Ordinary Horrors: A Blog

It's Here! ANSWERS WITHOUT QUESTIONS

8/9/2024

"We live in a world where all the stories have been written except the one you’re about to write."

Answers Without Questions is an ode to Lowell Mick White’s former and future students, a goldmine of writing advice, and a game-changing tool for creative writing teachers. I would encourage any writer and instructor, aspiring or current, to take a look at this book. Even if you just take away one lesson, it could transform your writing and your teaching. Have a highlighter ready because you’ll be annotating like you’re still in school.
—Madison Lawson, author of The Registration and The Registration Rewritten

Unlike the authors of most ‘How-Tos,’ Lowell Mick White makes his advice feel like a conversation rather than a lecture. Reminds me of our many zoom meetings when I was his student!
—Amira T. Mazzawy ‘23, Texas A&M University

On Sale August 2024

Order the ebook!

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Apple Books

Order the Paperback!

Barnes & Noble
Alamo Bay Press
Amazon
Powell's

0 Comments

Here's an Idea: WRITE BANNED BOOKS

6/28/2024

0 Comments

Don't self-censor. Be bold! Write banned books!

0 Comments

Coming Soon: Answers Without Questions, the Book!

6/9/2024

0 Comments

Answers Without Questions....

7/8/2023

0 Comments

New post on the Substack....

0 Comments

"Air conditioning! Airconditioning!"

7/2/2023

7 Comments

So I started a Substack—newsletter, blog, whatever it is. I’ll continue to post some things here (though, obviously, I haven’t recently—I haven’t had anything to say).

Here’s the most recent Substack….

7 Comments

Carnegie Library, Mankato

7/29/2022

0 Comments

This is the old Carnegie Library in Mankato, Minnesota, where I spent much of my youth.

The children’s collection was over on the right-hand side of the building in this photo, and the newspapers and periodicals were on the left. The Blue Earth County History Collection was down in the basement along with some newspaper archives.

The children’s side had a nice display of the Maud Hart Lovelace Betsy/Tacy/Tibb books. I read some of those books in third grade or so, and the children’s room had a big map of Mankato (“Deep Valley” in the books) in the Betsy/Tacy world and I thought that was pretty cool, and time I the spent trying to figure out the relationship of Mankato past and present is something I still do whatever place I happen to be at whatever time I’m in.

I didn’t much care for children’s books, though. The only one I actually remember was about a kid who built a soap box derby car (does the soap box derby even exist anymore?) and took it to Toledo for the big race and won against all odds, ho-hum.

I moved to adult books and history at a pretty young age. It seemed like children’s books were written to offer lessons or inspire and I didn’t like lessons and I was not inspired. Now, adult books—the things that happened in those books were inspirational! Drinking whiskey and driving in cars and blowing things up and doing sex (though that remained kind of mysterious). These were positive life goals—even for a fourth grader!

The big gift of the library—of books in general, and of my mother, who introduced me to reading and encouraged me to read—was its ability to take an often-unhappy kid anywhere. Everywhere. There was definitely an escape aspect to reading. I could get out of Mankato, or West Virginia, or wherever I happened to be, and be someplace—better. But reading also offered a window into the complicated and mysterious world I’d somehow found myself in. I guess reading offered an—education? A way of understanding my situation, and a context for what I saw around me. A way to cope.

Go read something.

0 Comments

Where I Lived Then Now VII: Wayne, Nebraska

12/17/2021

0 Comments

This is 908 Circle Drive in Wayne, Nebraska. I lived here for about a year and a half—1964, 1965—while my dad taught at Wayne State College.

A lifetime later, in 2010, I visited Wayne on a job interview, and of course had to drive by the old homestead. Aren’t childhood houses supposed to be smaller when you see them as an adult? This place seemed—bigger. I think someone at sometime added a room or two onto the back...? Those trees didn’t exist in 1965! (That curved-trunk tree might have). But there still wasn’t much grass…My bedroom was at that window on the far right.

In 2010 the house was for rent at that time—I thought, If I get the job, would it be weird to live here…?

A voice answered—Yes, Lowell, it would be very fucking weird.

(I did not get the job. Which is a good thing! (No offense, Wayne State)).

This house below—the house next door—didn’t exist in 1965—it was a vacant lot

After seeing The Beverly Hillbillies for the first time, I went out there with a shovel and started digging for oil.

There was no oil.

This is at the top of Circle Drive’s circle. An older kid named Todd lived here. Sixth grade, seventh grade. He was kind of a perv, and was friends with a kid named Stanley who was a serious goddamn pedo. All us first graders tried to stay away from them…..

