Interviews W/ Published Western Authors
A Rope and Wire Interview
With Award Winning Author
Tom Sheehan
I'd like to start out by asking you to tell us a little about yourself, not necessarily what one might read in a biography, but things such as, where did you grow up? What were your interests as a kid? Are you a college grad?
What or who were the influences in your life that moved you in the direction of becoming a writer?
I had two misconceptions early in life, thinking I was born on Old Ironsides (the oldest commissioned ship in the U.S. Navy, anchored in Boston) and that all things began with my maternal grandfather, Johnny Igoe. My father, in the Marine Corps, was often Charge of Quarters on that old ship and babysat me while my mother was doing errands. And John Igoe started reading to me as soon as he knew I could understand some of what he said. As it was, William Butler Yeats came early to me, then came a brother and five sisters. We lived across the street from the Charlestown Navy yard. We knew The Depression, hunger, family strengths. We moved from the hard city to the soft countryside. I now live next door to the house we moved to, in Saugus, 12 miles north of Boston, in 1935.
As a youngster I used to bring my grandfather’s lunch to him. He was in charge of the municipal dump, the little man whose magical voice rang down the days, swearing the horsemen of the Central Plains of Europe rode on their long route to Ireland, to the last end of Europe itself, ahead of the Tartars, the Visigoths, the Huns at rampage. I have been to that end of Europe on two long visits. He read to me at the dump, thus beginning my reading journey that has carried through to Wendell Berry (the ultimate), John LeCarre, Reynolds Price, Cormac McCarthy, a host of Irish short story writers, James Lee Burke, Elmore Leonard, after having read everything I could find from Zane Grey and Louis Lamour. Once I spent a whole month with Jack Schaefer’s Monte Walsh, one of my great favorites. (I read it in parking lots, under street lights, on subways, at lunch, at breakfast, and at the beach and the hockey rink on the same day.)
With the move to Saugus I found dear friends (some of whom I still meet with once a month), ponds to fish in, fields to play ball on, teachers who leaned on me. One of them, now 93, is co-editor with me of two books on our hometown that we have issued, selling all 2500 copies of our first one (A Gathering of Memories, Saugus 1900-2000), and 1000 currently sold of 2000 printed of our second one (Of Time and the River, Saugus 1900-2005), each one about 400+ pages, $42 each, all the proceeds to scholarships in his name. These are books for which we borrowed $60,000 from the local bank for the first one that was not yet written (and paid the loan off 5 months after publication). Another editor is 78 and handles finances, and another, who handles legal matters, an old teammate and classmate, just closed down his law office, at 79. Tomorrow I meet again for a three hour lunch and gab session on literature, sports and politics with them, the ROMEOs, Retired Old Men Eating Out. I can hardly wait. They’ll each have one martini, I’ll have three beers, and the waitresses will shine on us.
The day will be blessed.
I served in Korea in the 31st Infantry Regiment in 1951, came home and went to Boston College, earned an English degree in 1956, married Beth Rooney, the most compassionate woman I have ever known (hospice nurse for years, recently was the head of an Alzheimer’s ward and responsible for some old teammates of mine, and she just retired). I had six children, one a painter (deceased), three boys who write poetry, two girls who have brought me athletic grandchildren, all chasing me onto Saugus High School teams where I had played football, baseball and hockey, as did my sons.
I have painted my house four times, put on two roofs, rebuilt a kitchen and a bathroom twice and every summer have a great crop of flowers fronting this old house that was built in 1742 and which I bought while I was in Korea, having first option from the owner.
I had a quad bypass in 1991, the year I retired from Raytheon Company after 35 years. My knees hurt now but I walked ten miles a day for more than ten years with the cardiologist saying, “I don’t know what you are doing, but keep it up,” and the knee doctor eventually saying, “Whatever you’re doing, you are abusing yourself.”
It sounds like you come from a family whose members immersed themselves in the written word. Your Grandfather and Father sound like great men. You were fortunate to have them in your life as you grew up.
How did you progress from hearing great poetry and reading great books, to actually start writing these words yourself?
I accept now that it was a challenge from both of them, that “when you find words of your own, they’ll find a way to be expressed, in one form or another.” That was actually said to me. It sort of goes along with a statement my father made to me when I was in the 8th grade and I weighed in at 107 pounds and spring football practice was starting in a week and he said, “They’re giving out uniforms next week, but I don’t care if you don’t go out for the team ‘cause you’re kind of small and might get hurt.” I carried those words with me for all four years on the team, angry and challenged, and he sat back and smiled the whole while.
