Book Dreams Born in an Easy Bake Oven

My first published piece of writing appeared in the Evening Independent, the afternoon edition of  my hometown newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times. Not to be confused with the New York Times, the independently owned Times was one of the top 10 nationwide, known for its journalistic excellence, reliability, and predictability.

The Times arrived with a thump on our sidewalk every morning before sunrise. Sections were portioned out around the breakfast table. I usually chose the section that printed the local news. Feature stories, movie listings, and human-interest. That’s how I learned about the why and how behind the who. 

On weekdays, I’d slurp down the pastel-colored milk from the last of my Fruit Loops while reading each page of the B section, folded once, then again in half, so I could really hone in on what had captured my attention. 

I grew up on 15th Street in the Euclid-St.Paul neighborhood in a Colonial two-story home my parents bought in 1973 for $15,000. My dad and his father worked meticulously to make what felt like a mansion to this 5-year-old into something habitable, complete with gold shag carpet in the living room, orange shag in the family room, and my new bedroom, with Kelly green walls and lavender curtains and bedding my match my four-poster canopy. 

Credit goes to my mom for holding her tongue when I insisted walls reflect my still-to-this-day favorite color, green.  My brother Steve and and I attended St. Paul Catholic School, the same one our dad spent first through 8th grade. My mom attended St. Paul’s all girls high school. 

We walked to and from school, spending weekday afternoons at our grandparents’ house while my father worked to build his pet products business, and my mother assisted her boss and our family dentist, Dr. Schmidt. 

Our grandmother, whom we called Nana, delighted in made smiley faces with the French’s  yellow mustard on the processed baloney, slapped together with Wonder bread. A true 1970s after-school snack, made better with her homemade milkshakes whipped up in a chrome Whirlpool blender after she let me squeeze as much Hershey’s chocolate syrup inside as I desired. 

The Evening Independent always arrived around 4 p.m., while Steve and I were outside collecting kumquats and organizing them between rotten and edible. Launched in 1906, the Evening Independent was St. Petersburg’s first newspaper. In 1962, it was acquired by the St. Petersburg Times. Its promise of a free paper following days with no sunshine, which were rare in Florida’s “Sunshine City,” provided a slice of small town in a bustling community that is now Florida’s 5th largest city.

When I wasn’t on kumquat duty, I’d sometimes walk one block over to 14th Street, where the Moorhead’s lived. Mr. Moorhead was a columnist, editorial writer, theater critic, and reporter for the Evening Independent. When you’re producing two papers a day, “many hats” is part of the job description. Sometimes, I’d play in their 3rd floor attic with his daughters McKell and Molly. I was 8 years old, and while kids our age usually didn’t know or even care what our friends’ parents did for a living, I knew that most weekends my parents earned extra money at our other grandparents’ restaurant, Scully’s Square.

Scully’s Square didn’t close until 2 a.m., too late for a teenage babysitter to watch my brother and me. That meant that my brother and I spent Friday and Saturday evenings at our Aunt Margaret’s apartment in downtown St. Pete. When we weren’t eating TV dinners while watching Lawrence Welk or All in the Family, Aunt Margaret liked to give us projects like crossword puzzles, word games, and writing challenges. 

One evening, she showed me a column from Mr. Moorhead, wherein he posed a writing prompt that invited readers to answer, “Where in the world would you most like to travel.” The following week, one lucky reader would see his or her response published in the Evening Independent. 

Aunt Margaret thought that would be a good exercise for me, so I wrote a paragraph that described how I wanted to visit Washington, D.C., to see the White House and shake hands with the president. 

To my delight, my piece was published. It was 1977, and I still have the newspaper clipping that somehow survived a 2008 house fire.

The power of seeing what I wrote in print, even at 8 years old, showed me that a grownup valued what I had to say. Whether he thought it was cute that a child responded to his prompt, or he wanted to ignite a spark in a young mind, what matters is that someone provided me with a platform for which to share my writing.

Today there are many platforms - blogs, social media, writing contests, journals, online magazines - where aspiring authors and writers can share their work. That is a good thing because it shows the world that our stories matter. Your stories matter. The words you share can someday inspire, educate, and even entertain.

My wish for any aspiring author is to take the chance and share your thoughts. Tell a story that had a profound effect on you. Show us a transformation you experienced because of something you overcame. Invite us into your living rooms, your hearts and your minds. Chances are, readers will see themselves inside of you, and connect with you through shared experiences. Sharing our stories has the power to create community, and couldn’t we all use a little more of that in this increasingly difficult word.

I found the power of my words in my small community, the Euclid-St. Paul neighborhood where I made cookies in an Easy Bake Oven in the attic with the daughters of a local newspaper columnist.