After our civil rights journey, I took a year out of seminary as part of a theological school program designed to expose seminary students to the real world. The deal was you were supposed to find a real (non church) job on your own and then meet weekly with fellow participants to reflect upon the theological meaning of it. I jumped at the opportunity. I saw this as a chance to get out of the minister track and to make it big in the Big Apple.

And in my case there was some low hanging fruit. One of Davidson College’s chief benefactors, H. R. Richardson, had founded Richardson Merrill, the company that made Vicks VapoRub and other popular medicines. He had retired, was then in his eighties, and needed someone to help him with his memoir. Since my father-in-law was president of Davidson, I had connections and bingo, landed my first big job in the Big Apple as an editor of this industrial icon’s book. It seemed to me to be  a perfect fit and the opportunity I had been waiting for. I worked next to his corner office on the top floor of a skyscraper on East 42^nd Street. I even had my own spacious office, with a window facing the Chrysler Building, I concluded that  miraculously I had become president of a major U.S. corporation.  How much easier could it get?

The problem was that Mr. Richardson was never around, and the entire floor seemed like a tomb. After spending several weeks trying to make sense of his generally incomprehensible prose, I met with the old man and showed him what I had done, which included, among other things, correcting his capitalization of practically every other word in the manuscript. “I don’t know what they teach you at Davidson these days, but you are inflexible and you are fired!” he muttered,  turned his back and stomped out of my office. I had been there only three weeks.

Okay, maybe this did not turn out quite as I expected, but I knew there were plenty of other jobs just waiting for me. As I left the building, I noticed an employment agency, thought, what the heck, and went in. During my interview, the employment specialist asked me what I had been doing in my last job. I replied that I had been editing a memoir. “Oh,” she said, “the old man from Vicks? You are the fourth person to come in here. How long did you last?” She was not able to help me because they did not handle entry-level positions, so she suggested I look in the classified section of the Times.

My strategy was to scour the classified ads in the New York Times, find the largest employment agency, and offer myself to the New York workforce. One company seemed an obvious choice since it advertised on practically every page. I went there first thing the next morning. While I was waiting to be interviewed, a young woman gave me a questionnaire to fill out, which I brought with me to the interview. The employment specialist introduced herself as Marsha. After noting that there was virtually nothing on the list I could do— stuff like typing, stenography, or filing—Marsha looked me in the eye, frowned, and said, “Joseph, there is really nothing you can do. We have no place for you.”

“What do you mean, no place?” I exclaimed. “I can do lots of things—I am a college graduate, a graduate school student, and I have just been editing a memoir. This is ridiculous!”

“OK,” she replied. “You are a clerk. But we don’t have any clerk openings right now.”

“I am not a clerk!” I exclaimed, almost shouting. I was furious.

Just as I was reporting the humiliating interview to Embry over dinner, the phone rang, and it was Marsha. Her voice sounded much kinder than it had that morning.

“Joseph,” she said. “I am very pleased to say we have a job for you, and it is a very good one.”

“I am not interested in being a clerk, so thanks, but no thanks.”

“Oh, this is not for a clerk. It is for an editor. You did say you were an editor, didn’t you? And you do know all your proofreading symbols, right?”

I had no idea what a proofreading symbol was, but how could I say no? I was to report for work the next day. The company was Spartan’s Korvette’s, which I assumed was a New York publishing house of some sort. I was elated.

When I returned to dinner, I told Embry to forget everything I had just said. The employment agency had recognized my skills after all, and I had just landed a big editing job with a major New York publisher. Not bad, I thought. I am in back in business. The most encouraging thing was that people seemed to instantly recognize talent when they saw it. Embry looked at me with some skepticism but wished me good luck.

The next morning I put on my best suit, got on the subway, and headed to Midtown. The company was located on  the sixtieth floor of a sparkling new skyscraper. When I reached the proper floor, the doors parted and in front of me was one of the swankiest lobbies I had ever seen—red carpet, paneled walls, priceless art on the walls, comfortable modern furniture. A huge sign behind the receptionist read “Spartan’s Korvette’s.”

Big Leagues, baby.

“I am the new editor,” I beamed.

“The what?” the receptionist replied. After I had repeated myself a couple of times, she suddenly seemed to realize what I was talking about. She directed me to go through the door, down the hall, to the fourth door on the right, where I would be directed what to do next.