My first collected words came in a mimeographed paper in grade school, and along with the sense of composition streaming from my own mind, I liked the reception from the teacher and my classmates, some of those classmates still reading my words today. And my father and grandfather, of course. So I read and wrote poems and stories in high school and college, wrapped around a stint in the army in Korea (and a byline column in a local newspaper), grasping for the words with handles on them. The time came, with children coming, working, that I had five typewriters on site; in the cellar, in the garage, in the bedroom, in the study, and a floater, a small portable for the backyard or elsewhere. In each typewriter I would leave a thought or a line of poetry on a piece of paper for that time or place where an idea would hit me to expand that line or I might find words with handles on them, that single line always working while I was away from it. Many poems came from that ruse.
Were your Father and Grandfather around long enough to see you develop your skills as a writer?
My grandfather died when he was 95 and I was 17, but I write about him and for him each day and every day, his essence about me always … a phrase, a sound, an aroma of his pipe, the creak of his rocking chair, a poem he could pop on me from memory, a living entity.
("Your grandfather's dead," someone said and the visions came immediately, all of them; I saw Johnny Igoe at ten at turf cutting, just before he came this way with the great multitude. I saw how he moved the ponderous earth at his odd jobs, the young Irish scorching the ground he walked. He had come here and I came, and I went there, later, to where he'd come from; Roscommon's sweet vale, slow rush of land shouldering up into sky, clouds shifting selves like pieces at chess, his earth ripening to fire. This little man, of the great porch voice or the warm kitchen voice, poled his star-lit way down the Erie Canal, swung a sledge in Illinois, a hammer north of Boston, died in bed. But the tobacco smell still lives in his room. His books still live, his chair, his cane, the misery he knew, the pain, and somewhere he is. For all this he might be housed in this computer, for now he visits, or never leaves, Yeats on record but the voice is my grandfather’s voice, the perky treble, the deft reach inside me, the ever lifting out.)
My father died blind, one leg gone, bed-ridden, but listening for 12 years to Talking Books records from Perkins School of the Blind that came just about every day in the mail. He was 75 at his death and I was 50. One evening, at a visit, he put on the first record of a 17-record book on the life of Timogen. I went down the stairs from his room at 4 AM, after we “finished the reading.” It is memorable.
(His face is made of music, notes of an order I have yet to know. The mystics of his hands, engraved with the timeless, bear strange anointments. The salt of his touch, once known, leaps up past all of pain. After God and my father there are no divinities.) (Sprung from his loins wanting to be, self-torn from his arms at some piece of boyhood, I now remember earless, wordless, the touch when I was lovely you and I know I roam forever in the darkness of his eyes.) (In 1945 white-water snows came hard as spring Allagash, broke the backs of buses, plows, tore hearts of tractors out, spilled black black blood, held the crocus six weeks back. Icicle at your heart, snow writhing as spiders at hip line, brood-bent, you swam six miles home past knotted crankcases, fell in the back door. I knifed the mackinaw off, the iron laces of your boots. Kissed you cold on kitchen floor, rubbed my emery hands on threatened skin. In one giant leap, went 17 to 70, found response, am still there. Walked home from war, heartbreak, the hill above that holds your voice, Riverside where the stone deftly scribed is hardly your last sign, where we will touch again underground.)
You have certainly come a long way since your first mimeographed paper in grade school. Was there a progression to your writing profession from that point on?
The impetus came from teachers all the way through school, with special attention from high school teachers who really pushed on some of the assignments and offered significant encouragement. There were a few editorials and sports columns written for local newspapers that did garner some notice, and encouragement, as well as special efforts on fundraisers within the local community. In the meantime, there was always the pushing desire to “just get better” at the work I was doing. Much of this was for college and little magazines, and a couple of professors at Boston College who pushed for more effort on my part, and offered exposure via college publications.
There must have been some sort of a learning curve over the years. What was the path you followed to get to where you are now?
