keep 'em guessing: In your part of the world I bet they call a major crime a felony, right?  Cross the big line here, sweetheart, and you get slapped with an 'indictable'.  That's shorthand for indictable crime.  That's what they're called here; it's how it's written in the law books.  And you can keep your misdemeanors to yourself, too, while we're on the subject; try one of those on and we'll write you up for a 'disorderly persons offense'.  That's got more words but is easier to spell.  Makes it better, I think.  And this doesn't just stop with legal violations: We have county prosecutors in Jersey instead of district attorneys.  Okay, so maybe it doesn't roll off the tongue as trippingly as, "Hey Chief, you've got the D.A. on line one," but it is different; kinda homey, and that's they way we like it.

But all that is just words; let's go over a few details on how we get things done.  Here in the "Cockpit of the Revolution" the police are prohibited from going through the garbage you just put out at the curb for pick-up.  In order to accomplish that which your refuse collector, or any other passer-by, may do with impunity, we must obtain a search warrant.  We are not completely unique in this restriction, believe it or not, as our sister state of Hawaii has a similar, cutting edge, law on the books.

Let's say that you just got arrested for driving while under the influence (DWI, we call it; not DUI...yeah, you heard me...DWI).  Let's further posit that you are newly arrived from Kyrgyzstan and are therefore ignorant of the English language.  This will not save you from being read your rights.  The Great State of NJ has thoughtfully provided a website that provides a reading of said rights in any of fifty foreign tongues.  This is the wonder and majesty of Trenton.  Of course, if you happen to be from Kyrgyzstan this may be the first time you've ever had any rights given to you in the first place.

In order to protect the innocent, or at least the not-guilty, NJ further insists that all interrogations for indictable crimes be videotaped.  The cozy chats that we once enjoyed with our clientele are sadly a thing of the past.  Oh for the days before all this invasion of privacy.

Let me give you a scenario: We'll say that you're a uniformed officer on patrol.  You roll up to a stop at an intersection and look to your left.  "What lo?" says you, as Tommy Sunshine comes strolling along; fixes his wee beadies upon your stalwart visage; then turns on his heel and boogies for all he's worth in the opposite direction.  'This cannot bode well for the safety of our citizens,' you thinks.  'Pursuit?' you asks yourself. 

Finish that vente latte, brother...you got nothing.  Not here in the Garden State.  Case law has established that our citizens can decide to hot-foot it anywhere and at any time of their choosing, and Five-0 is not to read anything into it.  People get impulses.

Now, if you can tie little Tommy's sudden urge for distance betwixt himself and his protector-in-blue to something more, such as he's in a known drug trafficking area; there's a warrant for his arrest; or maybe he's just coming out from behind a store that has an alarm clanging away and it's four in the morning, well then, maybe you'll get some exercise after all. 

New Jersey has the death penalty...did you know that?  Neither do we apparently, as there's not been an execution in this state for well over a quarter century and probably much longer.  Courts have sentenced a number of murderers to death during that time but no one ever quite gets around to the dirty deed.  So, let's just say that we have a 'life until death' penalty, shall we?

Lest you think we're soft on crime, let me throw you this curve ball--we don't need no stinkin' probable cause to search someone for stolen library materials!  That's right, Lopresti, all you've got to do is point a finger and we're taking 'em down.  We like our libraries here; make no mistake about it.

So there you have it, gentle reader, a litany of the strange and the zany quirks of Jersey law and its enforcement.  It's not a comprehensive list, but it does give you some of the highlights, as well as a flavor for how we do business in the 'big' little state when it comes to policing.  I hope you enjoyed the tour.  Now if you'll follow me we'll finish our little chat about those 'rights' of yours...Oops...that was a lot of stairs, wasn't it?  Sure, I'll have rescue here in a jiff, but while we're waiting, how about that confession you've been dying to make?  And look, the silly camera is working again...how about that?  

To Sing a Story

by Fran Rizer

Here I am with two fine, good-looking, talented men I'd love to have known personally. I wouldn't mind having been able to drink a little bourbon or Jack Daniels with each of them. To my left, Mr. William Faulkner. To my right, O Henry. In my youth, I spent a lot of time reading short stories. My favorites include everything O Henry ever wrote and "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner.

My published writing so far has been four novels, two children's books, some scientific reports for Clemson University, numerous magazine features, and a few short stories. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about trying more short stories, and short stories make me think of songs. When I taught writing, I used songs to help the students identify some of the writing elements--setting, characters, plot, as well as beginning, middle, and ending.