The décor inside the hall was the opposite of  the receptionist area. The walls were gray and bare, and the floor was vinyl tile, not carpet. I wandered down to the fourth door, which turned out to be some distance away. When I opened it, I found myself staring into a room  the size of a football field, with rows of gray, metal desks all lined up, almost as far as the eye could see. There must have been a thousand of them, all occupied by busy workers with stacks of paper in front of them along with adding machines and typewriters. The room hummed with the sound of typing and adding machines clicking.

I reported to the person at the front desk, who appeared to be a supervisor, and told him I was the new editor. He seemed as puzzled as the receptionist and asked me to repeat what I had said. “Oh yes,” he replied finally and directed me to aisle D, seventeenth desk. I counted carefully and arrived in front of a plump, small man probably in his fifties wearing a white shirt and loosened tie. He looked up from his desk, which was covered with stacks of paper. When I announced that I was the editor, he pulled over a chair, placed it beside his desk, motioned me to sit down, and handed me a stack of what appeared to be computer printouts with lots of numbers.

 “Take these,” he said, “and when I read a number, you check it off.”

After we did this routine for a few minutes, I asked what this was all about, to which he responded, “Wait till coffee break. We are working now, not talking.”

About an hour later—it seemed more like a day—a bell rang. The clicking stopped, and suddenly the whole room was alive with chatter.

“OK,” I said, “It’s coffee break time. What is this all about? What do you want me to edit? And what is going on?”

“You are editing,” he said.

“Well, what kind of publishing house is this anyway,” I asked, bewildered.

“Publishing house? This is not a publishing house. This is the bookkeeping department for Korvette’s Department Store, the second-largest department store inNew York. Why would you think this is a publishing house?”

“Well, they told me that the job was for an editor.”

“Oh yeah, that,” he replied sarcastically. “We always ask for an editor to be sure we get someone who can read.”

I lasted  two days.

But my spirits were still high. I knew that the perfect job was waiting for me. Next week: Making It Big in the Big Apple: Macy’s.

So you think we live in a contentious time now? Man, this is nothing compared to what it was like in the late 1960s. The civil rights movement had been replaced by urban disturbances. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King had both been killed, everyone seemed to hate everyone else, and we lived in a fascist  police state.

Fascist police state? How could that be, you ask.

Well, seeing is believing; and I, too, admit  that I was a little skeptical when Don came out of his apartment and announced definitively that we lived in a fascist police state. Don was our skinny, long haired, next door neighbor in apartment 6 D in our run-down  apartment in the Upper West Side of New York City on Riverside Drive near 125^th Street. We never saw much of Don; and to give you an idea of how long ago this happened , he was one of the first guys that I ever met who had really  long hair—in his case, really long, curly, blond hair. He was the First Hippie. He could easily have been mistaken for Jesus in a Renaissance painting.  But we did hear him from time to time playing his guitar, usually around 3 am. On one occasion when  he left his door open when taking trash to the trash chute, I peered in and saw a completely empty room with nothing on the walls and only a messed up bed and box springs on the floor. Someone said they thought he was a PhD graduate student in physics at Columbia.

It is worth noting why Don was standing in the hallway in the first place. Our building was on fire. Well, we weren’t sure whether it was on fire or not, but there was smoke coming out of the trash chute. I was in the hallway for the same reason since I smelled smoke and immediately asked him what he thought we should do.

“Well, I sure as hell don’t want to disturb Joe Poitras. The fat bastard hates my guts and has threatened to beat me up more than once.” Joe Poitras was our super and ruled 530 Riverside Drive with an iron fist. Everyone was terrified of him. Joe was probably in his mid forties, was never seen without wearing a grimy undershirt, had a huge pot belly, no neck, always seemed to  have a three-day beard and spoke with the quintessential Nu Yawk accent. His wife probably weighed as much as he did; and at least one night a week all the way up on the sixth floor, you could hear them screaming at each other and throwing pots and pans in their basement apartment.

Actually I was not all that scared of Joe Poitras because he liked me. The reason he liked me is because a very savvy Episcopal priest in helping us find our apartment bribed him  to secure the rent-controlled lease and alerted me that in New York, regardless what you did the rest of the year, it was absolutely imperative to give the super a generous Christmas tip. That is what I did, but apparently others in the building, like Don, were not clued in.

