Writing From The Main Street of Gravenhrust, Barge Sunday Night

WRITING FROM THE MAIN STREET  -  I'M GOING TO GIVE IT A TRY

ANTIQUE EXPANSION AND OUR FIRST WEEK

     WHEN WE HAD OUR SMALL ANTIQUE SHOP IN BRACEBRIDGE, FROM 1989 UNTIL ABOUT MID 1995, BUSINESS WAS SO BAD, I WROTE FOUR BOOK MANUSCRIPTS, AND COMPOSED WEEKLY COLUMNS FOR THE MUSKOKA ADVANCE, AND LATER, THE MUSKOKA SUN. I HAD WAY TOO MUCH FREE TIME BETWEEN ANTIQUE AND COLLECTIBLE SALES. BUT AS AN INTERESTING DIVERSION, IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I MIXED MY BUSINESS WITH PROFESSION. I JUST STARTED MAKING NOTES ONE DAY, ABOUT THE PERILS OF THE ANTIQUE BUSINESS, AND HOW I'D LOVE TO MAKE IT MORE EFFICIENT, AND THE NEXT THING I KNOW, I'M WRITING ABOUT EVERYTHING, AND ALL OF IT WAS EVENTUALLY PUBLISHED, AND I'M PROUD OF THAT FACT. WHILE IT MAY HAVE BEEN THE WRONG LOCATION FOR ANTIQUE RETAIL, IT WAS PERFECT AS A WRITER'S SANCTUARY.
     So after all these years, happily selling our wares online, and writing from my office overlooking the thriving bogland at Birch Hollow, we decided to help our lads expand their vintage music business, by providing antiques and collectibles in the rear rooms of the former Muskoka Theatre building, on Muskoka Road, here in uptown Gravenhurst. For the short-term, Suzanne and I are helping Rob and Andrew man the expanded business, so I get home late and find it difficult to sit down at the keyboard and compose the day's blog. I'm approaching the 20,000 hits mark, hugely upgraded since November, when I began writing these daily blogs. Before this I had been writing about seven blogs each week, but divided over five sites. With a couple of meaty projects coming up, I'm trying to keep the daily efforts up to snuff, in preparation, because even taking a week off, is a killer as far as inspiration goes. Writing might take a holiday from me, but I know better than to turn my back on the urge to pen something......when the mood strikes. That's why I'm giving this working-up-town thing a try, just to see if I can recall my old writing days......when I could work in a wild and crazy newsroom, with sandwiches being tossed desk-to-desk, coffees being spilled in the electronic keyboard, and arguments breaking out all around me......and often involving me.
     At Birch Hollow I've become predictably soft. I can handle the distraction of a purring cat, and the sound of bird calls outside my window. Not much more. Frankly, it has been, at times, too gentle and obliging, and that probably has reflected in my editorial content. There's not much stirring, and exciting through the days, unless it's the handiwork of my neighbor's that distracts me from my work. It seems it is mandatory to have noisey equipment in our neighborhood, like chainsaws and leaf blowers. Of course there are lots of riding mowers and sundry other heavy equipment banging up and down the road almost hourly.
    Uptown here, and in the back of our expanded shop, I've just now heard a train horn, and the warning beeps from a truck backing up somewhere in the immediate block of commercial buildings. I hope to be distracted by a hoarde of antique hunters, who come to visit occasionally. I'm kind of hoping our location here in Gravenhurst works better, in business terms, than our former mainstreet location in Bracebridge. I'm of course reminded that fewer customers meant more writing projects completed for me. This time I'm hoping for a better balance because writers are usually poor, and even if I wrote twelve books every year, I'd still need this antique thing to produce some folding money, to offset what writing fails to generate.
     The problem of course, is that I've become fussy about the places I write. It's the same for artists, and music composers, I suppose. Yet I'm in the bowels of one of our town's more interesting buildings, that for many years, was a well known Muskoka movie theatre. It hasn't been one for years now, but the boys still get former patrons coming into the store, just to reminisce about the romantic adventures with girlfriends and boyfriends, locked shoulder to shoulder watching either a tear jerker, a chick flick, or something so terrifying, well, a strong embrace was necessary. I feel the aura of nostalgia here now, although it has been gutted of its seats, grand hall, projector room and movie screen......there is still a very good vibe in the building, and if there are ghosts, they are contented living in the past, and leaving us to our own preoccupations. The most I'm likely to sense at the old Muskoka Theatre, will be the shallow, whispering voices from the old silver screen. The essence of Hollywood once. John Wayne, Alan Ladd, Betty Davis, Richard Burton, Vincent Price, Boris Karloff. Ah, the good old days.
     Suzanne knows full well how enormously frustrating it is, to watch me suffer at the keyboard, during one of the rare blocks I face, once or twice a month. When I told her that I was going to borrow Andrew's laptop and attempt to write while helping with the store, she laughed out loud. She used to come into the Herald-Gazette newsroom, occasionally, while I was editor, and she understands how crazy it was to find any modicum of sanity amongst news staff who shared phones and computers. She knows I used to write and edit for a living, but has seen a gentler, more solitude-demanding writer husband since I left the daily hustle and bustle of the community press. So she's already made about four visits back to me already this morning, just to check up on my success or failure. Have I failed? I guess the only judge of that, honestly, is you.
    And by the way, since watching a feature story on the health-related problems of sitting too long during the day, and how standing at your work station promotes longevity, I'm writing while upright. I have a higher desk-top but my feet are already killing me. I figure that for the years I've been sitting while writing.....and watching television, I've got about fifteen minutes to live. Geez, I better get cracking. In the old days, I'd have taken twelve minutes of the fifteen to get up to the liquor store, two minutes to suck back a few pints, and with my last mortal strength, type, "-30-" which in news copy, means "The End." Being sober allows me the privilege of writing for the entire fifteen minutes, without any interuption than to occasionally check my pulse, just in case it's strong enough to allow me a few more moments in this mortal coil. If I make it past this fifteen minute thing, (I was crappy at math in school, so I may have miscalculated), I think this new temporary writing sanctuary may work. Suzanne just sold a book, from the front room, and I have managed to get this far with the urban neigborhood din, and the opening and closing of the shop door.....which rattles like Jacob Marley's length of ponderous chain. But alas, this rattle, brings with it a customer to our boy's shop, and this is good.
     I'm not too sure about this standing thing however, but I'm willing to give it a try for awhile, just in case it has some magical power to increase inspirational juices. I figure that the longer I stand here, composing, I will buy back the time in my life that I've lost to sitting. I may have been down as low as five minutes of life, but because I've been able to make it through this first blog, horse-like, maybe I've added a few good minutes to the buffer between me and the Grim Reaper, I saw browsing in the shop, earlier this morning. I thought at first he wanted to sell us his scythe. Well, we are the antique business afterall, and he's got a dandy implement. Very old! And undeniably well used.
     I've written copy in aircraft, while jetting over the Atlantic; penned copious notes, while hunkered down in Nottingham, England's Sherwood Forest, where the legendary Robin Hood used to rob from the rich to give to the poor; I've written in pubs, and beachside bars. I've written poetry while sitting in Picidilly Circus, in downtown London, and I've composed short stories on the sand banks of Ponce Inlet, south of Florida's Daytona Beach. I've written from a tiny bungalow bedroom in Toronto, and I've worked at a built-in desk in "Seven Persons' Cottage," in Muskoka's Foote's Bay, Lake Joseph, where everything was built in minature, and to scale of a larger Victorian home. I had to hunch to get in the front door. There was the new realease of the book, "Gnomes," sitting on the tiny coffee table, when I moved in, back in the summer of 1979. Point is, I've written in stranger and more exotic places than this retired movie theatre. I think we will get along, if what I see before me, on this blue screen, is evidence of what can be secured working in this cavernous old building on the main street of Gravenhurst.......which has certainly been bustling so far today.
     I want to thank old friend Kelly Duggan, for sending me a video of the entertainment on "The Barge" taken this past Sunday evening, of the group, "That 60's Show," which drew a huge crowd to the regular Concert on the Barge event, at Rotary Gull Lake Park......under clear skies, with a backdrop of a beautiful lake, and in company of thousands of folks enjoying the concert, the park, and the great recreational opportunities in this central Gravenhurst park. Hope you enjoy the video, courtesy, Kelly Duggan. I will have a profile of this coming Sunday's concert, in tomorrow's blog.....if that is, I beat my expected expiration date, and collapse before I can pound out another blog. I'm not sure death wants me anyway. They've rejected me a half dozen times already. I'm too needy, I suppose, and they would have to find a suitable position for me, on the "Heavenly Weekly," covering everything except politics. There aren't any politics in heaven. Right?

