The Burr Advice

Obviously, I never knew Aaron Burr so never received any advice from him. I don't really know if he would have uttered the words, "Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for," or not. It doesn't really matter as it's the words I'm dealing with moreso than Burr. Well, moreso than Burr the historical figure. I'm definitely dealing with Burr, the character, from Hamilton.

That said, Burr was a despicable figure, a true scum-of-the-earth human being. And, for what it's worth, I'm willing to go along with Miranda's interpretation of him, on the whole, since it's based on Ron Chernow's book about Hamilton. I would say that Chernow is a more than reliable as a source.

The Burr of the Broadway musical is a conniving piece of trash, a man constantly playing the middle so that he can make sure he comes down on the winning side. A bit of historical curiosity for you: He's the politician who invented going door to door and getting out in the neighborhood, which was not exactly a good thing. He wanted to get people to vote for him because of how friendly he was, how personable he was, not because of what he stood for. He wanted it to be a popularity contest, something like running for class president in high school.

"Vote for me because we could buddies!"

When I was a kid, I was into GI Joe and Transformers. Mostly, I was into the toys, and I collected them and kept them on display in my room. One day, my mom was in my room talking to me about... something I don't remember... when she abruptly inserted, "I wish you didn't have all of these war toys." It was completely out of the blue and, while not exactly confusing, a little confusing.

So I said the logical thing, "Why?"

And she said, "Because if you were ever drafted, you wouldn't be able to tell them you're a pacifist."

Which totally blew my mind. I think I said something like, "Why would I want to tell them that?" I don't really believe in violence as an answer to things, but I'm also not a pacifist. It would never have occurred to me to try to lie to get out of being drafted like, you know, claiming to have bone spurs.

Which brings us back to this idea of keeping your political leanings out of your public life. Not that most of us have a "public" life but, as small as mine is, I do have a public life. The general "wisdom" among my "fellow writers" is that we should keep our politics and our personal beliefs out of our public lives. Rather in the same way that people are saying saying that football players should keep their protests out of sports.

Not that the two things are actually similar. People want football players to keep their mouths shut (or their knees unbent) just so that they don't have to think about what it's like to be African American in America. Writers tell other writers to keep their politics and beliefs to themselves because they'll alienate potential readers if they're open about what they believe.

And that's true. I know that I have lost followers since I started writing politics.

However! The trade off is keeping your mouth shut about the injustices in the world (or, if you're a Trump (#fakepresident) supporter, supporting and praising those injustices). You know why the Nazis succeeded in so much destruction? People kept their mouths shut. People played it safe. People tried not to draw attention to themselves. And you can pfft all you want at this being similar to a pre-WWII Germany, but you can only do that if you're ignorant of the history. Ignorant.

Look, here's the thing:
When I was a kid in school learning about World War II and the Nazis, everyone always said, "Oh, I would never have done that. I wouldn't have kept silent. I would have taken a stand. I would never never never have let anything like that happen or have been a part of it." Everyone said that. But we're in those days right now, the days when people need to stand up and protest fascism and racism and all of the abuses of the Trump (#fakepresident) administration.

Well, for good or ill, all of you out there keeping your mouth shut, we know which side of that equation you would have been on. And all of you out there supporting Trump (#fakepresident), we all know you would have been right in with the Nazi party.
Congratulations on that.

In the end, I'm with Hamilton, "I'd rather be divisive than indecisive; drop the niceties."
Seriously, the Republicans have moved all of this way past "civility." Don't fall for that trap. It's just meant to get you to let them do what they want to do without complaining about it.

eBay and what I'm selling this week (6/25)

Refer back to this post for the background.

Here's what I have going this week:

Yes, that's the first appearance of Deadpool. I know you want it. You can find it here.

Are you guilty? Find it here.

Or do you have fear?

Or have you gone COSMIC?

All that plus GI Joe comics, more of all those comics above, plus Mage Knight, and Lord of the Rings figures!

Go get some stuff!