That is when Don turned to me and exclaimed for the second time, “We live in a goddamn, fascist police state!” Since the smoke was starting to thin out, I assumed we were not going to perish in a fire after all and asked the natural question, “What do you mean, ‘fascist police state’?”

“This is what I mean: last night I was minding my own business like I always do, bothering no one and playing my guitar. It was about 3 am; and all of a sudden, there is a knock on the door; and these three huge cops come bursting into the room. I jumped up from the bed and immediately went spread eagle, up against the wall, the way you are supposed to do when attacked by the police. But they never even frisked me, though since I only had my jockey shorts on I’ll admit there wasn’t much to frisk. In fact at first they didn’t even say anything to me, and of all things headed straight for the bathroom where they started flushing the toilet over and over. I stayed up against the wall the whole time fearing that if I made a move they would beat me. But it was worse than a beating; it was deliberate torture. Do you know what it is like to hear a toilet flushed over and over? It is some kind of new torture tactic aimed at people like me. They are trying to drive us out of New York City. Then after awhile when it was clear that I was beaten down mentally, they came back and said only, ’Ok, motherfucker, another trick like this and it is curtains for you’. Now is this a fascist police state or what?”

Sounds like a fascist police state to me, I agreed.

A  few minutes later, Embry came in the apartment carrying a load of laundry. “Well it is good news that the apartment house does not seem to be burning down,” she said cheerfully.

“Well, the apartment house may not be burning down, but we live in a fascist police state!”

“A what?”

I immediately told her the whole story—the three cops, the toilet routine, the torture, the mental brutality, the harsh words to our strange but harmless neighbor. And all because he was a hippie. That is how bad things had become in New York City. It had become a fascist police state.

Instead of agreeing with me, Embry threw back her head and laughed. A completely inappropriate and insensitive response. I was shocked.

“Let me tell you my story: just when you were talking to Don, I was talking to Mrs.  Finklestein.” Mrs Finklestein was our neighbor across the hall in 6 B. Well over 80, she was a tiny lady who walked, stooped over, with a cane, and had been widowed for a long time. She lived alone in her spacious rent controlled apartment overlooking Grant’s tomb, but for all we knew she had no children and no friends. We never saw another person enter her apartment.

“We were talking in the laundry room about the smoke and wondering if anyone would get up their courage to call Joe Poitras when she turned to me and said, ‘You know we live in a city where nobody cares any more. Nobody. Last night was the worst night of my life. Nobody cares, not even the police.’ She went on to say that in the middle of the night for some reason her toilet started over flowing and the only way she could keep it from flooding her apartment was to keep  flushing  it, over and over and over. Fearing Joe Poitras, the only thing she could think to do was to make an emergency 911 call to the police, not once but twice. ‘And you know what?’ she said,  ‘The police never came, they never came. They never let me down in the past, but today things are different. We live in a city where nobody cares about old frail people like me, not even the police. That’s how bad our world has become.’ ”

We never saw Don again in 6 D or Mrs Finklestein in 6 B because we soon moved out of the city. But I am sure Mrs. Finklestein went to her grave mourning the loss of caring in New York City. Don remained convinced—at least for a period—that fascism was just around the corner—and New York’s finest had another concrete example of how these awful hippies were ruining the city.

To the undisclosed number  of readers ( and I hope I am not being presumptuous by using the plural)  who are following the stories of Joseph Howell: There is lots more coming up but it will probably not be until late April until the stories resume since Embry and I are off to London to celebrate my 70th birthday with children and grandchildren, then I am headed to the Abacos Islands in the Bahamas for a couple of weeks of sailing with old friends. Embry is headed to South Africa for volunteer technical support to health care providers. But here is what you can look forward to when we return:

• Fascist Police State
• Second Job:Making It Big in the Big Apple
• Helping the Homeless
• Third Job:Getting Started On a Career
•  Housing for Seniors, Texas Style
• 5-0-5
• Flying the Friendly Skies
• In the Taiga
• Dennis
• A Regatta From Hell
• and many more…

“What was live TV?” one of my grandchildren asked. It caused me to pause and think about what a tragedy it is that our grandchildren will never experience the joys of live TV.

When I was eleven years old, I was invited to become a member of the Black Balls Club. This was quite an opportunity for me because it was just after I returned to school following my year of recovery from polio and just before my back operation that put me out for  another year. I desperately wanted to be part of a gang. I also was thrilled to be asked to join this exclusive club because the four or five other boys in the club were all cool, and I really wanted to be cool. It was unclear to me as to what exactly the name of the club referred to—it supposedly had something to do with initiation rites—but since I was never formally initiated, I never found out.