I grew up on a mix of country music, R&B, classical, and jazz. Two of the finest story songs from my youth are "Stagger Lee" and "Long Black Veil." Both of them involve murder.

On Christmas Eve, 1895, "Stag" Lee Shelton, a Black pimp, shot William "Billy" Lyons in a St. Louis saloon after Billy snatched Stag's Stetson hat. That was immediately cast into a song that swept through the South with several little changes each time it was sung. A myth evolved, described by Julius Lester in "Black Folktales" as, "Stagolee was so bad that the flies wouldn't even fly around his head in the summertime, and snow wouldn't fall on his house in the winter."

Over four hundred artists have released the song about "Stag" Lee Shelton since the first recording in 1923, and the song has been refashioned as Ragtime, Broadway showtune, Blues, Jazz, Honky Tonk, Country, '50's Rock 'n Roll, Hawaiian and Gangsta Rap. The story lives on as a musical, two novels, a short story, an award-winning graphic novel, Ph. D. dissertations, and a pornographic feature film.

Recordings include those by James Brown, Nick Cave, Neil Diamond, The Clash, Pat Boone, Fats Domino, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, The Grateful Dead, Woody Guthrie, The Ventures, Ike and Tina Turner, Ma Rainey, Jerry Lee Lewis, Tom Jones, The Black Keyes and Elvis Presley. My favorite is the extremely popular 1959 version by Lloyd Price. (shown below left) These are the lyrics as Price recorded it.

STAGGER LEE

The night was clear, and the moon was yellow

And the leaves came tumbling down. . .

I was standin' on the corner

When I heard my bulldog bark.

He was barkin' at the two men

Who were gamblin' in the dark.

It was Stagger Lee and Billy,

Two men who gambled late.

Stagger Lee threw a seven

Billy swore that he threw eight.

Stagger Lee told Billy

"I can't let you go with that.

"You have won all my money,

"And my brand new Stetson hat."

Stagger Lee went home

And he got his .44.

He said, "I'm going to the bar room

Just to pay that debt I owe."

(bridge)

Go, Stagger Lee

Stagger Lee went to the bar room

And he stood across the bar room door.

He said, "Now nobody move,"

And he pulled his .44.

"Stagger Lee," cried Billy,

"Oh, please don't take my life!

"I've got three hungry children

And a very sickly wife."

Stagger Lee shot Billy.

Oh, he shot that poor boy so bad

'Til the bullet went through Billy

And broke the bartender's glass.

Go, Stagger Lee, go, Stagger Lee

Go, Stagger Lee, go, Stagger Lee

On an occasional Friday or Saturday night, when

I go to a bluegrass jam, I inevitably get irritated when

one of the pickers does my other favorite story song.

The reason is that they don't sing the words as written.

When confronted, the reply is, "Oh, that's an old

public domain folk song. I sing it the way I heard it

at another jam."

"Long Black Veil" isn't an old, uncopyrighted folk song. It was written by Marijohn Wilkin and Danny Dill, and originally recorded by Lefty Frizzell on March 3, 1959, as a country ballad

that became a smash hit.

Wilkin and Dill claimed their inspiration for the song was three-fold: Red Foley's recording of "God Walks These Hills With Me," a contemporary newspaper report about the unsolved murder of a priest, and the legend of a mysterious veiled woman who regularly visited Rudolph Valentino's grave.

"The Long Black Veil" has been covered by artists in country, folk, and rock styles. Sammi Smith had a hit with it in 1974 and other recordings include those by Johnny Cash, Dave Matthews Band, Joan Baez, Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Harry Manx, Mike Ness, Nancy Owen with Mama Said, and Rosanne Cash.

THE LONG BLACK VEIL

Ten years ago, on a cold dark night

There was someone killed 'neath the town hall light

There were few at the scene, but they all agree

That the slayer who ran looked a lot like me

The judge said, "Son, what is your alibi?

If you were somewhere else, then you won't have to die."

I spoke not a word, though it meant my life,

For I had been in the arms of my best friend's wife

Chorus

She walks these hills

In a long black veil

She visits my grave

When the night winds wail

Nobody knows, nobody sees

Nobody knows but me

The scaffold's high and eternity near

She stood in the crowd and shed not a tear

But sometimes at night, when the cold wind blows

In a long black veil, she cries o'er my bones

Repeat Chorus

Tag Nobody knows but me

Nobody knows but me

Talk about flash fiction! What a great story in a few words!!

Randall Hylton, songwriter and performer extraordinaire who had more than two hundred original songs cut by major artists, told me, "Fran, story songs are easiest to sell," so I wrote a bluegrass story song. I'm tempted to put it here, but I'll save it for next time. I know that at least two other SleuthSayers are song writers as well. What about you? Do you have an original story song? If so, email it to me at franrizer at gmail dot com and I'll include it two weeks from now.