"You're not my friend anymore!" (an IWSG post)

Remember those days when you were a kid... What? You don't? Well, let me remind you...

You're playing with your best friend, one of your many "best" friends (because aren't they all when you're a kid?), and everything's going fine. For a while. Then, one of you does something the other one doesn't like: had GI Joe kiss a Barbie, won in a game of Checkers, used the wrong shade of blue while coloring Spider-Man and, suddenly, the dreaded phrase rings out, "You're not my friend anymore!" Usually, that's followed by the offended party running away, probably, to go tattle while leaving the unfriended in tears wondering what s/he actually did wrong.

Of course, you didn't do anything wrong, did you? Even when you told your friend that you didn't like the picture he drew. Because, you know what, it's not wrong to have preferences.

And what inevitably happens (at least when responsible parents are involved) is that the kid who yelled "You're not my friend anymore!" is marched back in to apologize for being hurtful, which is as it should be.

[And this is when I would like to talk about being forced to eat horrible things that I didn't like when I was a kid all in the name of being polite, but I don't really have room to go into that.]

Some of you know that I do a lot of reviews ("lot" being a relative term) and that I try to focus on indie authors. Being an indie author, I know how important the reviews are. Yea! for reviews, right? But, also, I don't give any special consideration, which means I give negative reviews, too. I believe honest reviews are better for the community overall than just lying and giving someone 4 or 5 stars. This has the unfortunate result of people (metaphorically) yelling, "You're not my friend anymore!" and running off and unfriending me from all of social media. Mostly, I'm okay with that, because I should be allowed to say whether I like something or not, and I'm not the one exhibiting the bad behavior (unless you're one of those in the camp that says a bad review is bad behavior, in which case, you should yell at me right now and run on off and unfriend me).

Here's the thing, I was checking out the reviews for a book I've been looking at reading and the book only has 5-star reviews and all from people that are in the blogging community. Okay, so right away, that sets my warning bells off. I don't tend to read 5-star reviews, because they usually amount to no more than "Everything is Awesome!" But I was scanning down the reviews for this book and one of them happened to catch my eye. The reviewer had a list of all the things she didn't like about the book. Okay, that intrigued me, so I read the review. Now, let me make this clear, the review only had negative things to say about the book but, at the end, she said, basically, "But it was intense and I loved it," and she gave it 5-stars. This was not a short review, either. Paragraphs and paragraphs about the issues with the book and then gave it 5-stars. Clearly, there is some amount of dishonesty happening here.

One of  my favorite reviews for a book was by a guy who ripped the book to shreds in his review. I mean, he really tore it apart. It was an even longer review than one I mentioned above. He had absolutely nothing good to say about the book but ended with something like "But it was very creative and a good read" and gave it 4-stars. The author actually responded with, "I'd hate to have seen what you would have said if you hadn't liked it." Again, clearly, there is some amount of dishonesty happening here.

All of that to say two things:
1. Reviews are believed to be important. [It's hard to say how important, though, because there is some evidence that suggests that reviews are not as important as we think. I think early in an author's career, though, they are important.] As an indie author who wants to support the idea of doing reviews, I do reviews. We have to learn to be comfortable with giving honest reviews. It hurts everyone when all we do is lie to our friends and give them 4- and 5-star reviews. Yes, that means we have to be willing to risk people yelling "You're not my friend anymore!" at us.

It also means we have to address only the work. For instance, it would be okay for me to say, "I didn't like how the author chose to color Spider-Man's costume green. I believe Spider-Man's costume should be the traditional red and blue." It is not okay for me to say, "This author is SO STUPID! She couldn't even get Spider-Man's costume right! Flaming IDIOT! Don't read this crap!" See, when I say, "I didn't like the green the costume," someone else might see that and think, "Huh? A green costume? That sounds interesting." But, if I attack the author's intelligence, we've moved the discussion away from creativity and made it personal.