The ring leader was Frankie, a boy with a mop of brown curly hair and a devilish gleam in his eye. All the meetings were held in his dusty garage and were top secret. Frankie had an older brother, some ten  years his senior, who somehow had been able to acquire a stack of French girlie magazines, which we spent hours poring over with feverish intensity. By today’s standards they probably would not get the attention of a Playboy editor, but in those days when Nashville was a dry city and Puritan morays ruled, the magazines were an  eleven-year-old boy’s dream.

The other thing we did was watch TV. Of course, it was all black and white, the images were often fuzzy and shows would occasionally temporarily go off the air. But TV was new and sort of like a miracle. And because all the shows were live, you never knew what would happen. The occasional screw-ups were usually worth the wait. Our favorite show was Captain Beau Jim– Nashville’s most popular kiddie show and a local version of shows like Captain Kangeroo or Mister Rogers. Captain Beau Jim always dressed in a sailor’s outfit and was particularly noteworthy to us because he seemed bored and detached. You could tell he hated his job. I do not recall all the things he did to fill his half hour time slot, but much of the time it was obvious to us that he was winging it. The highlight was when he opened the mail. Children would send in letters or drawings. Captain Beau Jim would open the letter in front of the camera, and then read aloud the letter or show the picture. His response was almost always the same, said in a sing-song, patronizing, almost sarcastic tone.

“Here is a letter from little Jimmy Jones, age eight, and he says he loves the show. Isn’t that nice, thank you, Jimmy.” He would then read the letter verbatim and open the next letter.

He would take the same approach for art work. He would open the envelop, carefully take out  the paper on camera and in his sing-song voice say something like, “Isn’t this cute, a tree from little Annie Johnson, age six. Thank you, Annie.” Then he would move to the next envelope. What made the show interesting was that viewers got to see the art work at the same time that Captain Beau Jim did.

He seemed to take an inordinate amount of time in opening the various envelopes, and we figured it was mainly to kill time. After a while we began to lose interest in the show. But not Frankie. In fact as the days went on, Frankie became even more enraptured and insisted that we all watch every show for one full week. There were a few mishaps but not enough to warrant our having to watch the show every day for a whole week. We were ready to rebel.

But then came Friday, the last day of the week. When the time came to open the mail, Frankie perked up like a dog hearing some shrill whistle human ears can’t hear. He had spotted something on the set and suddenly a sly grin appeared on his face as he perched on the edge of his chair.

“What’s going on?” someone asked.

“Just watch,” he beamed.

The first letter was something about a dog from little Ronnie Wise, age seven. “You have a nice dog, Ronnie, thanks.”The second letter was about a favorite teacher from little Lucy Brown. “Nice teacher, Lucy, thanks.” Then there was a drawing of a bird by little Billy Barnes. “Nice bird…”

Each time Captain Beau Jim finished opening an envelope Frankie seemed to get more excited.

“Well,” he said in his sarcastic voice, “there is time for a couple of more. And here is a really big envelope.”

At this time Frankie could not contain himself and let out a big squeal. We all gave him a puzzled look.

As Captain Beau Jim began to open the large envelope, he noted that it was from little Frankie Freeloader. Freeloader was not Frankie’s last name but that did not diminish his ecstasy. He jumped out of his chair and moved to within inches of the TV.

As was his custom, Captain Beau Jim carefully opened the envelope and in full view of the camera slowly   opened the paper which contained the art work. The camera zoomed in as Captain Beau Jim displayed the art work from little Frankie Freeloader.

It was a large, anatomically correct, erect penis, obviously painstakingly drawn.

There was a pause, which seemed to us like an eternity. The camera continued to focus on the drawing. Captain Beau Jim was speechless. We were laughing so hard that we had trouble hearing what came next.

After getting his wits about him, Captain Beau Jim said in a somewhat different tone from his usual sing-song voice. “Well, this drawing is from little Frankie Freeloader, age five, and he says it’s a rocket ship.”

By this time we were all rolling on the floor. When we looked up again, the show was off the air. Maybe the time had expired. Also it was not unusual in those days for shows to go off the air temporarily for “technical difficulties.” This could have fallen into that category.

