Walk the Walk

Walk it.

Sitting on the deck under beautiful summer skies we dined like gourmet farmers. The tomato, mozzarella, eggplant, basil and caper salad was everything I fondly remember about being on the Ligurian Sea. We sipped craft beer and talked. 

I am with three extraordinary people, my neighbors. A lawyer, an artist and a champion thespian. To add desert to the cultural gathering all I have to do is listen. 

The dogs are pestering us for table scraps as BB King coaxes Lucille into a blues scale even the mosquitoes appreciate. The conversation turns to the gals next big bike trip and which one of us kind gentlemen might be interested in sagging them to the start point. 

Which is, I ask.

Brookings Oregon.

I let the intel linger over the table like the smoke from the citronella candles, until it is becomes clear that additional detail might be required. 

Do you know what WWII trivia Brookings, Oregon is the answer to?

Three negatives.

Brookings, Oregon is the only town in the contiguous Unites States to have a bomb dropped on it as enemy action in the time of war. 

Serious? You’re making this up. REALLY?

I launch into my story, THE story, and the way it chronologically followed the larger stories of Pearl Harbor, Japanese incarceration (of particular local interest to us), the Manhattan Project, The USS Indianapolis, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Seems I have captured this audience and the conversation flows on its own energy from there. 

There comes a point in the discussion, now officially a debate, as the merits, the pros and cons, of Harry Truman’s moral decision to drop Little Boy and Fat Man, thereby ending the war, is now center stage. When my turn comes around I announce that, yes, I am in the process of writing the screenplay and need to go to Brookings to conduct interviews, film some b-roll and see the Samurai sword that hangs in the Library, so giving you two a lift there would be both an honor and a pivotal part of the bigger picture.

I am sitting at the table listening. The subject matter, the topic du jour, has elevated the tone and lifted the energy of the group a thousand percent. 

And I think, nice talk. Now get busy with the writing.

Walk the walk.