1/28/16  Interviewed by Fiona Mcvie. Name: Jack Scott Age: 80 Where are you from? I was born in Virginia, then moved to Milford, Delaware where I remained until I went away to college. I attended U. of Delaware, U. of S. Carolina, Morgan State College and took a couple of courses at Johns Hopkins. I was an English major,...

This is so weird. I am really confused. I went to sleep in my recliner in the kitchen. I believe it was Wednesday late afternoon or evening; I really don’t remember. I also don’t remember clearly that Candace worked that day, but I think so which would have made it Wednesday.

Betsy and I had been together for twenty five years when we separated. She was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Although parting from her was the most painful thing I have ever experienced, it was the next best thing.

Tom Rigler was my best teacher, not just of Reiki per se, but of other energy practices as well. He knew more and had been doing it longer than any of the others. He was a self-described energy junkie; no energy modality was too esoteric for him to learn and practice. I came across him through a weekend course...

Gretchen Scott, my constant companion and best friend for the last 10 years of her life, passed away with dignity at 9 o’clock last night in my arms. Maggie and I took her to Main St. vet by appointment. Dr. Molesworth administered the drug that stopped her heart after first giving her a sedative injection, which hurt her. Minutes...

Did I choose to love you? I doubt I could have chosen not to. Having committed to the larger, loving you, I fulfilled that with the smaller, trusting you. I believe it is more necessary to love than to be loved. You betrayed me in every way and sense of that word and deed and yet I continued to...

The kitchen was ordinary in an unconventional way suggesting that it was contrived and assembled by one or more artists. There was a dishwasher with a butcher block wood top, a vintage single bowl white porcelain sink with drain board on which was a vinyl coated wire dish rack, and a stove along the western wall facing an oasis-like...

I’ve always read a lot. mostly at thrift stores, but when I could afford them I would indulge myself with new ones at bookstores and later over the Internet from Amazon and elsewhere. My days of relative affluence had coincided happily with having my own transportation. Then something happened: I got old. Things, actually.

Having been an English major in college, when I first came to Baltimore I had worked my way through all the obviously available writing jobs in town- reporter, editor and so on- at an average salary of $47.50 a week. Neither sufficient nor encouraging. Since then I had been eking out a living in Bolton Hill as a contractor...

“Hi, Jack.” “Hi, Slim, how’s it going?” “Good. How’s Betsy? Home doing the ironing?” “She’s fine.” I laughed at the thought. Actually she had taken the van to Massachusetts to visit her folks. “Chloe?” “Out doing her thing.” I kept my thoughts to myself about that as he made his way down the line of bar stools saying hi....

I was never one for parties. Can’t get into them, too much going on- like a three ring circus. I’m a one ring man, into person to person conversation where you can really get into some stuff, get away from all that small talk and baby bullshit. I like to focus, and bore in. But Jenny was into the...

At one time I had two Ford Mustangs, a 1972 which was nothing special and a 1966 convertible, which was the best car I have ever owned. I lost them both on the same day Betsy and I were packing to move out of our apartment in Bolton Hill. The former was repossessed because I was behind in payments....

The first half was boring as dust and amateurish as a live Nativity scene. Puritans piss me off and scare me. I am intolerant of intolerance. This was cunningly deceptive. The director and scriptwriter had the guts to risk driving the audience out of the theater in order to heighten the effect of the transition which followed. From our...

We had been drinking beer at the Mount Royal Tavern when hunger called. Tired of the same old chili and BBQ, we decided to go out to dinner together. Where we would go could be decided en route. We went in Bill’s car, Patty in the front with him, Betsy and I in the rear. He headed for the...

Dave Jones and I had several things in common: we had both been English majors, we were both writers, we were stubborn and we had both been fired from jobs for those reasons. I was the editor of the Baltimore Guide, nominally a weekly “newspaper” in Highlandtown, factually an shopping advertiser. It was my job to plagiarize news from...

I have absolutely no interest in writing poetry about pansies or petunias, not even daffodils, but I would like to tell you about the Great Daffodil Robbery. This is not poetry. Fresh out of college as an English major with no degree I worked at several newspapers as a reporter, an editor, a “Merchandising Supervisor” and a few other...

Thanks to Valley Landscape Company, I got a contract from the state to remove a large dead White Oak from at the shoulder of Route 40 east, near Perryville this side of the Susquehanna Bridge. I used to work for them when I managed Valley Mart, their upscale garden shop in Mt. Washington. We remained on good terms and...

When I lived in Parkville, I drove over one Saturday evening to the Mediterranean Deli on Harford Road to get cheese, lunchmeat, olives and fresh bread for supper. I always loved going into the place; with its exotic sights and odors it was always evocative of foreign lands, truly cosmopolitan. In the middle of the floor was a freshly...