This was our last episode of Captain Beau Jim. I had seen enough of the program myself anyway.  One of our members reported back that the following Monday the show had been taken off the air.

It is too bad our grandchildren will never get to experience live TV.

Okay, I’ll  admit that my dad pulled some stings, but at age 16 how are you going to get a summer job anyway?

My  father was a banker, and a company called Euclid Tennessee was one of his customers. They basically supplied parts for all the earth moving equipment that was being used to build the interstate highways around Nashville in the mid 1950s. When one of the big earth movers malfunctioned, you needed a part. Quick. Euclid Tennessee was the place you got it.

I was strategically positioned in the parts department, the nerve center of the entire operation. The way I  looked at it,  I was the lynch pin that kept the construction of the super highway system going. The manager of the parts department gave me a bin number. I retreated to the bowels of the cavernous, dusty warehouse, located the part, and bingo, off again and running. Could anyone ask at such an early age for anything more important, more strategic?

After a few days on the job, while getting a coke from the machine in the break room, I ran into  a guy named Red, a small, wiry guy in his thirties with huge biceps, freckles, tattoos up one arm and down another and of course, bright red hair.

“So you’re the new parts boy, huh?” he muttered in a strong country accent, giving me the once over. “You goddamn preppie boys don’t know jackshit, come in here and think you are on top of the world. As far as I am concerned you are useless assholes, but if the old man wants to hire you, what can I do? It’s his business.”

Because of his heavy country accent I had a hard time understanding every word, but certainly got the gist.

I  did not know what to say except that I guessed I had to agree with him. But it wasn’t my fault. That’s how kids got summer jobs, right? His final word of warning was just stay away from him. He did not want to see me the entire summer. Ever. That sounded like a pretty good idea to me, and I retreated to my strategic position among the dusty bins waiting for a desperate mechanic to stumble in demanding a part, pronto.

“Oh, that’s just Red. Pay him no mind,” said my boss. “But keeping clear of him is not a bad idea. He has quite a temper.”

So for about half the summer I avoided Red. Though my job was terribly important, if truth be told, it was a bit dull. In fact some days I would sit in the dark space for hours, breathing the dust from the bins and  waiting for a panicked mechanic to bolt in the door demanding a part. I was board out of my mind. I would do anything for a change of pace.

The chance finally came. “Parts boy, parts boy,” a thundering voice roared. “Where the hell are you, you preppie asshole? I know you are back there hiding somewhere, you useless piece of shit.”

It was Red.

He explained that an emergency had come up; and as much as he hated to use me, I was the only one available to do a job that had to happen immediately. Unfortunately my boss was nowhere to be found.

“So this is your big chance, you dumb twerp. If you can handle this job, which basically any moron could do, maybe you’ll  get  out of the parts bin and start doing something worthwhile.”

This was the opportunity  I had been praying for.

“All you have to do is three things, right? One, go into the next room and get the tar. Two, put the tar in the back of my truck—that’s my truck, not the company’s. Three, drive the truck and take the tar to the bus station and then bring back another part.”

“Got it,” I replied eagerly but somewhat fearfully.

“Now get the tar now, step on it! Every second counts!”

I raced into the large room and scanned the room for a can of tar. There was all kind of junk around but no can of tar anywhere.  I figured I must be in the wrong room so  I stormed out, found Red, and panting, asked him which room he was talking about because there was no tar in that room, I was sure of it.

“Boy, I knew you were dumb but not that dumb! Any retard could figure this one out; and here you are some sort of preppie, bullshit, stupid idiot. Now go back in there and get the tar and bring it back here right now. The clock is ticking. Now!”

Okay, I thought, what am I missing here? Back I went, and this time uncovered every item, looked under every rag and can, checked every corner. I felt a panic attack coming on. It was  like not being able to solve a simple puzzle that everyone else gets. But the facts were the facts, and there was no  tar in that room.

At that point I looked up and there was Red, arms folded around his chest and glaring at me, “What the hell are you doing, boy, are  you completely, one hundred percent crazy?”

“Well,” I whimpered, I am looking for the tar, but it is not here. I’ve looked everywhere.”

“Jesus H Christ! You blind or what? What the goddamn hell do you think that is, you motherfucking idiot?”

He pointed to the middle of the room where there was a large tire.

“Oh, “ I groaned, “tar.”

By this time Red was speechless.

