I was signing books at the Kickapoo Country Fair when a woman handed me a copy of Population 485 that had been signed by Don Majkowski. Apparently she had met him at a football camp earlier in the week and she had him autograph the only thing handy, which was a copy of my book. She was a little apologetic, but I thought it was terrific.
I still remember the excitement of watching the “Majik-Man” play, blonde mullet and all. In the midst of some grim doldrum years for the Pack, Majkowski gave us hope, and he beat the Bears in an especially delicious way.
Then he got hurt. Then he came back. Then, on September 20, 1992, he injured his ankle during a game against the Bengals and was replaced by a new kid named Brett Favre.*
So. If you see Don Majkowski, please tell him I don’t mind him signing my books as long as he doesn’t mind me signing his footballs.
*Sadly, after serving as the Packers starting quarterback for 16 consecutive seasons and setting nearly every record extant, in 2008 Favre abruptly and mysteriously disappeared, never to be heard from again.
Sometimes people ask me if the books and the music are connected. Sometimes, yep. Amble Down Records compiled the following summary describing the connections from the Tiny Pilot album:
- “If They Give You Wings” is a song drawn directly from scenes in “Branding God,” the essay found on page 256 of Perry’s book, Off Main Street (HarperPerennial). The song lyrics also include a Dylan Thomas sample.
- “Harry Was Right” (bonus song available on physical CD version of album only as track #14) is a song set in a real-life bar called The Joynt. Perry’s readers will recognize the bar and its denizens from Chapter 13 of Truck: A Love Story (HarperPerennial) and may especially enjoy singing along with the bridge, which is a direct quote from the book: No…light…beer!
- Perry wrote the first verse of “Indiana” while driving from Michigan to Illinois on his Coop hardcover tour. The song makes specific reference to “Seven A.M.,” the Edward Hopper painting that anchors Chapter 8 (beginning on p. 138) of Truck: A Love Story (HarperPerennial).
- The lyrics of “Cissy Moan” invoke Oxford, Mississippi (home of Square Books) and the writers Larry Brown, Barry Hannah, and William Faulkner. The main character of the song is caught stealing books at “Lemuria” in reference to the actual bookstore in Jackson, Mississippi.
Another interview for the Coop paperback tour, although we got delightfully off-track and managed to discuss Truck and Population 485 and the music as well. I like this blog radio business. I can yap all around the country while staring at my actual (as opposed to virtual) chickens.
So last night was the final class of our required biannual emergency first responder refresher course. These days I am privileged to be answering calls with the Emergicare division of our local Township Fire Department, but the only refresher that fit my schedule was the one up in New Auburn, with my old Population 485 crew. So it’s been fun. A goofball reunion of sorts.
My good friend, neighbor, and butcher, Bob the One-Eyed Beagle was in fine form last night. He informed me that yesterday someone came by the meat market with a bunch of books and asked him to sign each one of’em. He got a big kick out of that. Then he told the story of how he hauled an old defunct TV to the recycling center the other day. He says he stopped at the cafe and one of the regulars asked him why he had a TV in the back of his pickup. “I told him I was trying to get the Outdoor Channel!” said Beagle.
In the process of researching the history of my hometown (New Auburn, Wisconsin) (now Population: 562) (urban sprawl!) for the book Population 485, I discovered that the town’s founder David Cartwright had written a bestselling book in 1875. I tracked down an actual copy of the book, but it took some doing. This morning a reader sent me a Tweet with a link showing me that along with everything else in the world the book has now been scanned into Google and you can read it here.
Here’s a portion of how I described the book in Population 485:
I have never seen any photographs of Cartwright, but the title page of Western Wild Animals is faced by an engraving tagged with the caption, “David’s Return to Camp.” He wears a white beard and a flat cap, and he is striding down a wooded trail, a rifle in his right hand and a dead deer balanced over his left shoulder. In short, he looks like a forbidding version of the Quaker Oats man. A selection from the preface seems a continuation of the furrow in his brow:
He is…not a professional book maker, and he knows that it is only by practice that there comes any great degree of perfection in any art or trade. What he gives you, he puts upon the basis of an experience of forty years, and gives it with that assurance that he believes should come of practical knowledge, as opposed to any hypothetical and visionary trash.
No dancing ‘round the campfire with patchouli and rain sticks, then. All well and good. But here’s where my ears really pricked:
Since the author of this book claims for himself an incompetency to the task of putting it into shape, and the more exact wording of its pages, and has placed that part of the work into the hands of another, it is due to him to say that…
Just a cotton-pickin’ minute. Back to the title page. Western Wild Animals, etc, and etc. By David W. Cartwright. In much smaller print: Written by Mary F. Bailey. Turns out David W. had a ghostwriter.
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