[My father bred and registered this young bull; the photo was taken about 1954, a year before my birth on the ranch.]
A cane prods me to conjure Dad’s ranch days in a memoir essay.
Essays and stories and poems are built from leaps in thought and emotion and incident. They must unfold like a dream in which anything is possible.—Lee Martin, in his recent post on revision
And the reason he writes is to explain it all to himself, and the less he understands to begin with, the more he probably writes. And he takes his ununderstanding, whatever it is — the face of wealth, the collapse of his father’s pride, the misuses of love, hopeless poverty — he simply never gets over it.—Grace Paley, Just as I Thought
[My father, Charles C. Gilbert, began ranching after WWII.]
I dimly recalled receiving the cane when I was four. This was about 1959. We had resettled by then in southwestern Georgia, and Dad bought a bull from a nearby farmer, R.W. Jones Jr. Walter Jones was a prominent breeder of polled (naturally hornless) Herefords who has since become legendary. He gave me the cane. Finding it again sent me into our basement, where I found Dad’s framed color photograph of Atoka Gold.
[Lifesaver: knee scooter.]
In my mind from the start, the piece really illuminated the nature of memory, imagination, and story. But early readers wanted more about my relationship with my father. I resisted, having written so much before.
Here’s a few typical passages from Shepherd: A Memoir:
I wished I could tell Dad, gone ten years now, about all I was learning, about the advances in grass farming—new theories, forage species, tools—since he’d been a pioneer in pastoral agriculture in California and Georgia. He’d used weak, clunky electrical fences that constantly shorted out. Hence his desire to feed his cows efficiently on silage he made. His vision of paradise became vast hay and forage fields that surrounded a feedlot where his cattle awaited his deliveries. . . .
Growing up in Satellite Beach I watched him charm outsiders, clients he had to entertain for work or distant relatives, unaware of his solitary nature, who were passing through. His blue eyes sparkled with humor and a smile lit his face. The current of warmth that flowed from him at such times was palpable, the way the Gulf Stream off our beach coursed in a warm vein through the Atlantic’s murky coastal chop. Always he commanded respect, a natural leader, and when he dropped his sober mask he could be as charismatic as a movie star.
[R.W. “Walter” Jones, in the wheelchair, shakes the hand of a Coloradoan making a historic purchase of Georgia cattle for the western range in 1965.]
As always, I was schooled in the joys and pains of writing. Managing the herky-jerky composition process challenges me. There’s the excitement of the first draft, a blend of anxiety and pleasure as you break ground and turn up glittering arrowheads amid the clay gumbo. Then there’s seeing something in a present-day scene, and working in a new thread to realize its promise. Then there are second thoughts and additions. Then there’s a whole new version. Then someone points out the essay’s true organizing principle—hello latest new version. And finally you cut that whole present-day thread that took weeks of work.
Always I re-learn truisms. You do improve, yet writing isn’t easier. Maybe harder in all respects. What a paradox. What a struggle. I think you must enjoy making sentences—and in my case, complaining about it. My new essay, labored over for three months, still isn’t fit for the front pasture. But I see its potential. And it won’t be long before I look back and realize yet again that the process was the gift.
[A 1935 photo. In Georgia, my father bought Hereford bulls from R.W. Jones, of Leslie, who perpetuated the Victor Domino line. Dad bought a descendant of this bull from Mr. Jones.]
Dear Richard, Henry James said of composing fiction that one started with a premise (that wasn’t his exact word), and then once the idea really took hold of one, it sometimes changed out of all recognition. He compared the relationship of reality to fiction as being that of starting with a fact or story, which was like a balloon tied to earth, which then as one wrote, one cut the cord to, and the balloon took off on its own and became another sort of thing entirely, no longer earthbound. I know that memoir writing has a closer relationship to fact than fiction does, and yet you used the word “cut” and a similar image, and it started me thinking: was there an analogous procedure at work in writing memoir? As you have done it and I haven’t, maybe you can answer that question better than I….
That’s a great point and question, Victoria. I think in some ways writing is writing. Doesn’t the work, in whatever genre, always take on a life of its own? It’s hard to picture my story as fiction, though. I mean, I have trained myself to ponder meaning in what happened—how I got the cane, Dad’s ranching and his relationship with me, and our dual relationship with Mr. Jones and Mr. Jones’s with HIS son. I guess it could be a novel—in fact in the essay I reveal my kneejerk imagined narratives. In either case there seems a loss of control or of fidelity to an instant “plan,” probably no more than a glimpse you had at the start. Squaring what I did with what I thought I was going to do is always a little hurdle for me. Even if I decide what I got seems fine, even better, the unreal, unrealized micro fantasy at the start can haunt me.
I love this essay more than usual, Richard, and that’s saying a lot!
I love that you have a new topic to “wrassle with.”
I love that you are writing again about that mysterious magnificent imperial father who so permeates your memoir and your love of all things agricultural.
I love the two quotes at the beginning and how you explicate them so delicately and cleverly.
I love your humor, especially when you say you love to write sentences and love to complain about writing them.
I encourage you to give humor even more life. The more you make the reader smile or even laugh, the deeper you can go into the father-son passions and unfulfilled yearning.
You’re perceptive as well as kind, Shirley. Yep: humor. It makes a difference…
Wonderful post, Richard. I look forward to reading the essay.
Thank you Darrelyn—I look forward to getting it published, if I can.
You will. I have no doubt.
Thank you. I remember the bull! I look forward to more.Ann
Ann! Thank you for checking in, big sister.
[…] reflexive analysis occurs while I’m completing an essay about how memory, imagination, and story intertwine. The surprising byproduct of my work has been a […]