Wanna win a prize? Answer this question of the day in Sleuthsayers Comments Section. First person with correct answer wins. Instructions how to claim the prize will be given tonight when the winner is announced tonight.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: What did Edgar Allan Poe and Abraham Lincoln have in common other than the century during which they lived?

Until we meet again...take care of YOU.

My Thoughts On The Big Lie— Santa Claus

downtown Knoxville

Santa is crying because he thinks I missed out on the joy of believing in Santa Claus. He is mistaken. Although I knew from the first day I heard somebody mention Santa Claus didn’t exist, I still enjoyed Christmas. My mother told– no, warned– my father, grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles, aunts, and anybody else who dared to mention Santa Claus to me, not to be telling her son that Santa Claus lie.

You’re thinking I must’ve grown up really disappointed during Christmas when all the kids wrote letters to Santa Claus. Nope. I never told my friends he didn’t exist, either because my mother told me not to or I instinctively knew not to. I prefer to believe the instinctive thing. I didn’t write letters to Santa Claus because my mother said she was Santa Claus, and so, I told her what I wanted. Although we weren’t poor, still I wasn’t always sure she would have the money to get what I asked for, so you see, I was as surprised on Christmas morning as the kids who believed Santa Claus, with his fat belly and bag full of toys, came down the chimney.

I liked the idea of Santa Claus. I liked it so much that I didn’t tell my two cousins, the daughters of my uncle the bootlegger, that Santa Claus wasn’t real. I became Santa Claus to them, helping my aunt or grandmother shop for toys, hiding them, and placing them under the tree on Christmas Eve after they had gone to sleep. Santa Claus may not have been real to me but he was to them. I always wondered, however, why they never asked how he could come down our chimney. He certainly was too fat to squeeze through the stove pipe after he got down the chimney and then into the stove, which had hot coals burning all night.

Christmas is the holiday I enjoy most. I try to forget the fact that the criminals, pickpockets, shoplifters, purse snatchers, carjackers, etc., are out in force during the holidays. What I enjoy most on Christmas morning is seeing the faces of my grandkids, as they open their presents.

But a TV commercial has me worried about the life of Santa Claus. The women in the commercial buy gifts at a store, and when Santa enters their homes, they confront him with smirks on their faces that say they don’t need him anymore. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, you understand, but I can’t help but think that, as Christmas has become more and more commercialized, some merchants may be trying to get rid of Santa Claus. Okay, I’ve seen some positive commercials showing Santa using a smartphone, so all is not lost. He’s fighting back with the help of digital technology.

To keep negative feelings from messing with my mind during the holidays, I listen to soulful Christmas music: Nat King Cole singing the traditional Christmas songs, The Temptations’s interpretation of “Silent Night”; my oldest grandson’s favorite,  gravelly voiced Louis Armstrong singing “’Zat You Santa Claus”; Booker T and The Mg’s instrumental “Jingle Bells”; and Otis Redding singing the all time favorite “White Christmas.” On Christmas morning when my grandkids come for their presents, they hear Nat’s melodious voice coming from the CD player, and I watch with a smile as they open their presents.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Quirks in Progress

Every year at Christmas our family--my wife and I, our daughter, our sons, and all their spouses and children--get together for a week or so, at our house. The headcount is up to thirteen now, and shows signs of growing even more in coming years. It's a lot of fun, and since the five grandchildren are all under the age of seven, it can be a little chaotic as well. Sort of a mix between a Waltons Christmas special and the studio food-fight scene in Blazing Saddles.

What's different about this year is that some of our clan arrived here later than usual--the day before Christmas Eve--and are staying until after New Year's Day, instead of coming a week earlier and leaving just after Christmas. Therefore, instead of my usual practice of avoiding booksignings the week before Christmas because the family's here, this time I told my publisher I'd be available, and wound up signing at several Booklands and Books-A-Millions over the past few days.

Gift rapping

I had a good time at each store, met some interesting folks, and was pleased to see firsthand that a lot of shoppers still choose to give books as Christmas presents. I'm sure some of them were last-minute gifts--I still remember the way I used to frantically grab presents for the kids at the airport after a business trip--but the fact remains that the items under the tree on Christmas morning sometimes still turn out to be books. That warms my heart: I love to give them and receive them.

(By the way, I don't mean to be ignoring e-readers or magazines or subscriptions to magazines. To me, any kind of reading material--or instrument for that purpose--makes a good gift.)

