A Mini-Memoir: The Pen and I, Part I
By Linda Saholt, East Sierra Branch
From the time I could hold a pencil, I have always been driven to write. Dad taught me to read between kindergarten and first grade, and I fell in love with the local library that summer. Reading is magic!
Trying to stay out of Mom’s way, I mostly holed up in my room with the door closed, or perched up in the big elm tree in the front yard. I read or daydreamed, entering fascinating other worlds at will, time traveling and seeing through others’ eyes.
By 1962, I was in 9th grade and signed up for drama class. My teacher, Mrs. Davis, encouraged me to write plays — actually, little skits, but you have to start somewhere. I wrote one piece, about 10 minutes long, to be performed entirely in front of the stage curtain. No sets were needed. The premise: four students hiking along a mountain trail talking about The Meaning of Life. (I was trying to be profound; rather a conceit in 9th grade.) Nonetheless, Mrs. Davis was quite taken with the skit, and oversaw having it performed at the school’s annual Father-Daughter Banquet.
That week, Dad was out of town. Evidently Mrs. Davis called Mom and insisted I had to be there, so Mom brought me to the event. We came in late and stood at the back of the auditorium. My little skit was performed, Mrs. Davis announced it was written by a student, the audience cried, “Author, author!” and I got a moment in the spotlight. Mom’s face was not smiling and she said nothing. All the way home she said nothing, and the event was never mentioned again. I don’t know if Dad even knew it happened.
Once, I told Mom I wanted to be a writer. She told me, “Forget it. There is no market for unknown writers.”
Three years later, our high school had a huge writing contest. I was taking Creative Writing, and wrote pieces for just about every category in the contest, on the theory that, if you enter the more obscure categories, you have a better chance of winning something.
I typed all my submissions on Dad’s antique 1939 Underwood until my hands ached. At the time, it was the only working typewriter we had, and it featured open sides, keys with rims, and the shift key lifted up the whole guts of the machine. I didn’t make carbon copies because making corrections took so long, so just turned in the originals, which were not returned.
The whole family attended the contest awards assembly. I won a first-place award for a screenplay, a third-place for a one-act play, and an honorable mention for an essay. I was ecstatic! After all the years of Mom’s chewing me out for failing to win awards, I just knew this would please her.
On the ride home, Mom turned to me and said, “I just don’t understand how you can be so good in this one area, and so bad in all these other areas…” Blah, blah, blah…The bad mouth noise continued all the way home. I slumped down in my seat, and came perilously close to chucking those award certificates out the window. But that would have been littering, and littering is wrong. Mom looked smug and little brother David laughed.
Read Part II with its happy ending in our October edition.
Linda Saholt has written extensively as a reporter for
Ridgecrest, CA’s News Review and also as a contributor to
Ridgecrest Death Valley Magazine.