When I was in the tree business I had an old farmhouse and three acres in the county. It was an isolated hilltop not readily visible from Putty Hill Avenue or even the nearest neighbors. I liked that aspect, but it had some hypothetical disadvantages. The narrow dirt and gravel road to it was indirect, not coming in a...

On the phone the woman said that the people at the Potters’ Guild had told her that she should probably call me, that I might be able to help her. “With what?” I asked her. “I want to make some ethnic dolls. I don’t think I’ll have a problem with the bodies or clothes. The clothes are what I’m...

Once upon a time I had a tooth ache. When I went to my dentist he gave me a prescription for antibiotics, another for pain meds. My tooth ache got no better, so I got a renewal on my prescriptions. The pain steadily worsened to the point where all I could do was lie in bed and suffer. I...

I’d rather have been on Route 17 on the coast where it might at least have felt warmer. It was cold everywhere, and snowing here. Route 1 is where my rides had taken me. I’d had nothing but short hops all day, many of them people Christmas shopping in the next town. I got picked up outside Raleigh around...

We had put in at the Sandy Point Marina and made it to the mouth of the Magothy River just as the martini fleet was sailing home. It was a warm evening with just enough breeze to keep the mosquitoes off. We had bought a dozen bloodworms, which was a waste because white perch and spot, which wasn’t what...

Bill put his Boston Whaler in at Sandy Point at around nine am, Bill and Patty, Betsy and me aboard. We trolled, zigzagging around the Chesapeake Bridge pilings toward Kent Island on the eastern shore. Best catch scenario: Striped bass, Rockfish. It was possible to catch some really big ones. This was before depletion of stock and subsequent regulation...

Usually, when I went fishing, it would be in my twelve foot aluminum Sea King boat which I kept “docked” on top of my Chevy van; I had a twelve horsepower Johnson outboard motor for it. This time I kept it where it was because my son, Kevin, and I were visiting my cousin, Bart in Ridge near Point...

Of all my favorite places that I have been to Cape Hatteras is my favoritest of them all. Betsy felt much the same way or at least said she did, albeit for different reasons. Here, for her, was fresh air, sunshine and a beach second to none. At the tip of a long peninsula, or cape, out onto the...

We were out on the Delaware Bay for a day’s fishing, my wife and I, her parents and my father. Our young boys had stayed in Milford with my mother, who would not come. I don’t remember her ever coming out on one of my father’s charter boats, and never really knew why; she just didn’t come until we...

I parked at the north end of Slaughter Beach where the road turns west toward Milford. From this road a mile or so out a side road ends at the Mispillion Light house where the charter boats docked. Facing the water, to the right the bottom was sandy for quite a distance out, the slope into deeper water gently...

This is not a linear story, nor is it a karmic tale. When I was nine my father bought me a bow and arrow and a bolt action single shot .22 caliber rifle. The rifle comes up elsewhere. I was allowed to use it then only when hunting for rabbits or squirrels with my father or target practice with...

While going through my previous writings and deciding which of those I might want to include in this Automythology, I am confronted with some contradictions and the threat of redundancy. I realize that I have told some of the same stories before at different times in different ways. I resist the idea of rewriting them to adapt them to...

When they got married, Rose told Henry McGowan she wanted him to stop sailing. She didn’t like sailing and was afraid for him. Being in love, he did so at once. He had The Rose pulled from the water and dry-docked with her mast down and laying lengthwise under the tarp. He stored the sails in his garage. His...

“Manic Depressive” wasn’t in anyone’s vocabulary back then, I think. I was a troubled kid with no relief at hand. Before starting school, I had had an almost perfect childhood. A mystery. There was no obvious reason for my discomfort or behavior. My mother sought out help for me as best she could. What helped the most came about,...

This was written before this website actually came together. I apologize for whatever redundancy you may find. Originally I selected a dramatically appropriate website template with a wooden bookshelf on a wood wall, with nine old books on it. Three of the books were entitled Collection I, II and III, my poetry.

It would be far easier to state what I am than to say who I am. The what would be merely a list of the things I have done, the activities and events I have participated in, easy enough to catalog. Whenever you present yourself to others these are the things that you hope they will mistake for you.

Max was huge and he sweated a lot, but in the heat among his ovens he was graceful. He glowed and glistened like a god of the hearth, and smiled largely when he was there in his element. Her name was Dawn, as princess as he was frog. They worked together in a bakery, making artisan bread for those...

Early within the first hour and a half of this movie,  the (I will call him) hero became my role model. No doubt about it. Of all people I have ever observed he is the one I feel closest to in terms of wanting to be as good a man as he is. I’m sure he has warts and...

Hey Pop, There’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time, maybe thirty years or so. It took me so long to get around to this for a couple of reasons. First, once I came to realize the missed opportunity of that phone call, however farfetched, I kept waiting for you (whoever you were) to...

I was divorced today from my fourth wife today.

It was my original intention to label this section “Postcards”, my idea being that postcards could deliver messages to myself from my past.