When I tell an imaginary kid to go out and play in the ditch, I’m not being mean. This is what we kids did in Wayne! We played in the goddamn ditches! It was fun!

Look at this ditch above!

Doesn’t seem like much—I think it’s been filled in. But 55 (!) years ago it was pretty deep—about head-high on a first grader. We could play army in the ditches, hide from the pedos, if girls were around we’d play Family (I always got delegated to be Brother, which was uninspiring). The ditches led to culverts that ran under the streets, and those were cool and scary, too—you could hear cars thumping overhead….

I’ve only written one story set in Wayne. It’s about playing in the ditches and storm sewers and hiding from the pedos…and it sadly doesn’t work. POV problems. Maybe I should figure out a way to fix it….

During my 2010 job interview, the chair of the hiring committee was driving me around town, and we went past a grim little house….

I said, “Back in first grade we thought that house was haunted….”

The chair blanched. “My kids think that house’s haunted, too!”

Maybe the whole town is haunted?

This is haunted America….

You know my entire oeuvre makes a great present, right? So get over to my Amazon page and order some books. Your life will be better for it!

The kindle editions are at a special pandemic/holiday price!

Not sure which book to get? That's understandable--it's easy to be confused by an abundance of excellence. So here's a seasonal reminder: THAT DEMON LIFE is the official community read of Pottersville!

0 Comments

The Stupid Persistence of Stupid Memories

12/10/2021

1 Comment

This is the grave of Laura Zeilke, who was my teacher in the third grade at Wilson Campus School in Mankato, Minnesota.

I woke up the other day with a sudden unexpected flashback to my third grade experience, and to Miss Zeilke, and so I did some semi-random googling, and found that she had passed away some time ago….

My educator parents thought Miss Zeilke was a good teacher. They knew more about teaching than I did or do, but as far as I could tell as a kid in the classroom—No. Miss Zeilke was mean, Miss Zeilke was crabby, Miss Zeilke picked on me, Miss Zeilke was generally disliked by me and (I think) my classmates. I remember once at the mall (what passed for a mall in 1966) jumping on the cracks between the concrete in the sidewalk outside—yelling “Step on the crack, break Miss Zeilke’s back!” and my poor mother was shocked and outraged.

But it was an honest childish emotion I was expressing.

Below is a floor plan for a room at Weiking Center at Minnesota State University-Mankato. Back in the day this was Wilson Campus School, at Mankato State College, where I received much of my youthful education. Wilson was a small school—maybe 500 kids pre-k through 12th Grade.

From the website, it looks like the building has been much modified over the years, but this—which was the Second Grade classroom then—still has much the same form as the other classrooms in the elementary school wing of the building.

Of interest here is B158—the “locker.” In my day this was just called the “back room.” A storage area. Every classroom had one. I remember all the back rooms had those giant paper cutters which we were constantly warned away from. I guess other teaching supplies were stored there, too. But as far as I could tell then, or remember now, the main use for the back rooms was to house and punish unruly students.

I spent a fair amount of time in the second grade back room. I probably spent half the year in the third grade back room. Sheesh.

I was an ornery kid. No doubt about it! I was squirmy and fidgety and excitable and I talked a lot. (I probably had ADHD, which was unknown then). But I think different adults reacted differently to my orneriness and squirminess. Me, as an adult? I sure wouldn’t want to be around me as a child. If Current Me was supervising 3rd Grade Me, I’d say something like, “Little Lowell, go out and play in the goddamn ditch and leave me the fuck alone.” Or I’d lock me in the goddamn back room with the giant paper-cutter and hope for the best. Some of my teachers no doubt found me annoying, too—maybe especially Miss Zeilke found me annoying.

At one point in the school year, Miss Zeilke moved my desk from the rear of the room, to the front—right in front of her teacher desk. I told my parents that, yeah—she moved my desk to the front of the room because I was smarter than everyone else. And, yeah—I think I actually thought that was true! I don’t think I was lying! Stupid, clueless me.

My parents came home from a meeting with Miss Zeilke and told me that—Hell, no, Miss Zeilke didn’t move my desk because I was smart, she moved my desk because I was ornery and obnoxious and disrupting the class. Whoa. My parents were ashamed and they were pissed.

So the unhappy school year sort of passed like that. I got yelled at, I got exiled to the back room, I endured what I thought at the time was terrible injustice. I guess I learned stuff. Our class moved on to the Fourth Grade, with Mrs. Palmer, who I loved.

Miss Zeilke later retired and moved to Florida. But I never forgot Miss Zeilke!

