What is the date you began writing this memoir and the date when you completed the memoir? The book has an extended beginning. Four months after my sister (Nancy) died, my niece Lara sent me a mysterious box she found in my sister’s closet. Wrapped in a bright blue ribbon and labeled, “Raymond’s Treasure Box,” it contained many curiosities that my father had secreted away during his life. The minute I opened the box I knew I had to write about its contents. And so I began taking out the pieces one by one and posting what I found on Facebook.
The short descriptions were greeted with unexpected enthusiasm from my Facebook friends, so in the late spring of 2020 I sat down at my computer and began the book, which I finished about four months later, in September 2020. After a few months of agent/publisher hunting, I was able to place the book with Black Rose Writing. They scheduled the book for a June 2, 2022 release.
Click to order UNBOXING RAYMOND from Black Rose Writing
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Where did you do most of your writing for this memoir? And please describe in detail. I live in the woods of West Virginia, on Wolf Hill, overlooking Sleepy Creek Mountain. Bears, deer, coyotes and all manner of critters skitter by my office window while I’m writing. Sounds romantic, right? Well, not exactly; this office could be anywhere. I’ve carved out enough space in a spare bedroom to haul in a desk, chair, side table, and bookshelf. As you can see from the photo, I am not noted for neatness. A stack of notes and “important stuff” about two hands high sits to the left of my laptop, which I’ve supplemented with a large monitor to make my writing life larger, if not easier. The side table contains stacks of books I’ve used to research various aspects of each of the eleven books I’ve managed to write here. And if you’re wondering, yes, as with any devotee of Clutter Modern, I know exactly where everything is in this assembled mess.
What were your writing habits while writing this memoir- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? My first couple of books were written longhand and then transferred to a computer. But now I can’t imagine doing it that way. My muse (if there is such a thing) comes from the action of my fingers on a keyboard—the feeling of it, the rhythm of it. All this happens with an ever-present, frequently filled cup of coffee at my side in the early, early morning. I get up at about 4:30 a.m. each day, make a pot of coffee, and get to work, usually writing about a thousand words before getting back to life in the woods. The thousand words can take me ten minutes or an hour or two, but never more. One of my writing quirks is to limit my words to a thousand at a time. If I try to do more, the writing suffers. I find myself rushing along with the plot rather than stopping to smell the roses (and to describe them). Oh, and I always have the television tuned to Morning Joe while I’m writing. I hear maybe ten percent of what is being said; otherwise, it is just background noise.
Out of all the specific memories you write about in this memoir, which ONE MEMORY was the most emotional for you to write about? And can you share that specific excerpt with us here. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer, and please provide page numbers as reference.
My father suffered a “nervous breakdown” in 1934. My mother and father refused to talk about it, but it was the source of my contentious relationship with him. And it wasn’t until I wrote the following chapter (pages 17-20 of the book) that I realized that my father suffered from untreated PTSD his entire life. His constant striking out at me and my brother was just a symptom of the underlying problem.
Here is the excerpt:
The Elevator
He has no name. He could be a John or a Lester or a Bill. He has no age. He could be young or middle-aged or ready for retirement. He has no physical description. He could be tall or short, fat or thin. He could have black hair or ginger.
Whoever he was, his death in 1934 changed my father’s life forever, and even before we were born, affected the lives of me, my older sister, my younger brother, and my mother.
But I get ahead of myself.
When Raymond married Dorothy, he was working as a staff upholsterer at Hotel Washington, a posh hotel in downtown Washington (now a W Hotel). Jobs were scarce during the Depression, so if you had one, you did everything you could to hold onto it. For Raymond and his fellow upholsterer—let’s call him Al—that meant “making work.” They would use their pass keys to enter empty hotel rooms, where they would damage furniture with lit cigarettes, tear loose seams and fringe, and otherwise make repair a good idea. The cleaning staff would find the damage, blame it on the last occupant, and notify the manager, who would then send for Raymond and Al. It may not have been ethical, but it was a scheme that kept food on the table during trying times.
Until.
There is always an until, that moment when things change, for good or ill, and life tumbles in an unexpected direction. For Raymond, it was a call from the manager. There was a damaged sofa in Room 1011, and it needed fixing. The previous guest had apparently burned a whole in it and had left without reporting the problem.
After a brief back-and-forth about the evil that guests do, Raymond hung up the phone and gave Al a sly smile. “Seems we have a damaged sofa in 1011.”
Al returned the smile, tamped out his cigarette on the bottom of his shoe, and followed Raymond down the hall to the freight elevator, which was used by all the craftsmen and the cleaning staff.
After propping open the door to 1011, Raymond and Al picked up the sofa and carted it out into the hallway, setting it down briefly to close and lock the door to the room. Then they proceeded down the hall to the elevator, Al in the lead, walking backwards, with my father at the other end, giving instructions.
“Here we are,” said my father.
“Right,” said Al, resting the edge of the sofa briefly on one hip in order to turn and open the manual elevator door.
That’s when The Until arrived with lasting horror. Al lifted the sofa off his hip and began backing into the elevator. The problem was the elevator was on the basement level, in use by the cleaning staff. Al stepped backwards and fell ten stories to his death, the sofa following, Raymond looking on in horror.
My mother always referred to this incident as “the breakdown,” for surely it was that. My father was broken, a nervous wreck for years afterward. The Until was merciless. The once easygoing and affable young Raymond was now moody, depressed, and withdrawn, and given to violent outbursts, outbursts that would eventually be directed at me and my brother, Kenny. Raymond never held a job again, living the rest of his life as a self-employed upholsterer. They didn’t have a fancy name for it back then, but it’s clear as I think of it now that my father was suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which would go untreated for the rest of his life. That fact gives me pause now, chastens me for my hatred of him growing up. He just couldn’t help himself or control himself.
Raymond never referred to The Until. The most that he would ever offer was that he was claustrophobic and therefore couldn’t ride in elevators, including this one, years later, at the apartment building on Columbia Road.
I knew by then that it was pointless to ask if I could ride the elevator up to the customer’s apartment. That was forbidden, so I joined him on the eight-story climb up the switchback concrete stairs. The number of steps between floors always varied. Sometimes it was forty, sometimes it was fifty, and sometimes it was an odd number like thirty-seven. At any rate, counting helped distract me from the pain in my thighs and the sound of my father’s labored breathing as we climbed on and on.
This could take a while, so let’s get back to the box and see what new treasure we can find.
Can you describe the emotional process of writing about this ONE MEMORY? I was writing it like any chapter at first, but halfway through, when his coworker fell down the elevator shaft, I suddenly realized the depth and nature of his “breakdown” and how I had been misreading him my entire life. It was at that moment that my father earned some measure of redemption for his emotional abuse.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? If anything, it would be the depth of my sorrow. I can only wonder what our lives would have been like if he had received treatment and someone had sat the family down and explained what was going on and how to deal with it.
Len Boswell is the author of seven books, including three Simon Grave Mysteries, Flicker: A Paranormal Mystery, Skeleton: A Bare Bones Mystery, The Leadership Secrets of Squirrels, and Santa Takes a Tumble. He lives in the mountains of West Virginia with his wife, Ruth, and their two dogs, Shadow and Cinder.
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