But the job had to be done, and I was the only available soul to do it. Red bit his lip and said very slowly and sarcastically. “Okay, so now we have found the tar. Now you are going to put the tar in the truck and drive to the bus station. It is my truck and it is new. If it comes back with one dent, I will kill you, I swear it, you understand that, do you understand that?” He was screaming by the time he got out the last sentence.

Getting a grip on himself, he went back to a controlled, sarcastic whisper. “You do know how to drive a stick shift truck, don’t you?”

“Uh, well, sure.”

Actually I had never driven any kind of truck, but my car had a stick shift. How different could it be?

Red was back to hollering: “Now get in and go, fast, now, pronto, move!”

There were two challenges. The first challenge was that the truck was backed up to  a towering pile of loose cement blocks. If by some chance the truck backed up instead of moved forward, there was the  likelihood the blocks would collapse—on the truck. The second challenge was that there were two places the forward gear could be—up and to the left or down . If I got it wrong, I would be in the reverse gear instead of the forward gear.  The problem was I would not know until I actually tried. So I had to  ease out the clutch very, very slowly, so as to avoid slamming into the cement blocks if I got it wrong.

I took a deep breath, said a prayer and chose bottom left. I eased out the clutch ever so slowly but not slowly enough. The truck lurched backwards, hit the pile of cement blocks, which came crashing down on Red’s truck. I heard a bellowing scream, the likes of which I have never heard before or since.

I then faced two more choices. The first was to get out of the truck, apologize and be killed on the spot. The second was to find the forward gear and take off. I chose the latter. I found the right position of the first   gear, screeched off with gravel going in every which direction and Red charging after me as fast as he could, shaking his fist and screaming, “I will kill you! I will kill you!”

There was then  a third choice: whether to fulfill my mission in hopes of mitigating the damage, repenting and gaining some sort of forgiveness, or to drive off into the sunset and never return. Never return to the job or to my house or to my family or to Nashville. It was a tough choice.

I got my wits about me; and as the British say, “carried on.” I was able to get the “tar” delivered and to pick up the emergency part. On the way back I spent some time wondering exactly  how the obituary would read in the local newspaper– “Banker’s son bludgeoned by angry mechanic”?   Actually I was not as apprehensive as you might think. I was sure I would be fired but figured that would at least get me out of harm’s way. When I drove into the parking lot, I was surprised and relieved to find that Red was miraculously absent. Someone commented that he thought he had suffered a nervous breakdown. My boss, it turned out, was mercifully understanding and said the company would pay for all the damage done to Red’s truck. He was somewhat less understanding when we both realized that in my confusion I had failed to latch the rear gate of the truck securely and that the emergency part had fallen out, probably somewhere along the road. When I offered to get back in the truck and go look for it, he directed me to go on foot. I spent the last three hours of the day walking along the busy highway looking in vain for the missing part.

By some act of mercy  I was not fired from the job. I guess they needed someone  in the critical nerve center of superhighway construction. And I never saw Red again. Someone told me that he was told by the owner (my father’s friend and customer) that  if he came within a hundred yards of me, he would be fired. The one or two times it looked like our paths might cross, I was assigned a muscular escort. But I never left the dungeon of the parts department that summer–my boss said it was for my own safety– and do not recall any good bye parties when my job came to an end.

Next week: The Black Balls Club

Due to the thousands of emails and requests to keep the blog going, I have decided that I can’t let down an anxious and adoring public and will continue with stories that did not make it into the book and stories that followed the time frame of book. Of course, these are not ordinary stories without meaning or purpose but are profound, as you would expect. They  illustrate timeless truths which in my case often involve pain, suffering, abuse, agony, disrespect  and all sorts of dreadful things that are totally undeserved but seem to be a  part of the human experience for most of us mortals. However, in these stories miraculously, many  have happy endings and provide the hope that you are looking for. Some may be a bit longer than a half page but they will be worth it. Stay tuned. Except when I am traveling, I will try to get out at least one a week.

I had stopped adding to the blog in recent weeks for two reasons. First I was not convinced that anyone was reading it; and second, I thought I had said about as much as I could say about issues related to the book or to current events. But wait! Two people (one being my son) actually asked why I was not contributing weekly installments anymore. Two people! So people are reading it, probably lots of you. You are just quiet and shy. But fear not, the cause will continue.