2. We have to learn not to yell "You're not my friend anymore!" That's just destructive behavior. Sure, I get that it doesn't feel good to have people not like what you worked so hard on (which is why you have to like it enough to not worry about how other people feel about it (but that's a different discussion (and one I've had before, but I'm not finding that post, at the moment)), but cutting someone off is like kicking someone out of your restaurant because she didn't like one particular dish. Maybe you should try saying, "Well, I'm sorry you didn't like this book; maybe, you'll like this other one better." Or the next one. Or whatever. What I can say for sure, though, is that, in my case specifically, I won't be returning to the particular author who unfriended me because I didn't like that particular book. She's not someone I'll continue to support.

And you might be thinking, "But a negative review isn't support," but I would argue with you that it is.
1. I bought the book, which is, honestly, more support than most of you out there are willing to give (I have hard evidence on that by looking at my sales numbers).
2. I left a review and, even if it's not a 4- or 5-star review, it shows that I read the book, which, again, is more than most of you out there are doing. And there is a component that quantity of reviews are just as important (or more important) than quality of reviews.
3. My reviews mean something. Whether I like the book or not, I give the reasons why I did or did not. Those things are important. They tell other people, like with the green Spider-Man example, whether they think they want to read it.

At any rate, all of this stuff is insecurity inducing, but, as authors, it's stuff we have to learn to deal with. If you want people (especially other authors) to be willing to give your book a review, you need to be willing to do reviews for other people. If you want to get reviews, you need to be willing to listen without unfriending people when they say, "I didn't like this one."

This post has been brought you in part by the Insecure Writer's Support Group.

Catfish Tastes

I grew up on catfish... Wait, no, that makes it sound like it was the only thing I ever ate. Let me try that again:

When I was a kid, to say that we were having fish meant that we were having catfish. It was the only kind of fish we ever had (other than the rare trip to Long John Silver's). But we didn't buy it (and, now, I'm wondering why anyone would ever buy catfish), because to say that we were having fish meant that we were going fishing. And I don't mean a few of us, either.

No, when we went fishing, it was everyone. Everyone includes my parents and brother, my grandparents, several uncles and aunts of various sorts, and at least a cousin or two. It was a family event. And, really, you had to have a lot of people, because all of those people were going to be there to eat the fish no matter how many people went fishing, so the only way to make sure there was enough fish was for everyone to go fishing. However, in actuality, the women mostly didn't fish. I suppose they went along because it was an event. That and they made sandwiches and stuff for everyone.

Often, these trips were "caused" by me and, possibly, a cousin or two asking my grandfather to take us fishing. We loved it when he took us fishing, because, no matter how many people were along on the trip, it was my grandfather taking us fishing. The rest of the people were... superfluous. (Except for that time I caught this huge fish and one of my uncles knocked it back into the water. You can't be merely superfluous when you cause someone to lose such a big fish.)

After the fishing trips, we'd bring the fish back to the farm and the men would sit around and clean the fish. It was always catfish except for the very occasional perch, which we called sunfish, because no one liked cleaning them except my Uncle Fred (scaling a fish is much different than skinning a fish), so those got thrown back unless he was with us.

It was my grandfather that taught me how to fish. How to bait a hook (and where to find said bait). How to hook a fish (turn a nibble into a caught fish). How to take the fish off of the hook (which is not an easy task with a catfish (for those of you who have never done it)). How to clean a fish, both catfish and scaled fish (but, yeah, I know why no one liked doing it, because you get scales all over you). He taught me how to do all of it up to the cooking part. I had the eating part all worked out on my own, and I figured out the cooking part later.

When I got to be a teenager and we no longer did those huge fishing trips and it was just my nuclear family that would go fishing (basically, whenever my mom would decide that she felt like having fish), I was the one that had to do all the maintenance stuff, meaning that I was the hook baiter and fish remover. Yeah, I hated those trips, because I never actually got to do any fishing. I got plenty of bites, but they were all from mosquitoes, and, when all you get from a fishing trip is mosquito bites, it's just not any fun. Why was I the hook baiter and fish remover? Because no one in my family would do those things. I mean, one time when I was doing something else and my dad caught a fish, I turned around to find him stepping on the fish (so that he wouldn't have to touch it) while trying to get the hook out of its mouth with a pair of pliers. I started finding other things to do rather than go fishing, so the catfish eating dwindled away.

