Cool Walter. I've read some of those too. Met Barry at the Hoka one night before they tore everything cool and bohemian down for yet another apartment complex. Met Larry several times but then he lived and died not 10 miles from me. He said the novel "Faye" began on a piece of my land. I've read all of his. The last, "A Miracle of Catfish", just ends abruptly in the last third of the story, sort of like his life.
Yeah...Miracle of Catfish...Cortez Sharp...I did read that one, too, as well as Fay. At the time I musta liked both of them more so than the previous two. I knew Harry, who plugged Larry a time or two I believe. I listened to a cassette from the Alachua County library, Harry talking, and he described hitchhiking to Jacksonville to knock on...I think it was Frank Slaughter...knock on his door, Harry high school age give or take. Slaughter was taking a shower. Heh! So there was this once I'm enrolling at UF, summer, I see they got a "creative writing" course listed, Harry teaching it so I put that on my card or whatever it was we used. Nope. No go. Lady tells me something about class size, something, something. Says I might talk to the man, see what's happening, get in the class. Dunno why I waited until dark, but it was dark when I drove up 13th to Harry's place, tin-roofed shack about 24 x 40, up on stumps, dirt driveway, bulb shining by the screen door, little dog tied to a thin line and yapping. I guess I had that big Pontiac still...left the door open, approach the house...this was my reason for even being in Florida, my mission in life...dog is yapping away I try to say hey no go. I knock. Screen door bounces against the jamb. Nothing. No lights on inside, nothing.
I turn and head back to the car. Maybe I knocked again. I'm walking slowly to the car when a man's voice yells out, "You looking for something, Dude?" Gravel in the voice, grit. I turn and see nothing, nothing has changed...but it is quiet. The dog and the man wait for me to respond. Yeah, I'm looking for Harry Crews! Boing! The screen door winds open, a man in a white bathrobe steps barefoot onto the wooden step and bounds down into the yard, "Yeah! I'm Harry Crews!" I've already read all of his stories, you should check out Childhood, A Biography of a Place...so he walks up to me and I explain about the course and he says Oh no man they decided not to have that course this summer. Damn. Not much to say after that...he walked barefoot back into the house I got in the Pontiac and went back to 2nd Avenue.