Take me to your reader

Which brings up another subject. Several of my writer friends have told me they don't read other people's fiction while they're in the process of writing their own fiction. They say that if they do, it dilutes their focus, and keeps them from concentrating fully on their own styles and storylines.

That's fine with me. I've always believed a writer should do whatever it takes to make him or her productive, which of course includes avoiding whatever would make him or her unproductive. If it hurts when you laugh, don't laugh.

But I must tell you, the "don't-read-others'-fiction-while-you're-writing-your-own-fiction" policy is--for me--a quirk that wouldn't work. If I stopped reading other authors' fiction while I was in the process of writing my own, I would never get a chance to read other authors' fiction. I'm always writing something, it seems, and if I'm not actually putting words on paper I'm dreaming up those words to later put on paper.

Concurrent sessions

Here's a related point, which I'll put in the form of three questions. Do you ever read more than one novel at the same time? (I don't.) Do you ever read a novel and a nonfiction book at the same time? (I do.) If you're a writer, do you ever find yourself plotting (in your head) more than one novel or short story at the same time? (I do.)

One thing I don't usually do, and I'm not sure why, is read two installations of a series without reading some other kind of book in between them. Novels I've read over the past couple months are (in order): Lee Child's Without Fail, Kinky Friedman's Blast From the Past, Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, John Grisham's The Litigators, Child's Worth Dying For, Friedman's Ten Little New Yorkers, Stephen King's 11/22/63, Collins's Catching Fire, Michael Crichton's Micro, and Collins's Mockingjay--and splitting up the two Child and Friedman "series" novels and the Hunger Games trilogy was intentional. I think I just enjoyed them more that way. (During that same period I also wrote seven short stories and I've almost finished plotting two more.) How about you?--Do any of you prefer to read books in a series back-to-back, or do you (like me) prefer to sandwich other books between them?

Speaking of gifts and sandwiches . . . that's a wrap

In closing, I sincerely hope all of you read plenty of books and stories in 2012, that you buy plenty of books for others, and that you receive even more.

Happy holidays to everyone! See you next year.

Fairy Tales Live On

Once upon a time....as the old fairy tale goes....a beautiful princess kissed a frog and POOF, he magically turned into a handsome prince. But then, there's a lot of fairy tales out there to be heard, if one is a believer in that sort of thing.

In more modern times on the dating scene, there have been incidents of young women, who under the distorting influence of alcohol just before last call in a singles bar, have lost the ability to distinguish some of the various reptilian species lurking in the nearby vicinity. Thus, mistakenly they have kissed a toad, hoping he would magically turn out to be their charming prince. Unfortunately for them, their delusion did not transform into reality.

It seems that in the real world, you had better pay attention. All may not be as it seems. As a sidenote however, in my realm of expertise there is a certain family of toads, and no I won't provide their names, which have hallucinogenic properties. For those poor souls desperate to take a mental trip, all they have to do is lick the toad's back and POOF, they're off to magic land. Naturally, you had best know your toads, because like some mushrooms, the wrong ones can be detrimental to your health.


So anyway, here we all are making our way through life in a world of part fairy tale, part hope and a whole lot of reality. Most people figure out real quick that reality is the part that reaches out and tags you. For those who don't comprehend the difference, well they're still out there pinning their hopes on toads, wondering why reality keeps getting their attention the hard way.
In continuing the fairy tale thread, I don't want to say that law enforcement, especially undercover ones, started this next particular fairy tale for the streets, but here's how I ran into it.

Me and my lowlife Cooperating Individual (CI) were sitting in the back seat of a criminal's car in a city we won't bother to name. The CI had just duked me in and everything was going fine. Conversation was easy, no visible tension, we're merely negotiating some finer points of the deal we're about to do. Then out of nowhere, the bad guy's partner sitting in the front passenger seat turns and says to me, "Are you a cop?"
I was stunned. Did this guy suddenly know something I'd overlooked?
"No," I replied, and then since a good defense is a good offense, or vice versa, I followed up by asking the question back to him. "Why, are you a cop?"
"No, no," they were both quick to respond.
"Then why did you ask?"
"Because," said the Lower IQ of the two, "we heard that if we asked you if you were a cop, you had to tell the truth, otherwise you were a liar and the case wouldn't stand up in court."
"Damn," says I in amazement. "I'm glad you gave me that information. I will definitely use it to protect myself in the future."
I then paid them the federal government bills of which the serieal numbers had been previously recorded, and they in turn provided the contraband goods. Our deal was done, my case was pretty well made, and I was ready to get out of their vehicle. But wait, we weren't through yet.
"Be careful," says the bad guy in the front passenger seat.
"Why's that?" I inquire, wondering what could possibly be next.
"Because," says Low IQ, "we heard there's an undercover fed just come into town."
That part was true, no fairy tales there. I had been in town for the last three days, but was only just now getting around to working on them. They didn't know it at the time, but they had to wait their turn.
"Uh-oh," says I, "you guys had better tell me what this fed looks like so I can stay away from him."
They then proceeded to describe me to me, and quite accurately I might add. I thanked them profusely for their valuable street intelligence, opened the rear door, and POOF, the guy they thought they knew in their car was gone.