My effort over the past several weeks has been to try to enlist a commercial publisher since I am aware of the challenges of getting people besides those who already know me to buy and  read the book. I thought I had landed  Waveland Press (the current publisher of Clay Street); but in the end (yesterday) they passed. Too personal, they said. Big risk in the academic market, which is their market niche. I was disappointed but not really surprised. My next–and last ditch–effort in this regard is to send out copies to various publishers who have previously published civil rights books. This time I am including self addressed, postage paid, return envelopes in hopes of getting the book back. If things with the commercial  publishing world continue along the same lines as they have been going, I will be surprised if I get any of them back. But as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

In the meantime I am continuing to get good exposure and very positive feedback from readers. Last week I gave  an author talk at the National Women’s Democratic Club to an enthusiastic audience of 35 or 40 people and am working on a couple of more gigs. Hard stuff, this book marketing and commercial publishing.

And the blog posts will resume. For one thing I really enjoy writing. What does it really matter if no one is reading? (It turns out, a lot.) And second, I don’t have all that much to do anyway, being semi retired and what not. I will continue to stick to  social justice themes and also begin to include  some of my (famous) stories; and those of you who know me will know what I am talking about. Transforming these from the oral tradition to a written version is a bit tricky. We will see how that goes. In the meantime if you do happen to read this or other blog posts, if you let me know, that will reassure me that it is worth continuing. Just one person makes a difference.

The ongoing battle with Google as to whether I should be permitted to advertise on the internet (because my site was alleged to be a “bridge site” ) and whether the site should be removed from the Google search engine altogether (because I did not have a “privacy policy”) is at last over. After several weeks of fact finding, blog site revisions and  negotiations, I am happy to report that Google has allowed the ads to continue and has accepted my privacy policy. A small but significant victory.

While advertising does not seem to make much economic sense given the small margin on book sales and the relatively high hit costs,  it was nice to see for a brief moment the name “Civil Rights Journey” coming up on all the civil rights sites.

After readily finding publishers for my first three books (including Doubleday, one of the big boys), I began to look at other options when after a month or two  of trying I never got a literary agent to return an email. Truth be told, I actually never sent the manuscript of  Civil Rights Journey  to a commercial publisher or university press, so I can’t say that I was actually rejected by anyone or for that matter that anyone I did send the proposal to actually read it. The reasons  I did not  submit the manuscript directly to a publisher were that I was told by several knowledgeable people that it was hopeless;  and at one point of desperation  I clicked a button on  the Lit Net website which said something to the effect , “If you are  sick and tired of commercial publishers and literary agents, click here.” Within seconds I was besieged with emails from Authorhouse, iUniverse and numerous other “independent presses”.  What intrigued me most about Authorhouse was that the guy who called me about five minutes after I sent him an email, exclaimed enthusiastically that he was sure I had a number one best seller.

“But wait a minute,” I responded, “I haven’t even told you what it is about.”

Whatever.

My experience with Authorhouse overall was good. The best part was working with two extremely capable publicists on my marketing campaign. They really got behind the book and I will be eternally grateful to them. I do not think you will find better talent at any commercial publisher.

But it is not all that easy when going this route, which by the way, I refer to as “Indie publishing.” And anyone who in my presence refers to this as going to a “vanity press” or an “ego press” will be summarily banned from the kingdom.

Authorhouse set me up with a blog, Twitter, and Facebook . They got a review (favorable, thank heavens) from Kirkus, the respected independent reviewer,  an author interview video , an internet radio interview, and they sent out a bunch of email announcements to their data base—hundreds of thousands, they told me. They also  were able to get one independent TV interview and three independent radio interviews lined up, and three very nice feature stories in newspapers.  Not all that bad when you think about it.

But is that enough for the book to gain traction and get sales much beyond one’s immediate circle of friends and some of their friends? At this point, it is hard to say yes. There are about 500 copies now in circulation, about half of which I have given away or sold at author talks and book signings. That is not bad, but it is hardly a start to being a number one best seller. Now that all my friends have their copies, will there be any more sales?

One obstacle  is that  there is considerable bias against “self published” books among  book sellers and the literary establishment. In fact in Washington, I was more or less told by one of the few remaining book stores  that they did not want my book or me in their bookstore. I got a similar response from someone at a literary café, who  initially warned me that “self published” books were generally not considered “real books.” Are independent films generally not considered “real films”? Please. Libraries, same response. The local branch of the DC library next to my house would not even touch the book because it was “self published.”