WILLIAM HENRY SMITH AND 150TH ANNIVERSARY IN PREPARATION NOW

     My film-making son Robert, has commenced work on a music video for me, to companion the little tribute I'm writing for the first of August, commemorating the 150th anniversay of the naming of the post offfice in Gravenhurst, circa 1862. While the town is celebrating the 125th year of the Town's incorporation, they haven't paid much interest to the fact it has been 150 years, since William Dawson LeSueur named the new hamlet post office, after a book written by British writer / poet, William Henry Smith, entitled "Gravenhurst; or Thoughts on Good and Evil." It's not every town that can say it was named after a poet. We can. I want to explain how significant this is, and hopefully an accompanying video will help. It will be contemporary, I'll tell you that much. Smith and LeSueur may turn over in their respective graves, but the only way to pitch the idea of a poet-town relationship, is to make it up to date and highly relevant. Not an easy process. I'd really like the younger generation to think this kinship is neat. Now that would be great.
     So I'll be on the road with the young Cecil B. DeMille in the coming weeks, getting some candid shots of our town, to go with the story of the good Mr. Smith, and our village's first post office. What's in a name? Quite a lot, if you're interested. The short series with music video will be published on this blogsite, beginning on August 1st. Please join me. I promise. It won't be boring. Robert insists it will be invigorating.