Now we come to the end of our little tale. For the two criminals in the front seat of their car, I guess you could say those two were believers in fairy tales, even if it was of the modern day street variety. Some phantom from the Office of Disinformation (also known as "They") had obviously spun a fantasy those two desperately wanted to believe. And, I'm sure those guys were also hoping they'd found their prince with a lot of magic money in his hand. But, it soon appeared that they'd pinned their hopes on a fairy tale for sure, because the expected transformation didn't come out the way they had anticipated. POOF! They were in handcuffs.

A quick word to the wise. Don't put a lot of stock in everything you hear on the street. It may just be a fairy tale.

But then, what do you believe in?

The Old Man in the Corner

Janice Law

Some time ago, I wrote about Baroness Emma Orczy's pioneering female detective, Lady Molly of Scotland Yard for the now closed Criminal Brief website. That led me to Orczy's more famous Old Man in the Corner who debuted in 1908. He was part of a group of highly rational, puzzle solving detectives inspired by Sherlock Holmes, and possibly the earliest of the 'armchair' detectives and ancestor of American favorite Nero Wolfe.

Like Sherlock Holmes with Watson, he has an amanuensis, Miss Burton of the Evening Observer, the young "female reporter" who was herself something of a novelty. She meets the Old Man at her favorite coffee shop, the Norfolk branch of the Aerated Bread Company, where he dines on milk and cheesecake and plays endlessly making knots in a length of string.

His casual remark that, "There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear on the investigation," begins their on-going conversation about the sensational crimes of the day. Miss Burton is skeptical about the Old Man's claims, but again and again he produces ingenious solutions to baffling mysteries.

His narratives of the crimes are extremely clear and provocative, and, despite her reservations, Miss Burton is fascinated. Unlike Watson, her only function is to be a sounding board and recorder. The Old Man leaves the coffee shop for excursions to courthouses and to assemble the dossiers of photos and documents he needs, but all such adventures are kept off stage.

In the Old Man in the Corner stories, Orczy keeps as strictly to the "unities" as Aristotle could want. Everything is confined to the ABC shop and a single conversation with Miss Burton. So far so good in a conventional vein; the puzzles are complex, the casts of characters interesting, the crimes varied.

The Old Man is, however, far odder and more distinctive than that brief summary would suggest. Unlike any other detective I can think of, the Old Man is not on the side of justice. Yes, we've had favorite characters who were criminals, Donald Westlake's bumbling robbers, for example. Lawrence Block has run a series about a professional hit man and Dexter, blood spatter expert and serial killer, is in print and on the tube.

But both of the latter are ultimately on the side of the angels, dispatching justice, if of a peculiar and personal sort. They may be immoral, but it would be unfair to dub them amoral. Not so the Old Man.

Several times, Miss Burton asks him why he doesn't place his superior intellect and clever solutions at the disposal of the police. The Old Man is perfectly clear about his motivation: He admires the murderers. Of the Fenchurch Street killer, he exclaims, "Ah! it was cleverly, artistically conceived! Kershaw is a genius." And he concludes on a note of mock horror at the thought of hanging such a man.

The Old Man's superior intellect is reserved for his own enjoyment and for the edification and amazement of Miss Burton, who occasionally, as in The York Mystery, agrees that publishing the solution would be unwise.

The Old Man's cases run the gamut of Edwardian crime, with an emphasis on inheritance squabbles, stolen jewelry, crimes of passion, and crimes to protect reputation and status. They often rely on disguises, and it must be said that the Old Man, who has some childish traits, has an almost childlike faith in the powers of wigs and costumes to confuse even those nearest and dearest.

If this is a weakness, the Old Man has a counterbalancing strength. Like Lady Molly, and unlike police officialdom, the Old Man never rules out female criminals and never sells the opposite sex short. "French detectives, who are acknowledged masters in their craft," he tells Miss Burton in The Theft at the English Provident Bank, "never proceed till after they have discovered the feminine element in a crime..."

