Product Description
After writing the story (“Coal & Coca-Cola,” available on KINDLE) of my Mom's bakery start up in The Malt Shop in Florence, Colorado in the 50's, I had wanted to write a parallel story about my Mom's sister, my aunt Annie Rocchio, who had been the trusted employed of the Florence Creamery in 1943 when the owner and his wife needed to sell the creamery and offered it to Annie, saying, “We know you can do it; we've seen how hard you work.”
As was the case with each of my true stories of individuals of quiet grit, this one took off on its own into a theme rooted into Annie's life from her perspective of telling it to me, when she was a cherished, contented resident of St. Joseph's Manor, a clean, pleasant nursing home in Florence, located several blocks away, around the curve of the Main Street bend, from where The Malt Shop had been when owned by Annie and her two sisters, Mary and Margie.
The title of this story was taken from Annie's sad question, which she had repeated to me as she attempted to understand her life and its final chapter accompanied by painful limitations of aging. The story comes through with a finished jig saw puzzle of a type of fountain of youth in reverie.
I have a growing collection of KINDLE editions with photo essays which I call Visceral Histories. This collection is loosely connected to this story and to Coal & Coca-Cola. Each story stands alone, yet each also works into the others, and into the themes developed in my novel series opened by THE ROSE AND THE PYRAMID. The link has to do with history, as a concept as well as a reality.
VISCERAL HISTORY is my term for true stories told from the gut, usually featuring the perspective of the author in addition to one or a small number of individuals. Rather than attempting to give cool, detached accounts of historic events (whether panoramic public accounts or private biographical vignettes); the focus is purposely placed on emotional reactions (of the subjects, and the author’s in empathy) to what has been lived through, experienced, or observed.
The purpose is to show the subjects in a heroic light, no matter how seemingly simple their lives may be.
No life is simple.
What I’m getting into here, in a gritty, gutsy, yet warm and personal concept of historic capture is somewhat complex, intriguingly so to me. I hope to find time soon to write about this concept in more detail, especially my thoughts about allowing latitude when researching dates to a precise, to the month or minute accuracy (especially when it’s not possible to do that)… about how different types of memory capacity can be triggered or catalyzed in a manner similar to working a jigsaw puzzle...
A philosophical treatise could be written on the ways history can be recorded, from the coolest clarity and accuracy of trained historians; to the warmest skewing and heart healing dramatizations of salt of the earth men and women. Sometimes the coolest records are innocently (or purposely) politically skewed; while the warm stories, told and retold, are so gut level honest, they remain uncannily close to the truth of life.
Fortunately for me, I’m not an investigative reporter assigned and paid to dig for dirt.
I’m a literary mirror for the good and the true in the human heart.
That, I believe exists.
Respectfully Submitted,
Linda G. Shelnutt
List of Linda Shelnutt’s VISCERAL HISTORIES
1. The Price of Black Diamonds
2. Coal Dust in Their Hands
3. Dark Diamond Twilight *
4. The Last Lunch Box
5. I Worked
6. This is Someone’s Loved One: An Undertaker’s View
7. We work all our lives and what do we get? *
8. Coal & Coca-Cola *
*(KINDLE edition w/photos now available)*
The above 8 stories are available as Amazon Shorts. Shelnutt is upgrading (slowly) each of these for KINDLE publication. As currently planned, Kindle editions will have new covers and photos added (with corrections of any typos found in Shorts versions at the time of Kindle publications).
As was the case with each of my true stories of individuals of quiet grit, this one took off on its own into a theme rooted into Annie's life from her perspective of telling it to me, when she was a cherished, contented resident of St. Joseph's Manor, a clean, pleasant nursing home in Florence, located several blocks away, around the curve of the Main Street bend, from where The Malt Shop had been when owned by Annie and her two sisters, Mary and Margie.
The title of this story was taken from Annie's sad question, which she had repeated to me as she attempted to understand her life and its final chapter accompanied by painful limitations of aging. The story comes through with a finished jig saw puzzle of a type of fountain of youth in reverie.
I have a growing collection of KINDLE editions with photo essays which I call Visceral Histories. This collection is loosely connected to this story and to Coal & Coca-Cola. Each story stands alone, yet each also works into the others, and into the themes developed in my novel series opened by THE ROSE AND THE PYRAMID. The link has to do with history, as a concept as well as a reality.
VISCERAL HISTORY is my term for true stories told from the gut, usually featuring the perspective of the author in addition to one or a small number of individuals. Rather than attempting to give cool, detached accounts of historic events (whether panoramic public accounts or private biographical vignettes); the focus is purposely placed on emotional reactions (of the subjects, and the author’s in empathy) to what has been lived through, experienced, or observed.
The purpose is to show the subjects in a heroic light, no matter how seemingly simple their lives may be.
No life is simple.
What I’m getting into here, in a gritty, gutsy, yet warm and personal concept of historic capture is somewhat complex, intriguingly so to me. I hope to find time soon to write about this concept in more detail, especially my thoughts about allowing latitude when researching dates to a precise, to the month or minute accuracy (especially when it’s not possible to do that)… about how different types of memory capacity can be triggered or catalyzed in a manner similar to working a jigsaw puzzle...
A philosophical treatise could be written on the ways history can be recorded, from the coolest clarity and accuracy of trained historians; to the warmest skewing and heart healing dramatizations of salt of the earth men and women. Sometimes the coolest records are innocently (or purposely) politically skewed; while the warm stories, told and retold, are so gut level honest, they remain uncannily close to the truth of life.
Fortunately for me, I’m not an investigative reporter assigned and paid to dig for dirt.
I’m a literary mirror for the good and the true in the human heart.
That, I believe exists.
Respectfully Submitted,
Linda G. Shelnutt
List of Linda Shelnutt’s VISCERAL HISTORIES
1. The Price of Black Diamonds
2. Coal Dust in Their Hands
3. Dark Diamond Twilight *
4. The Last Lunch Box
5. I Worked
6. This is Someone’s Loved One: An Undertaker’s View
7. We work all our lives and what do we get? *
8. Coal & Coca-Cola *
*(KINDLE edition w/photos now available)*
The above 8 stories are available as Amazon Shorts. Shelnutt is upgrading (slowly) each of these for KINDLE publication. As currently planned, Kindle editions will have new covers and photos added (with corrections of any typos found in Shorts versions at the time of Kindle publications).