But, see, I grew up liking, even loving, catfish. And I didn't have to give you all of that background, but I wanted you to have the context of my relationship with catfish. In my mind, it's associated, mostly, with these great family fishing trips with my grandfather and him teaching me how to do all the stuff. He gave me my first fillet knife and skinners one year when I was probably around 9 or 10, and I thought that was one of the greatest presents ever.

But we don't do the whole catfish thing out here in CA. It's just not a thing here the way it is in the south. Out here it's salmon and, well, I don't really know, because I lost any inclination I had for fishing when my grandfather died, so it's not a thing we do. I mean, not a thing my family does. I know plenty of people that take off to fish for salmon or do ocean fishing. I don't know anyone that does catfishing.

On Friday nights, we do special family dinner night. Special dinners are things that take more time or are more elaborate than we can do on a night when people have to get up early the following morning. Every so often, I'll do a fried fish night, but those are more rare than even the normal special dinner nights, because it takes a lot of time to prep and fry everything. Like the onion rings. Because, according to everyone that's had them, I make the best onion rings ever. And fried mushrooms, too. But I digress. So... fried fish, which is generally cod.

Last week I was out buying fish because were going to have our first fried fish night in... I don't know, months, at least. So I was picking up the cod, and there in the display case with the fish was catfish. Catfish. Oh, man, I hadn't had catfish in so long. I mean, I've lived in California for a long time, and I think I'd only had it once before since I moved out here. I love catfish. My kids should try it, right? My kids that don't actually like fish that much to begin with, and I was thinking they should try catfish of all things, but I'm not really to that part yet. I bought some of the catfish. I love catfish.

Friday night came. I mixed up the batter. I sliced up a couple of onions. I chopped the mushrooms down to appropriate sizes (because they hadn't had anything of an appropriate size at the store). I started frying those up. Everyone was eating onions rings voraciously. My wife and I were eating the mushrooms. I got out the fish, the cod, and sliced it up and started frying that up. People started eating the cod. I pulled out the catfish...

I pulled out the catfish and fried up a few pieces, nuggets, because I was eager to pop one into my mouth. Long time since catfish. I love catfish. I was... actually excited, I think. I toss the first couple of pieces onto the plate to cool. Before it was quite cool enough, I popped one into my mouth...

And, man, it was like eating a mud ball. And, yeah, I know what dirt tastes like. I was a kid that played in a lot of dirt. Not that I ever actually on purpose ate any, but, you know, it gets in your mouth. And that piece of catfish was the equivalent of a handful of dirt down at the farm when I was a kid.

It must have been a mistake. Just a bad piece, right? Right...
So I got another piece and... dirt! OH MY GOSH! Catfish tastes like dirt! Then I thought back to the previous time I'd had catfish, the last time, years before, when I thought "I love catfish; I should get some for everyone to try," and it had tasted like dirt, too, and no one else liked it or would eat any of it. Just like this time. And I realized: I had grown up liking the taste of... dirt. [And, see, when I was growing up, I'd heard people say they didn't like catfish for that very reason, but I'd always dismissed them as not knowing what they were talking about.]

But that's what growing up is for. I also grew up drinking only soda, but I can't stand the stuff, now, after being off of it for the last five years or so. The sweet of it is just too much for me. And I grew up liking some shows (mostly cartoons) that I look back now and wonder what I was thinking when I was 15 and watching G. I. Joe every day after school. And there have been books and/or authors that have been that way for me, too. All of it dirt.