The Old Man solves one case because of the modus operandi - a stab in the back. An English gentleman would strike an opponent, he says. A woman, conscious of her physical weakness but resolved to prevail, would choose a knife in the back.

The most unsettling of his cases, however, is The Mysterious Death in Percy Street, which unfortunately is placed midway through Dover Book's good collection. It belongs at the end, and clearly represented a point where Orczy was considering dropping her curious detective.

In this case, an elderly woman who had been preyed on financially by an improvident nephew is found dead along with her pet canary. The plot is as intricate as ever, but one of the details is the presence of a particularly intricate knot. At the end of the story, it strikes Miss Burton that the crucial knot is just such a one as her companion habitually makes. "If I were you," she said, without daring to look into that corner where he sat, "I would break myself of the habit of perpetually making knots in a piece of string."

When she looks up, he is gone and is never seen again - until the next series of Old Man in the Corner stories began.

This will be my last regularly scheduled SleuthSayers piece, although I hope to contribute the occasional column. It's been fun and I've appreciated the kind comments.

Happy Holidays

by Robert Lopresti

That title is not yet another blow in the war against Christmas (which seems, oddly enough, to be doing just fine in spite of all the worriers).  Instead I want to think about tying books or stories to specific holidays.  I believe I tried it exactly once, with a story tied to the British custom of telling ghost stories around Christmas Eve.  Alas, that story remains in my ever-increasing pile of stories waiting for a good home.

Is a holiday story more or less marketable than any other kind?  Beats me.  On the one hand, you may be reducing your odds to, say, one issue out of twelve for the year.  On the other hand, the editor might really want something thematic for that issue.  Certainly Christmas is the obvious one, since we as a nation seem to obsess about Noel for a longer period every year.  (In a short story called "The Black Whatever" James Powell suggested this was part of a conspiracy by Santa Claus... that was yet another Christmas story, of course.)

I suppose the person who should be writing about this subject is our own R.T. Lawton, since he write a series of stories about a couple of very dumb criminals who specialize in holiday burglaries (the latest was titled "Labor Day.")

Maybe my problem with all this is that the holidays that mean the most to me tend to fail to show up on the pre-printed calendars.  For example, I always enthusiastically celebrate Bike To Work And School Day, which you may not have heard of, but it's a big deal among my friends, and my wife .helped start it.

Which brings me to the actual subject of this piece (and about time).  You see, we are celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary this week.  You won't find that on anyone's calendar but ours, and I am pleased to report there are no crime stories associated with it.

So that's what I will be celebrating.  Oh, and Chanukah, too; we're multi-tasking.  As for the rest of you, I hope your days are merry, happy, bright, and joyful.

Dickens' A Christmas Carol

 Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

    So begins one of the most popular and long-lived novellas in English literature.
 

A Christmas Carol, front piece and title page (1843)

    Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843, just prior to Christmas.  But the story, from all accounts, had been fermenting like Christmas punch in Dickens’ imagination for many years.

    If you have read biographies of Dickens, or if you perhaps had the good fortune to catch Roy Dotrice’s 13 part 1976 Masterpiece Theatre presentation chronicling the life of Dickens, you already know that many of the characters in A Christmas Carol were drawn from Dickens’ own life.  Characteristics of Ebenezer Scrooge were taken in broad brush from Dickens' father, a man whose moods swung often from joy to darker visages, who was in and out of debtors prison, and with whom Charles Dickens had a life-long love/hate relationship.   Fan, Scrooge’s fragile sister, bears the same name as Dickens’ equally fragile sister, and her son Henry, a sickly child who died young, is almost certainly the model for Tiny Tim.  Fred, Scrooge’s nephew, is also the name of Dickens’ younger brother, a spendthrift of whom Dickens largely disapproved.

    There is also evidence that both the story and the theme of A Christmas Carol had haunted Dickens for years before he actually sat down to write the novella.  In fact, a “working draft” of A Christmas Carol can be found buried in another Dickens story, a short narrative of Christmas redemption that appears in the earlier novel Pickwick Papers.   There, in an episode that also transpires on Christmas Eve, the character Mr. Wardle tells those assembled the story of old Gabriel Grub, a lonely and bitter sexton, who undergoes a Christmas conversion after being visited by goblins that show him scenes from his own past and, unless things change, his likely future.  