One thing I always did was read, so I kept at it, finding out what and how the good and successful writers were conducting their business. I remember personal excitement at reading Thomas Wolfe and Seamus Heaney and Reynolds Price and John Nims and so many other excellent writers. It carried on my exploration after early reading of the pulps, like G-8 and His Battle Aces, Doc Savage, cowboy and mystery magazines, finding romance in Robbers Roost, The Hash Knife Outfit and Riders of the Purple Sage. In addition, everything I wanted to do was fostered by radio and its early drama, seeing the excitement that The Lone Ranger brought to my grandfather in his rocking chair, and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon and similar programs.
Has your writing style changed much over the years? If so, how?
I just hope it has gotten better, because I give it a lot of energy. I might rewrite a paragraph ten times until it gets the feel for me. I keep telling my children, and have done so for all their years, that we come with two things … love and energy … and we damned well better use up our allotments. I am 80 now and just getting up to speed.
I know you have gotten better. In fact, I understand your book, A Collection of Friends, was nominated for a PEN America Albrend Memoir Award, in 2004. In 2005, your book, Epic Cures, won an IPPY Award from Press 53. You were also awarded a Silver Rose Award from ART. Plus, you have just been nominated for your tenth Pushcart Award. Can you tell us what piece of work this nomination was for?
This 10th nomination is for “The Storekeeper,” the lead story in Brief Cases, Short Spans, and was from Press 53. I also was awarded the Georges Simenon Award for Fiction by New Works Review and won a non-fiction competition in London for one of my fishing pieces, “The Three Fishermen.”
I know from the amount of your submissions to Rope and Wire that you are a prolific writer. Can you give us a rundown on the books you have in publication?
Coming in the spring from Pocol Press, in Clifton, VA is another collection of short stories, From the Quickening. They published A Collection of Friends, and expressed an interest in some baseball stories that I have on the back burner. Sent out in proposal format is a collection of all the stories I’ve had on your site, which I have titled The Kelly Green Colt and Other Stories. Being gathered and formatted currently is another short story collection that I have started with a working title of Upstart.
Press 53 has just published your newest book, Brief Cases, Short Spans. I'm currently reading it and find it to be a wonderful collection of great short stories. Can you give us some insight on this book and its contents?
Some of the stories, based on fact, have fascinated me for years. Two of them are my fictional solutions of unsolved actual murder stories. “The Cochran Resolve” (the murder and garroting of a 19-year old local girl just prior to WW II, has also been a fascination for many people in the area. When it first appeared on an Internet site, I received emails from long-interested people, some bearing clues of their own. Just about all the stories have been either in print or on Internet sites or both. Two other stories have also been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, “The Man Who Hid Music,” and “Salvatore Giambaressi, Numbers Runner, Reader.”
The store in “The Storekeeper” was a half block from my house, and the story line grew from scenes that I saw or interpreted as being fact as they happened, as I saw them, being young and impressionable. “The Puzzle Solution’s Swift Shift from Irony” came from a side remark my father once made when I was a child and always remembered.
You've mentioned Pocol Press and Press 53. How many publishers are you currently working with?
Currently I am working on the two books, Brief Cases, Short Spans just released from Press 53 and trying to get all the publicity I can for the company, and From the Quickening due in the spring from Pocol Press and proofing and other necessary work just being completed. As I said earlier, I have a cowboy book proposal in the hands of a few publishers, and another book, Upstart, in the gathering cycle, with some of the elements already being completed.
Is it unusual to work with more than one publisher? How is that working out?
I don’t know that it is unusual for some writers, as I see that activity happening for some of them, but it is a new experience for me. Both of these companies have been excellent to work with, and I have journeyed to North Carolina to read for Kevin Watson and Sheryl Monks of Press 53 at bookstores in Raleigh and Winston-Salem, and to Clifton, VA to meet with Pocol Press’s Joseph Hetrick to discuss details. Each of them is a hard taskmaster and each wants to put out the best product they can. I am happy to be so involved. Neither publisher has objected to the other, and each one gets mentioned whenever I do, which should be fine with them, and each one commends my work highly, which is fine with me.
One final question. Would you mind sharing a bit of the wisdom and knowledge you've acquired over your many years as a writer. Possibly something that might give aspiring writers a bit of encouragement?
At a seminar many years ago I was asked to define the art of writing and I simply said it is the act of putting the seat of your pants on the seat of your chair and getting it done. The art in it comes with that dedication. Whatever you want to do, read those who have done it successfully and those who promote those successes.
You can find out more about Tom Sheehan by visiting the Rope and Wire "Authors Herald" page and clicking on the appropriate link.
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