There are a few things, I suppose, that you could come away with from this, some of which I've talked about before (like, just, outgrowing things), but it would take too much time, at this point, to talk about all of those things. Instead, I will just mention this one thing:

Sometimes, you have to get away from something long enough to realize that it was dirt all along. Some things that we think are good are only good because we've never experienced anything else. But, when we go on to new things, hopefully better things, we can later recognize that that thing we used to love was really just dirt and we'd only loved that thing because it was the only thing we'd ever had. Which is why we need to always be broadening our experiences. Trying new things. Reading new books.

And, on the book note, I suppose that's why it bothers me when I see people saying things like, "I only read YA" like it's a good thing and, worse, like that makes them better than people who read a variety of types of books. What I want to say to that is that you're eating catfish. [Which is not to say that all YA is dirt.] Or, maybe, baby food. I get that you grew up reading YA and you love YA, but, really, you're 30 now; branch out a little bit. Seriously. You might discover that some of that YA you always thought was so yummy is really just a mud pie.

Ninja Killer

I'm gonna come right out and say it: I'm not a big fan of ninjas.
Yeah, you heard me. In the whole Pirates vs Ninjas thing, I'm totally for the pirates. Not that I like pirates all the much either, but, you know, at least a pirate is honest about what he is. A scurvy dog, right?

But the ninja? No, the ninja has spent centuries developing this idea about themselves that just isn't true. That they're these awesome fighters and all of that. It reached a peak in the 80's, and, I have to say, I was as sucked in as the next guy. I loved the show The Master, for instance, although I may have been the only one considering how quickly it went away. Huh, I didn't remember Demi Moore being in that. Weird. Of course, it has been nearly 30 years since I've seen it. Heck, even the original Transformers animated series had a ninja robot in it built by humans! And I can't even get started on G. I. Joe. I have only one thing to say about that: Snake Eyes! In the 80's, ninjas were cool.

Then I learned about them. Not on purpose, mind you, because, like I said, I was as sucked in as everyone else, but, as I've mentioned before, I went to nerd school, and my world history teacher gave us some actual ninja learning. That was my introduction to the web of lies that ninjas have built around themselves. But, then, it does serve their purposes, because, what they want, is not to fight. If everyone thinks ninjas are all badass, which they're not, people will run away from them, and they don't have to do any real fighting. See how that works?

No, a ninja's real job is to be a sneaky killer. They don't do direct confrontation. They're the guys that sneak around and poison food or kill you in your sleep or sneak up behind you. Anything not to be seen, kill their target, and get away, again, without being seen.

My favorite ninja story?
This ninja needed to kill this guy, and, to do it, he hid in an outhouse. But not just in the outhouse, in the outhouse. As in under the seat down in all the urine and feces. He brought supplies so that he could camp out down there, which he did for three days. Three days! Three days in a toilet making no noise while people did their business on him. After three days, his target finally showed up. The guy sat down to do his business, the ninja took his spear and, while the guy was reading the equivalent of the Tokyo Times, the ninja shoved his spear right up the guy's bum. What a way to go.

See, if I was a ninja, and I was willing to go to that kind of length to kill someone (which I'm not), I would totally own it. I would own that... um... forget that next word... um... stuff! I would own that stuff! And, then, I would respect the ninja. But, then, I guess the whole lying thing is just a part of what they are in order to do their job.

The thing is, though, in a straight up fight of pirates vs ninjas, the ninjas would all run away. Of course, there's always waiting for the pirates to get drunk and fall asleep, which is what the ninjas would do.

Anyway... all I'm saying is that if ninjas were honest about who and what they are, I'd be okay with them.

But all of that is not really what all of this is about, now is it? Because this is the

Question the first:
What does Alex look like?
Alex looks like George Clooney with a guitar. Probably not as well dressed. I imagine him walking down railroad tracks with the guitar slung over his back.

Question the second:
Who could play Alex in a documentary?
Well, of course, George Clooney. Or, maybe, Ben Affleck playing George Clooney, because, as Kevin Smith says, "Affleck could be the shark."

Question the third:
Who does Alex remind me of?
At this point, how can I not say George Clooney? I can't not say that, so I will: George Clooney.