     While all of this is useful background information, The Annotated Christmas Carol by Charles Michael Hearn (2004) notes that the catalyst that inspired Dickens to write A Christmas Carol was his visits in early 1843 to Cornish tin mines.  During those visits the author  encountered child laborers working in deplorable and heart-wrenching conditions.  After touring the mines Dickens immediately set to work on a pamphlet that was to be titled "An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child," and that was intended as a clarion call to end child labor, particularly in the mines.  Charles Kelly, in his 2003 treatise A Christmas Carol, reports that Dickens soon concluded, however, that his call for labor reforms and charity for the poor would be more resoundingly received if they were set forth during the course of a story, particularly one cloaked in the setting of a London Christmas. 

A page of Dickens original manuscript

    But this revelation came to Dickens in October of 1843, barely two months before Christmas.   In order to ensure that the book would be published at the time of year when its message would resonate the most Dickens had to accomplish a Herculean task.  When Dickens began to write A Christmas Carol it was therefore at a feverish pace.  The book was finished a scant 6 weeks later, in early December of 1843.  Less than two weeks after completing the manuscript on December 17, 1843, Dickens published  the first edition of A Christmas Carol at his own expense. 

    Although expenses related to Dickens’ decision to self-publish (tricky then as it can be now) resulted in less of a return than the always over extended author had hoped for, the little book was nonetheless an immediate commercial success.  The first run of 6000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve of 1843 and a second press run was immediately begun .  Since then Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has never been out of print. 

    The success of A Christmas Carol inspired Dickens to write four additional Christmas tomes published between 1844 and 1848:  The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain.  Each of these was published just before Christmas in succeeding years, and each involved a similar theme – redemption of the spirit in the context of the yuletide holiday.  But none matched the success of A Christmas Carol.

    So, what was it – what is it – about A Christmas Carol that struck the right chord?  Well, at least back in 1843 some of the success of the book can be attributed to rather remarkable timing.  Stated another way, the little book was a product of its times.

    In the early 1800s Christmas had been more of a somber affair in England.  It was a day barely observed, when businesses remained open and commerce continued to flow.  That fact makes more understandable the grudging question Scrooge poses to Cratchitt:  “You will want all day tomorrow, I suppose?”  Scrooge, after all, had presided over his business in years when a Christmas holiday from commerce was hardly the norm.

    But by the 1830s times were changing, and the Yule had begun its transformation into a joyous year-end celebration.

    Evidence of this transformation abounds.   In 1841, for example, Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert, German by birth, introduced a tradition from his homeland and the first Christmas trees appeared in England.  1843, the year A Christmas Carol was published, is also the first year that Christmas cards were widely exchanged in England.  The singing of Christmas carols, suppressed in England since the Protestant Reformation and the Calvinist aversion to "nonessential" religious customs, also enjoyed a resurgence in the 1830s as wassailing took hold in England.  All of this was in place when A Christmas Carol first appeared in the bookstores of London in December of 1843.  

     Even meteorology cooperated with Dickens’ narrative.  The “white Christmas” setting of A Christmas Carol was hardly the norm in London, which more typically receives 6 to 12 inches of snow spread over the entire winter season.  But this was not so much the case during Dickens' lifetime.   In his biography of Dickens, Peter Ackroyd wrote: "In view of the fact that Dickens can be said to have almost singlehandedly created the modern idea of Christmas, it is interesting to note that in fact during the first eight years of his life there was a white Christmas every year; so sometimes reality does actually exist before the idealized image."  Probably even more telling was the fact that on Christmas Eve of 1836 – seven Christmases before the publication of A Christmas Carol, and the very night that Dickens tells us Jacob Marley lay dying – London  was blanketed in a blizzard that continued for five days and reportedly left snow drifts of 12 to 40 feet in the city.

    And beyond all of this is the moral of the story, which, as Dickens had hoped, captivated his readers.  In 1843 England -- beset with its poor houses, debtors prisons, and child labor -- the hope of individual and societal redemption that lies at the heart of A Christmas Carol fell on sympathetic ears.  Dickens was not the only Englishman appalled by these conditions, nor was he the only one hoping that society would begin to move toward a more charitable approach toward poverty and its ravages.

    So a joyous Christmas story, set in a snow-bound England, and telling a tale of redemption, of throwing off miserly ways, of embracing human kindness and charity, was one that the reading public readily embraced.

    It is more elusive, perhaps, to explain the amazing staying power of A Christmas Carol.  It has proven itself, beyond all debate, to be a story not just for the Victorian age, but for all ages.

