Publisher's Synopsis
This book is the Author's third publication while in his mid-eighties. There will be a fourth, that one, The Shirt Lake Almanac, will cover adventures in retirement years. If you think Octogenarians write all those books in their eighties, you must be disavowed of that myth. Many, as Mr. Dix, have written all their lives, some of it published, some not. Some of it read by a privileged few. They get to the point that they want to bundle the pages for the convenience of a biographer, if there be such. Thus this book and another under the author's penname, Howie Barber, "Parenting When Nearing Dotage. Old, but ever new.
The events in "The Frogskinner" took place 70 years ago, a different time and place, or was it? It was written in 1996, the Author's first year of retirement. It, for no identified reason, has been rewritten nearly seven hundred times. Have things really changed, or have they just put on new underwear. The author's career, in part, included that of a Communicator for a large, metro, school district (22,000 students) and thirty schools. He was working closely with the metro media and was asked to do a guest column for a local editor. That started a five year stint as a columnist for the weekly news. In this book you will not only be exposed to some of those exposes, but you will also read how they were written midst the din of a couple of birth children and a couple foster children and more. In letters to the editor or the author, some readers said he reminded them of a male Erma Bombeck, a contemporary, who, unlike the author, was discovered. There is a bit of political comment in these pages and some reaction to contemporary history. But mostly, a chuckle here, a recognition there..."the guy, a lawn guy, at the door wanted to destroy my weed. I explained that my lawn was weeds and if I lose them, I've got nothing to hold down my dirt." And finally, sans the Viet Nam war, a collection of poems written as experience happened. Most on Nature, which became his second or so career.