Flash Fiction (bah! I mostly dislike flash fiction):
George Cavanaugh was making his way down the tracks one day with his guitar slung over his shoulder. Cavanaugh had stolen the plans for an IWSG from a secret government installation, but he'd found that no one paid any attention to hobos with guitars, so it was his MO to sneak away in this particular guise. Besides, if he needed to be inconspicuous, he could always stop and play on a street corner, because even fewer people paid any attention to those guys other than tossing some bills into his case, which would mean he wouldn't have to pay for supper, either, so, really, it was a win-win. However, a ninja had tracked him and was, at that very moment, sneaking up behind him, sword drawn. Cavanaugh knew all about the ninja, though, and was just luring him out. At the last moment before the ninja struck, Cavanaugh spun while drawing his cosbolt and shot the ninja right in the eye slit. "New pajamas," Cavanaugh thought, as he stripped the body.

Bonus Points?
Wait, who said anything about points? This is an arbitrary thing, right? Besides, I've used up all my words. I'll just keep it short: Thanks for sharing!

The Farm

I collect things. Well, not so much anymore, but I used to. Many of those things, I still have. They're just put away. In storage. But they're there. All the Star Wars toys from when I was a kid. Yes, I still have all of them. GI Joes and Transformers, too. Comic books. Way too many comic books (but that's a much longer tale and not what this post is about, but, you know, if you want to buy some, let me know. heh). Magic cards and other CCGs (yes, even thousands of the Harry Potter TCG cards). Some of these things, I wish I was still involved with but, mostly, it's all just put away.

I don't spend time with any of it. However, there is some amount of comfort knowing that it's there. I don't know why. My wife wishes she knew why, because she wishes I would get rid of at least 95% of it. Sometimes, I wish I could just toss it all, too, but it would leave me with the feeling that something is missing. There was a point when I was in college that I was kind of strapped for cash. Not something I was used to dealing with. I generally did a pretty good job of keeping myself in the money that I needed to get by, but, this one time, I was running low on fundage. I knew these kids that collected Transformers, and they had been lusting after my collection for months and months. Being somewhat desperate, I broke down and decided to sell some of them. Well, it ended up just being one of them: Soundwave (along with the cassettes that went with him even though they were, technically, separate figures). I've never really gotten over selling that one piece. It haunts me still. "I used to have that." "If only I hadn't been stupid and sold him." Those kinds of things. So, even though I haven't even looked at my Transformers in years, the knowledge that I'm missing that one figure from my collection pricks at my mind any time I think of them. When the kids came back to buy more a few weeks later, I told them I wasn't selling any more of them.

I could give other examples of how the losses of little, basically, inconsequential things can sit around and nag at people. Not just me. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, "I used to have that when I was a kid. I don't know what happened to it." Or, "yeah, I had all of those, but my mom threw them out when I went off to college." Or, "yeah, I had tons of GI Joes and Star Wars toys, but I blew them all up this one 4th of July." Yes, that's a true story. The common thread is that everyone, every single person, I've heard say anything like that all wished s/he had those things back again. Small, unimportant things. But things that had meaning to them and played some part in their lives when they were growing up. For me, things I hoard up because one day I want to share them. Sit down with my kids and explain what they meant to me, why I kept them, and pass them on.

But, in the end, they are still just things. Often things, like my wife says, that clutter up our lives and steal our space. And we don't really have a lot of that, so it's a valid concern. However, it's not always things that we want to pass on. Sometimes, it's people. My grandfather is the person that I most wish I could pass on to my kids. The person from my life that I most wish they could meet. He's the person that sat with me every night after he got home from work, smelling of sweat and motor oil, and read to me. Read to me the same books over and over, because I was the king of "read it again," and he was my throne. Little Black, A Pony. And that story about the old blue truck and the cow. And he would read them over and over to me.