Alistair Simms -- perhaps the finest
portrayal of Ebeneezer Scrooge

    Not only is the book universally read, it is equally universally performed.  Think of the actors who have played Scrooge over the years – Reginald Owen, Alistair Sims, Basil Rathbone several times (he also played Marley at least once), Frederic March, Ralph Richardson, Cyril Richard, George C. Scott, Albert Finney, and Patrick Stewart.  The story even resonates when Scrooge is played in a stretch – by Mickey Mouse, Mr. Magoo, Jim Carrey, Tim Curry, or by Kelsey Grammar (in an operatic version, nonetheless), or by Henry Winkler (in a western version), or by Marcel Maceau in a mime version, or by Bill Murray (in a jaded Hollywood setting), or by Michael Caine (performing opposite the Muppets),  All of them, and others, have looked out at us and expounded on burying revelers with a stake of holly through their hearts.  All of them have muttered about blots of mustard, crumbs of cheese, and underdone potatoes.  All of them have snarled “humbug,” a word that did not exist until Dickens penned it.  And each of them, every one, has been blessed and redeemed in the end. 

    I re-read Dickens A Christmas Carol often, and (at least for me) it always works.

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!

And So It Goes

by Jan Grape

Okay we're only one week from Christmas, December 25th. What's happening at your house?  Things are fairly calm at my place with only my alien and I and Nick & Nora, my two cats.

I put up a tree...well, I call it a tree and it honestly is one. It's made of tomato plant wire and lights. You've seen those surely? It was what I used outside my RV because there really wasn't enough room for a tree inside.  The new house has plenty of room and even a lovely bay window where a tree would sit in splendor but have you priced Christmas trees lately? And the thing is, the day after the 25th the prices will be reasonable. So this year, I'm making do.

I also couldn't find my box of "grape" decorations. They were stored at a friend's house or my sister's house or someplace and I still have not located them so I'll need to buy decorations. Same thing as the tree, after the 25th everything will be marked down about eighty per cent. And my final reason for not putting up a traditional tree, with only Cason and I here for the holiday, there won't be many presents and if there were presents under the tree, the cats would probably tear, scratch, play with and generally wreck havoc.

So we have the little light tree in the bay window and from the street it looks just like a regular tree. I put some lights on the wooden railing and hand rails on the front and side porches. Which brings me to another unusual event. When I plugged in a string of lights in the kitchen, all the lights lit up and looked just fine.  Ten minutes later when I plugged them in out on the porch (and the extension is fed through the front window) only half the string lit up.  Mind you it's just one string. Brand new mini lights, 100 lights long and only half of them now light up. That half blinks and looks really cool, but the other half of the lights just sit there. This is NOT two strings plugged into each other, it's all one string of 100 lights.  I have no idea what's going on there.

I did find my purple "chili pepper" lights that we used to attach to our RV awning when I unpaked boxes after the move. Two strings. I attached them to each wooden hand rail along the steps and both strings lit up and look awesome. All of them work.  All bulbs burn on each string. Then I went out to the side porch which also has stairs and a wooden handrail. I found a string of lights I had used on my RV handrail last year. Now this is two strings of lights plugged together. I tested them inside and all the lights worked, no problem. Ten minutes later, I plugged them into the outdoor electric socket. Guess what?  One string lights up and one does not.

Okay, I admit that I have the mechanical aptitude of a horned toad but good grief, even I know to check each little bulb and be sure it's tight in each little socket.  There's even a little statement on the front of the box that says if one bulb burns our the rest stay lit. NOT. They all worked in the kitchen electrical outlet. What changed in that ten minutes? Heaven only knows, but I sure don't. And it happened to two different set-ups. That's what really confuses me.  The 100 string lights on the front porch are brand new. The two stringer set up on the side porch are from last year. BUT they ALL worked at first. So we have a few outside lights and some non-lit bulbs. You can't tell from the street, it just looks like I only half decorated. Like maybe I'll buy more lights tomorrow. NOT.

BUT we do have stockings hung by the chimney with care. Problem is they won't stay hung.  The fireplace mantle is limestone rock so I can't attach them with thumb tacks or push pins.  I used Scotch tape.  That worked fine for about a week and then the stocking with my name on it fell off. Scared Nora half to death when in fell just as she walked by. She's a bit of a scaredy cat anyway. Next I used that wonderful gray duck tape that holds everything together. That worked for two days and the stocking with my name fell off again. The two little stockings with Nick's & Nora's names on them fell off. At the moment all the stockings are laying on the hearth. I have yet to figure out what I'll do next.  Maybe just wait until Christmas Eve, hang with the duck tape and hope the stockings stay up until Santa slides down the chimney and fills them.

In the meantime, I went to a Christmas party today and two people asked at different times as I milled around, if I was working on a new book. I shook my head sadly and said, "not right now. Not until after January first." Both looked as if they understood.

And so it goes....
Merry and Happy Everyone.