I recently made a run out to the Clackamas Book Exchange to stock The Old Crow Book Club. Ever since its release, Linda, the store's only employee and passionate advocate for Lord Calvert scotch, has hustled the book with astonishing and unique gusto quite unlike any bookstore clerk or owner I've ever met in my literary career. I mean, she's basically dragooning customers into reading it because the issue of homelessness is very important to her; she almost endued up homeless herself and would have had not for her sister. She was living on the minimum Social Security payment and what she scraped up managing a second-hand bookstore. It isn't nearly enough to afford anything decent or even terrible in the area and thank the Lord she has family.
Linda had but one copy of the book left and it was pretty ragged when I walked in and saw it. She greeted me with tremendous enthusiasm and I gave her an update on Mark and various other members of he book club and our continuing frustration at the incompetent bureaucracies tasked with alleviating the crisis.
Linda practically screamed, “Bureaucracies don't have hearts!” a line I immediately noted in my mind as a great title for a country song, which I will indeed write and perform one of these days.
I handed over three additional copies and Linda thanked me. She had held on to the last copy for a couple of weeks, and demanded people read a chapter right then and there! Absurd! Beautiful!
She implored me to not lose hope for the cause. I promised I would not. I said when Mark finally got into housing, I'd swing by with some scotch and we'd toast to Mark's health and glug down a belt in a specimen cup. We would also praise the Lord, as in Lord Calvert. Linda was very much for that.
This new country hit would be a great tag team with your prior piece, ": “I Had to Put My Dog Down. Wish it Had Been My Ex-girlfriend.”
Family matters. Always enjoy your writing, thanks Matt.