But there was still  more that I think Authorhouse could have done during the twelve week marketing campaign which I signed up for. Two were especially important. The first was  targeting the academic market—professors who teach civil rights or social justice courses in colleges and universities. My guess is that there are at least three or four hundred of these folks out there (and if they assign the book, sales happen), but they are not in any Authorhouse data base and therefore not part of the program. One of my goals is to pursue them, but it will take a good bit of time and effort.

The second was to assure that Civil Rights Journey would come up in any internet search dealing with civil rights or social justice. In Authorhouse’s defense it turns out that this is  more easily said than done.

One of my relatives is an internet guru who has made a fortune optimizing internet searches. He said the only way I could assure that the book would come up in any broad search on civil rights or social justice  was to advertise on Google. He told me exactly what I needed to do, and I got everything lined up with a Google rep who was just as enthusiastic as the Authorhouse rep. He assured me that within a matter of weeks the book would be a number one best seller. Sure enough, on day one, over 12,000 people visited one of the internet pages where my book was listed; and the maximum number allowed under the contract visited my site. The same thing happened the second day. On every website related to civil rights and social justice that I visited, Civil Rights Journey by Joseph Howell appeared prominently directing the web searcher to my blog. I was euphoric. I had beat the system, jumped the barriers and was going big time.

On day three, however, the ad was pulled by Google because it was determined to be a “bridge” site (directing people to another site—in my case a site where they could buy the book, like Amazon); and they have refused to budge. Even worse, however, they determined that because I did not have a “privacy policy” in place, I would be pulled from the search engine altogether. Now I have a privacy policy but no hope for search optimization. So much for Google. Probably not a bad thing actually. I later learned that instead of a hit costing something like ten or fifteen  cents, as I was lead to believe, it was costing seventy cents. Since my margin on an Amazon sale is less than a dollar, that would mean I would need a sale with every visit to the blog, not exactly the way it usually works.

So this “self publishing” route has its ups and downs. In its favor  is that given the revolution underway in publishing and selling books, it is for many of us the only option available. Some of these books might actually turn out to be pretty good.

The new year that is about to begin will determine the course of our country for the next four years and possibly far longer. The Republican hopefuls are all calling the next election decisive, and Newt Gingrich is even saying it is the most important election since 1860. While the negative ads dominate Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, what  the Republican presidential candidates seem to have in common is a hatred for Barak Obama and for our federal government. Even John Hunstman has recanted from his original moderate position. They all want to roll back the social contract we have had in this country since the New Deal. The only question is how far.

Republican Hopefuls

What would it be like not to have a guaranteed income, albeit a modest one, when you are in your 70s or 80s and have no way of being able to work or earn a living? What would it be like if as a senior you had to pay for all of your health care out-of-pocket or try to find a health insurance carrier who would  insure you? What would it be like to try to find affordable housing provided  entirely by the private sector using no government subsidies if you earned less than $20,000 a year? What if there were no subsidies for highways or mass transportation or education or school lunches or nursing care or for that matter, virtually every aspect of  the economy? The list goes on and on. Many of the popular subsidies and entitlements we take for granted—and which often benefit the middle class more than the poor—seem to be ignored when the federal government is attacked by the Republican hopefuls. Or if they are not ignored, they are seen as the problem. Romney calls himself the paycheck president in contrast to Obama, whom he describes as the food stamp president. Deregulation, lower taxes for the rich, and radical federal government downsizing are said to be the solution to all our problems.

I believe that 2012 will in fact be a watershed year. The country will weigh in as to whether we want to continue with a modestly progressive agenda that provides a safety net of sorts (while addressing the issues of entitlements and tax reform) or whether we want to go back to a 19^th Century laissez-faire kind of capitalism and social Darwinism. That such a choice is even on the table  is for me both puzzling and frightening. I just can’t figure out why drastically reducing government and lowering taxes for the wealthy  are seen as the only answers to complex global problems. Certainly government at all levels is far from perfect and constantly needs reforming and refocusing. But why is it now painted as the enemy in even more extreme language than what was used by Ronald Reagan?

So what would happen if the right wing Republicans should win big in 2012? They would soon discover that it would not be possible to cut all of the safety net or completely destroy the social contract. But in the process of trying they could certainly profoundly affect the direction of the country and the quality of life for millions of Americans. My prayer for 2012 is that we will not have to find out.