Roger, thanks for reading and for taking the time to comment, especially with such a cool driving story. I hope you’ll be back.

Hey Claire! The AMC Gemlin. I took a long road trip in that car. From Indiana out to the east coast to see grad programs I would apply to–UMass, Yale, Columbia. Ended up not applying to last two. Yale wanted me to have two foreign languages and a dead one. At UMass the famous library had just started popping it brick facade. I was with Mike Wilkerson, his car. We stopped off at Indiana University in PA. Everyone said to us–we get your mail. And Michael said–that’s why we came, to pick up the mail. The Gremlin was black and white and looked like an expressionist’s nightmare of a saddle shoe. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Are you in Maine now or visiting Vermont? Remember to look both ways!

Thanks, Susanna! So happy you “found” something here. I love the found and the accident. I think, as I get older, I become more and more in the school of “first word, best word.” Whatever memory or the subconscious or unconscious gives me. Now, if I were in France, I would be out of the car and on the train or next to the tracks, waiting for the next very fast train go by. What will it bring me? What will it leave in its wake?

Re your comments about “bests” and doing our utmost to avoid trying to produce something GOOD when writing, thank you for these reminders just when I really needed them. I started my Daily Shorty project May 1–I’ve committed to drafting a short story every day for a year–and when I read your piece, I happened to be selecting my “best” shorties from the month of May so I could post the first paragraph of each on my site tracking the project (dailyshorty.com). Throughout May I had gloried in how the pressure to write a complete story every day was forcing my Inner Critic to stop hectoring me so much. I’m free, I’m free! Yet when I go back through my blog posts, I see that I reflexively comment very frequently on whether I wrote a “keeper” that day or a “clunker.” Wow. Think what a shrew my Inner Critic must have been if I’m calling that freedom!

So great about the play. Must have been such a lark.

That makes me so happy to hear, Darrelyn. I was very happy to realize I could make I-65 into a verb in the piece. I have got to get me some of those emoticons. I am so old I remember when the first time I saw one–the summer of 72 in Bloomington, Indiana, on a gray t-shirt. I think they were first a bank promotion but then got adopted. Or you can go with the version in Forest Gump. Thanks for reading!

I didn’t try out for the part. But the woman who played Michael Martone’s Mother borrowed a pair of my mom’s famous Chuck’s and lacy socks. It is very strange seeing someone else play you. But having written Michael Martone, I had gotten used to many different Michael Martones. Four! A good number. Thanks for writing.