In fact, I carried a stupid smoldering grudge.

So. Years and years later, my class at Wilson finally graduated and people were milling around afterward, and I saw—Miss Zeilke. Talking to one of the Mitchell twins. Laughing—saying something about how cute they were way back then.

I marched over and stuck my arm out. “Look!” I said. “I still have scars on my arm from when you grabbed me and dragged me off to the back room!”

Miss Zeilke just looked at me blankly. Confused.

Miss Zeilke had no idea who I was.

And I suddenly felt like an idiot. Here I had been carrying a deep anger and resentment toward her for nine years—for half my life!—and she had been off living her good life in retirement with no idea that I even fucking existed.

So my hate was all a big nothing. So, apparently, was my life.

1 Comment

Lowell Mick White Night at the Tex Lounge

12/4/2021

0 Comments

Where to start?

Let’s start with setting.

It was December, 1981. I was living in the Haunted House on Pruett.

The Tex Lounge—not to be confused with the Austex Lounge, on South Congress—was a sleazy beer joint on 4th Street, just west of Congress. The photo below is the best I could find—the bar's entrance was just to the right of the awning on the far right side.

The Tex Lounge was sleazy and nasty, but a step up from the super-nasty (yet interesting) rumdum bars I wrote about here. The bar itself was kind of small, but there was a big room on the east side with a couple of pinball machines—one of them a KISS machine that I could roll all the time. There was a barmaid from Minnesota named Gail, who was lovely, and we actually knew a person in common back in the north. I would go down to the Tex in the afternoons and play pinball and flirt with Gail and work on being a colorful character in a sleazy bar. Every now and then the Tex Lounge would book a band in the big room--Kathy and the Kilowatts was a big draw, and the Gutter Brothers.

My connection to the Gutter Brothers was through Peter Nye, the band’s bass player, who was also a bartender at the Deep Eddy, and also a neighbor at the 700 Club. One Sunday night we were hanging around the Eddy watching TV and when the bar closed, barmaid KB sent us on home. We walked up the hill to the 700 Club, and as we crossed 7th Street three or so cop cars screeched up and swarmed around us. Not city cops—UT cops. They got out of their cars and one of them grabbed me by the arm.

“There’s been reports of prowlers around the married student housing,” one of the cops said. “You don’t match the description,” he said to Peter. “But YOU do,” he said to me.

“Oh,” Peter said. “Well, I’ll see you later.”

He crossed the street and went up the steps and into his apartment. Ha. I wasn’t too worried—it was like a big joke. I had an ironclad alibi—down at the bar all evening being a ne'er do well. I got to sit in the cop car until someone came by and looked me over and said I wasn’t the prowler and then they cut me loose and I went on up to my apartment. Peter later bought me a beer and apologized for bailing.

The Gutter Brothers’ biggest song was a punk number called “Killer Waitresses.” It was sort of inappropriate in 1980, and certainly inappropriate in 2021.

Killer Waitresses
They got big tits
Killer Waitresses
They get big tips

Yes. Well. It was fun at the time.

They also had a great t-shirt, which you can see me wearing here.

The shirt is long gone now. When it existed, it showed Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy—fucking!—in the gutter. (Artwork by Peter Nye...).

I guess that was inappropriate, too. But amusing!

So, I don’t know, we were all at the Deep Eddy one evening, and I was ranting about something. Probably complaining that someone (my professors?) didn’t recognize my greatness or whatever.

“Well, you’re a great American,” Peter said.

“Yes!” I yelled. “I am a great American!”

And so it was on. The Gutters had a gig coming up at the Tex Lounge, and Peter set it up as a tribute to me.

The night itself was fun.

Many people came—I didn’t do a count, so I don’t know exactly how many. Mostly people I knew, but also people who came in off the street because it was Saturday night in a sleazy bar in Austin. Much beer was drunk. At one point the band invited me to read a poem—and this was my first public performance.

I kind of sucked. I’m the weird kind of introvert that wants people to pay attention to them, until people are paying attention to them, and then they get anxious. (Also I mentioned much beer, right?). I started to read a poem. I’d never used a microphone. People had trouble hearing me. Peter Nye came over an adjusted the mic a couple of times. Maybe it was better. I continued reading—a punk poem I’d written a couple of years before in Minneapolis after hearing the Sex Pistols record for the first time.

My mommy was a sterno bum
My daddy was a whore
Granddad was a newsboy to the age of 84
(what a slimy bastard he was)

I’m never ever gonna go very far
I’m never ever gonna drive a nice car
Every day is just the same
I’ve never even been to a baseball game!