He was a presence. Quiet. Strong. My mother tells me, and, you know, she knew him a lot longer than me, that he never raised his voice. I certainly never remember him yelling, but things are often different with your kids as opposed to your grandkids, but, no, she says he never raised his voice. As far as she knows, he never raised his voice to anyone. If they (my mom and her two siblings) needed shouting at, that was my grandmother's job. And he never said an unkind word about anyone. Not an individual. Not any group of people. Not even when the Cowboys lost. He was the giver of hugs. Bear hugs. The one that tickled us and caught our hands when we were too slow. He has always been the person I most want to become.

The day he died remains the worst day of my life. When the phone rang that morning, I knew what it was about before anyone answered it and was already crying even though I had no reason to think that that was what the call was about. I'd just seen him two days before, and the doctors said he was going to be fine. That they'd caught the cancer  in time and that he should recover. But I knew. And, even then, I felt the loss as not just my own but as a loss for the kids I didn't yet have or have any notion of whom I would have  them with.

Sometimes... sometimes the things that we keep packed away in storage are places. I haven't been "home" in 10 years. Home being the House from The House on the Corner. My parents live in it, now, and I spent my teenage years living in it with them. But, before that, it was my grandparents' house. My memories of that house go back as far as I have memories. My dog when I was two. My mom holding me and not letting me go down to him when they found him dead in the backyard, still a puppy, both of us. My cousin pushing me off a riding toy and my aunt taking care of the huge bump on my head. Hearing jingle bells one Christmas Eve and being convinced it was Santa in the house.

But home was also East Texas. Besides the house in Shreveport, my grandparents had a farm outside of Jefferson. This was the real place where I was formed. Playing in the hay barn with my cousin Sam, leaping from stack to stack of bailed hay pretending we were superheroes in Gotham or New York. Catching toads with my cousin Becky. Picking blackberries with my grandmother. Feeding the cows, especially the one called Pig with the forked tongue, the table scraps from dinner. Waking up to the smell of coffee brewing.

This was the place that I spent nearly every major holiday from the time I was born until my grandfather died when I was 20. Every Thanksgiving I can remember. My cousins and I sitting at the kids' table where my cousin Sam would pour ketchup all over everything on his plate. The nearly 20 adults sitting at the long row of tables passing food back-and-forth. With just a few exceptions, every Christmas, too. My cousins, brother, and I all slept on the floor together when we were kids. Often in the same room with the Christmas tree. But, somehow, there were always presents piled under it on Christmas morning,  none of us the wiser as to how they got there. It was probably that more than anything else that convinced us of the magic of Santa.

There was also my great-grandmother's house. It was about a mile or so down the road, the dirt road. I spent as much time there as I did at my grandparents'. My Uncle Fred lived there, too. And, in the summers, my Aunt Effie would come and stay and bring my cousin Becky. I spent my summers with her. With her and my uncle's dogs. He always had at least three, and they always had the most unimaginative names. Spot. Brownie. Blackie. About as far out as it got was a dog named Ginger when I was a teenager, and that  was probably because he already had a Brownie.

There were so many places there. Because, you know, when you're a kid, one place can be comprised of many universes. Under the house where the dogs would go when it was too hot, and it was often too hot, and dig holes to lay in. That was our favorite place to catch toads. The cane patch my uncle kept back behind the house for fishing poles and where there were often snakes, but we played in there anyway. The pond that my uncle dug where we would swim. And catch frogs. And where there were also often snakes, but we played there anyway. The pine woods that surrounded my great-grandmother's where we would tramp around. The loft of the barn where Uncle Troy dried his peanuts.

They had an actual well in the house. When we were thirsty, we would go and lower the bucket and bring up a pail of water and drink from it with a big dipper that hung on the post. Everyone drank from that dipper, and no one thought anything about it. The water was always cold and had a metallic tang to it that may or may not have come from the dipper. Possibly, the well tells you that it was an old house. It had a tin roof. I loved being down there when it would rain and listening to the rain pound on that roof. They kept skewers, for lack of a better term, on a nail next to the fireplace (all the time), and Becky and I would sit and roast marshmallows on cold nights.

