I’m often asked about the short stories in the Slice Of Life trilogy of stories, A Slice of Life, Another Slice of Life and The Rest of The Pie. Are they true stories? Do I know the people? Did I really make them up? Yes! Yes! And Yes!

“Yes” doesn’t mean I didn’t have help. Inspiration is everywhere if you just take a good look around. I take things I’ve heard and seen and lived and turn them into stories.

Much like an actor on an audition, I pull from my experience to come up with a new character. I’ve often gone into an audition and use an aspect of a person I know to pull off another character. It’s taken from somewhere or someone else, but it then becomes an original.

Actors and writers are observers. We watch people. We notice a tick in a character. We study mannerisms. And if you’ve lived an adventurous life, you have life to draw from.

One source of inspiration for me has been all of my past summer jobs. As a teen without connections and as a hungry young man, I worked all kinds of summer jobs with all kinds of people. My first job was at Shoney’s Big Boy at Eastwood Mall in Birmingham. It was a lesson in priorities. Once school started, I continued to work there on weekends. After a night of high school football, I was up at 6am and on my way to Shoney’s. I remember the night I scored my first touchdown. I was at work the next morning.

I spent two summers at US Steel. It was work for grown men, grueling, grinding, back breaking. I learned a lot from the men I worked with. They did what they had to do to support their families. It reminded me of my dad who did the same kind of work at another plant in town. Daddy always reinforced the idea in me that college would be my ticket out of the plant.

I sold shoes at a ladies shoe store in downtown Birmingham on 2^nd Avenue North. Don’t remember how I got that job but it was fun, especially the stretching machine. Some ladies would insist they were a size or two smaller than they actually were. It was a comic battle trying to get an oversized fat foot into shoes a size too small. That’s where the stretching machine came in. If they were repeat customers they’d heard of our stretching machine. They would ask if we could stretch the shoe. Trying to beg off did no good. The broom handle in the back room closet came in handy.

I worked on a Garbage truck one summer while in high school. Worked for a janitorial service, and worked construction; but at the top of the list were the two summers I worked as an ice cream man; truck, ringing bell and all. I sold ice cream all over the north side of Birmingham. I had a ball. Picked up my truck about 10:30am. Brought it back to the lot about 7:30pm. Counted up the Ice Cream and Popsicles I had left and got paid in cash. Everyday! Most of the drivers were full time, grown men. Every week the manager would post the top ten sales lists. My goal was to get into the top ten. Halfway through the first summer, I made it as high as #8 and stayed there through the next summer. The store manager was proud of me. I was proud of myself!

I met some characters through the many stops, construction sites, playgrounds, customer regulars, and the children. Oh man, the children! As soon as they heard the bell, whatever they were doing, playing ball, hopscotch, jacks; whatever, it was over until after they got their ice cream.

There was a method to ringing that bell just long enough to where the parent would give in and break down with the words directed to their children I waited to hear, “Go in the house, and get my purse.” I was in business.

My favorite stop was with the hippies – boys and girls, with their glazed eyes, and the munchies. “Heeey man!” They would drawl. I’d park the truck. Feel the cool breeze from the freezer in the back of the truck. Open it to ice cream goodies and proclaim to my audience “The Ice Cream Man is here.”

Summertime and the reading is easy!

For some wonderful reason, summertime is the time for reading and relaxing for those who still remember how to do that. Photos and artwork depicting a slow, lazy day of summertime reading adorn many of the walls in our homes, offices and in the pictures of our lives. Can’t afford to take a vacation away from the hurry up world of electronic gadgetry? You don’t know what you’re missing. So, in a throwback to yesteryear, reach for a favorite book(s), plan a slowdown vacation and get your read on.

“What are you reading this summer?” I’m asked. “Great question,” I respond. For me, 2017 is the year of the biography. It started with “The Godfather’s” Kill ‘Em and Leave by James McBride. Kill ‘Em and Leave was “The Godfather,” James Brown road motto. After “killing them” (the audience) during another “funky as you want to be” show, James Brown would immediately retreat to his dressing room, according to author James McBride, get his hair done (if you know the Godfather’s shows, you understand), and slip out without the hugs, kisses and well wishes friends and fans were waiting to bestow on him. The book ventures inside Brown’s tiny inner circle and instead of looking for the “Godfather of Soul” the author instead searches for the real James Brown with his hidden stash of cash and his love and fondness for Michael Jackson. It’s a great read but more so if you’re a “Godfather” fan.

Lorendo by Ken Ringer is an interesting look back at a time and a man who became a three sport athlete at Georgia, led the Southeastern Conference in pass receiving in 1949, was drafted by the Green Bay Packers, was an assistant to legendary football Coach Ralph “Shug” Jordan at Auburn and was my offensive coordinator on some great Auburn teams of the 1970s. Coach Gene Lorendo was probably the coach who was most responsible for my being awarded a full athletic scholarship within 11 months of my arrival as a walk-on. I started for him as long as he was the offensive coordinator. He was the rough and tough “right hand man” for “Shug Jordan” for 25 years. We won a lot of games together. Coach is a man who should be remembered and Ken Ringer has done a good job of giving him his due.

Up next is Bus Ride To Justice: The Life and Works of Fred Gray. I’m already a hundred pages into it and as soon as I finish Lorendo, I’ll be in with both feet. I am a history buff, especially when people I know have been involved. Much of what is included in the book served as a precursor to my life and the challenges I faced during integration. Fred Gray’s book reminds me, I would not have been in the position to face integration were it not for people like Fred Gray.

During his legal career, Mr. Gray was the attorney for Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr, The Montgomery Bus Boycott, The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, The Desegregation of Alabama Schools, The 1965 Selma March and The Harold A. Franklin case that desegregated my alma mater, Auburn University.

Finally, I will get into Hook. It’s a book I’ve been anxious to read ever since I got it. Again it’s by someone I know. Hook, by my friend, my book editor and one of my former football players, Randall Horton, recounts his “gripping story of transformation.” As a recent college graduate in 1975, I was asked to coach the B-Team at Parker High School in Birmingham. Randall Horton was a wide receiver on that team. He was a nice, smiling 15-year-old with a positive future ahead of him.

In Hook, Randall tells of his downward spiral from unassuming Howard University undergraduate to homeless drug addict, international cocaine smuggler and incarcerated felon-before he discovered literature and reclaimed his life and is now a college professor.

So what are you reading? Click off the television. Put your devices down. Select the book of our choice; whether hardback, paper cover or electronic, pick yourself out a good spot by some calm water, or sink into a comfortable couch and gorge yourself on a load of some summer reading. Have a good summer! I plan on it.