And I’m so pissed.

It was an authentically terrible performance. Someone even threw a beer can at me! Sadly empty. Oh well. I think I’ve gotten better since then.

But! Despite the poetry, it was a great night! A big sporting evening, as they say. And when the show was over, I was grabbed by some characters and we drove down to the coast to watch the sun rise.

Youth is exhausting.

You might be interested in my novel of Austin, That Demon Life....a novel of lust and laziness....

“That Demon Life has got Austin in its sway, or at least this novel's motley crew of characters. A horny judge, a defense attorney with an attitude, an entourage of petty criminals, a dating service maven, a self made internet porn star and a boy toy or two—they're all slouching toward Sixth Street and beyond. This is a fast-paced, hold-on-to-your-bar stool satire, a hilarious, stumbling romp through law and disorder, urban ennui and its after-hour antidotes, Texas-sized lust and doom.”
—Alison Moore, author of The Middle of Elsewhere and Synonym for Love.

Read That Demon Life now!

0 Comments

Memories of the Kennedy Assassination

11/19/2021

0 Comments

He didn't make it to Austin that day....

(This is a continuation, sort of, of my kindergarten post here).

And so one day in kindergarten we were building something with the new blocks and the teacher came into the room and said “Children, the president is dead.” And I still remember how my stomach just--dropped—and I was left kind of confused. Like—what does that mean? And I was scared—I think now the fear was based more on the dark tone of the teacher’s voice, rather than any childish anxiety about the fate of the nation.

My mom, as usual, came and took me home. The weather across West Virginia was cold and gray and damp that day. (That’s not a memory—I looked it up). Don’t remember if we talked about anything in the car. My parents were definitely not JFK fans—my mom told me years later how, following the 1960 election, she was sick to her stomach every time she saw JFK’s face. (I later came to understand this—after the 2000 election, I had a similar reaction to George W. Bush).

When I got home there was big big difference—no cartoons! TV stations in those days telecast cartoons for the after-school set. Looney Toons was my favorite, especially Bugs Bunny, but I liked Woody Woodpecker, too. But with JFK dead, there were just a bunch of solemn old people on TV talking. Man, that was terrible.

My dad came home cussing. That was actually kind of normal, but the cussing this time was about Kennedy. He’d been up in Pittsburgh for the day with some other grad students and they were driving back to Morgantown when they heard the news. My dad’s immediate response was, “Ah, the son of a bitch deserved it.” The other grad students—objected. I guess it got kind of heated.

Anyway, he got home pissed and we all sat in front of the TV for the next four or so days while my dad kept up a rude commentary. I remember at one point him saying, “They’re all acting like they expect him to jump up out of the coffin any minute!” I sat up at that—Whoa, JFK jumping up out of the coffin would have been cool!

I thought it was also cool how they wedged the boots in backwards on that horse. And Haile Selassie sure had a bunch of medals. (“Ah, he gives himself a goddamn medal every time he builds a bridge,” my dad said).

So! Fifteen years or so later and I ended up in Austin, Texas, at a bar called Raul’s. Seeing a band called The Huns. And the squirrelly lead singer got behind the mic and yelled, “Fifteen years ago a president came to this state. And YOU killed him! And WE’RE glad he’s dead!”

And--bang-bang-bang noise-noise-noise, etc….

I mean--

He said he'd get us to the moon
But spent his time chasing poon

That’s pretty funny!

Punk rock, y’all.

And, so, anyway, about a year after that, I was down at the Deep Eddy with a girl I liked named M, and I was telling her about seeing The Huns—and “Glad He’s Dead.” We were seated sort of toward the door end of the bar, me with my back to the door. I heard behind me someone say, “You’re an asshole.”

What?

I turned around and there was a squat older guy at the very end of the bar holding a mug of beer. He looked pissed.

“John F. Kennedy was the greatest president of all time,” the guy said.

“Oh, yeah?” I asked. “Well, my dad said the son of a bitch deserved it.”

“Well, your dad’s an asshole, too.”

“Malcolm X said the chickens came home to roost.”

“And Malcolm X is an asshole, too.”

But! Things did not escalate! Kind of surprising, right? M got the drunk guy chilled down, and the guy ended up telling M and myself his whole lugubrious stupid life story, which didn’t amount to much. Typical Silent Generation. Loved JFK. Worked hard. He’d gone to high school with Johnny Unitas. That was the high point of his life—“They’ll never be able to take that away from me.” He had Johnny Unitas—and those memories of JFK.

(I wrote about some aspects of Robert Caro's account of the assassination here).

0 Comments

<<Previous