My Aunt Effie actually had a house down there, too, even though they never actually stayed in it. It was, oh, probably three miles or so farther down the road. They had a wardrobe down there full of games. Most of them missing too many pieces to really be playable. On the very rare occasion, my cousin and I would walk the three miles down to her house so that we could play Mouse Trap, because that's where that game lived. There was no need for a key, because the house was never locked up, and it was never an issue that it wasn't locked up. Nothing ever went missing.

This was the place that I really grew up. Sitting and shelling peas or shucking corn on the porch at my great-grandmother's. We did a lot of that. Riding in the back of the pickup with the dogs, because the dogs went everywhere with my uncle. Unless he had to go into town, and, then, they would obediently stay behind. Digging potatoes. Playing in the mud in the ditches next to the road after the rain. Riding on the tractor with my grandfather and, sometimes, getting to steer. Going on long walks down the road with my great-grandmother and picking wildflowers for the table, when she was still strong enough to do that with us.

This place has been like that box of Transformers. Like all my Star Wars toys. Giving me comfort because I knew it was there. Giving me hope that one day I would be able to share these places with my kids. Take them there and show them. Tell them stories. "And this was the place where we were chased by the cottonmouth." "And this is the place where we found the copperhead, and my uncle came and chopped it up with a hoe." "And this was the place where we stumbled across the rattlesnake, but it just shook its tail at us and let us go." I told you there were a lot of snakes. Not all of the stories would be about snakes, though.

I've always known that it wasn't actually very likely that I would get to take my kids and show them all of these places and tell them the stories about the people that lived there, make them as real for my kids as they are to me, but there was the possibility. The knowledge that those places were there, stored away like a collection, a collection of memories, smoldered in my mind, keeping some part of me warm. I could dream of taking them and showing them the pond, long ago choked by weeds and telling them, "this is where I used to swim," and see the dumbfounded looks on their faces, because they have never known anything other than swimming pools. And take them down to the creek and show them the vines that we used to swing into the water from. And just... just sit on the porch in the old chairs where we would sit for hours in the evenings watching the fireflies (when we weren't out trying to catch them) and shelling peas.

But all of that's gone now. I just found out yesterday that all of it, all of it, my grandparents' house (where my Uncle Oscar (my mom's brother) was living), my great-grandmother's house (where my Uncle Fred still lived), even my Aunt Effie's house (where no one was still living, because she actually lives in Houston), was claimed by  the wildfires raging through East Texas. It's all just... gone. And I don't know, really, how to feel about it. I mean, these are not places I'm currently involved with. Like the boxes of toys, they have just been stored away for the future. A future that would probably never be possible, but there. They were there, and I knew they were there, and I hoped. But it's all gone now. The outhouse out behind my great-grandmother's that no one ever used, because it was always full of wasps. The turkey coop. The 200 year old furniture. The tractors, at least one of which was probably 100 years old. The floor that I slept on on Christmas Eve, and the coffee pot that would wake me up in the morning with its smells wafting through the house.

Part of me feels guilty for feeling such loss to something as intangible as my memories when so many people, so many people, have lost everything that they are involved with. Lost where they actually lived. But I do. There is a numbness and a pain fighting within me over these places I haven't seen in a decade and haven't spent any real time in since my grandfather died 20 years ago. The loss of these things won't affect my life or change how I live. I won't have to make allowances to my routine to compensate for their loss. But just as I had the knowledge that they were there, I now have the knowledge that they are gone. It will be just like Soundwave. I won't be able to think about "the farm" without the nagging thought that it's gone. I can no longer imagine what it must be like for the people that have lost everything to these fires, because I can't imagine walking through the blackened earth where all that I once knew and loved once stood. I wish that I could. To make it real. Because I can't imagine those places not being there. What I do know is that, now, I can't go back. Can never take my kids and make these places real to them. That is a loss that can't be replaced.

[Just as a note: none of my family members were hurt during the writing of this piece. They all were away or got out safely. They should all be okay, too. Without going into details, they are all taken care of.]