Ghostwriting: Cowgirl Courage
Writing Sample – Cowgirl Courage
Kate Jonuska • Names and details changed
It was 1916 when my parents stepped off the train in Marlton, New Mexico and I do believe they went straight to the courthouse. They were two years into their marriage and almost 500 miles from their home town of Lampasas, Texas. I don’t think they were scared, though, as they filed papers to claim two different half-sections of land offered under the Homestead Act. One in her name—Eva Marie Smith—and one in his—Jason Dean Smith. All together, that land made up a whole section of 640 acres which they were granted, free of charge, with the catch that they live on the premises for six months. The deed to the land was the carrot on the end of that six-month-long string.
Those premises, however, were entirely empty. Their parcel of land lay more than 20 miles from the town of Marlton and, in those days, there was no transportation to get out there. There was no “there” to get to yet: not a road, not a house, not a crop, not even a fence. It was flat land that was closer in nature to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, only about 40 miles away, than the real desert environment of other parts of the state. There were trees and foothills, a creek nearby. The soil was a deep black and fertile with potential. For six months, they had to make a living on that homestead. I know that they weren’t able to bring in calves to start the ranch until they owned the land and, more importantly, no way to physically round them up until they owned a horse.
Of course, they went into homesteading knowing all of these obstacles in advance. Despite those challenging circumstances and in an effort to surmount them, they stepped off that train. They boldly claimed their land with the rest near that small town in the northeast corner of New Mexico. As I said, I don’t think they were scared. Homesteaders were not an easily scared bunch or, if they were, their other character traits minimized and hid that fear, traits like dedication, independence, and strength of spirit. It takes a lot of all three, I would think, to carve out a home in the middle of that vast emptiness.
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Ghostwriting, Portfolio | Comment (0)Ghostwriting: Before Once Upon A Time
Writing Sample – Before ‘Once Upon A Time…’
Kate Jonuska • Names and details changed
The beginning. Every story has a beginning.
Once upon a time in the beginning, there was a set of eyes that looked out upon a set of stars. These eyes saw the daytime world filled with plants and animals of infinite variations. They saw that the depth of the night sky was thick and yet intangible, forever out of reach for earth-bound hands. They looked around to find themselves alone and sought to name and explain these many wonders that surrounded them. They were the first of many to pose mankind’s universal, existential questions:
Where did I come from?
Why am I here?
Where am I going after this life is over?
Once upon a time, these questions were answered by religions that developed during aboriginal evenings around campfires with parents or tribal elders proffering crude creation mythologies to explain the existence of the glittering stars of the night sky and the bountiful beauty of the Earth below them. These explanations often included the participation of otherworldly beings or animal spirit gods who began in an empty vacuum and created everything in the universe out of nothing in an instant—Creatio ex nihilo.
Then, human consciousness and civilization evolved. Even so, we are still surrounded by religions in the present day. Their structure and doctrines have changed over time but their function is still the same. They are “once upon a time” stories that explain humans’ place in the world and/or the world after this one. Religion is the lens that our scared, lonely eyes use to look at the universe and not feel alone, unsure and powerless in the thick of the unknowable night. Religion can often act as a step-stool for earth-bound humanity, giving them the boost they need to feel that the stars are within reach.
For many, understanding the world around us and how it was created—or who created it—is a matter of religion, or faith. There are the dogmas of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hindu and others more numerous that there are fish in the sea. With so many alternate versions of “true” religion, the faiths that were meant to explain our world and make us feel solidarity with our fellow men instead can be divisive, violent weapons we wield against each other. We live in a world ripped apart by the stories that were supposed to bring us together.
Even worse, faith can go further than these traditional religious definitions to encompass every group who has a common dogma, world view or the same set of answers to humanity’s questions. Political parties, governments, educational institutions—don’t these groups also have common faiths? Much like religions, they explain the world to their members, show them how to act in that world and predict the future. Don’t these institutions also act as divisive forces that segment humanity into smaller groups instead of bringing us together?
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Ghostwriting, Portfolio | Comment (0)Ghostwriting: A South-Central Story
Writing Sample – A South-Central Story
Kate Jonuska • Names and details changed
The house on 94th Street was supposed to be a good move for my family, a step up in the world for both my parents, Walter and Yolanda, and all six of us kids. The house was sharp and fresh with a new coat of paint. Its three bedrooms were spacious compared to our grandmother’s, where the eight of us bust the seams of her small Long Beach home. From my oldest sister (who was 14 years my senior) to my youngest brother (4 years younger than me), we were the black Brady Bunch. Three boys and three girls, six dark faces and six pearly white smiles. I was the “knee baby” of the bunch, meaning that there was only one sibling beneath me I could stand on. Everybody else got to tread all over me, like most older siblings do.
That first home was part of a triplex of houses—ours in the front, facing the street and two, connected units in back. In those days, there was the sound of birds in the trees and bicycle bells on the sidewalks. The street had a healthful glow about it with groomed green grass in front of every house and colorful flowers blooming in window boxes or carefully outlined beds in the yards.
I was in elementary school and, to me, the house was something that was ours and no one else’s. The world, too. That was ours for the taking. Even though I was a little black girl of the lower-middle class, growing up in Los Angeles, my future was whatever I wanted to make of it. Some of the greatest minds of the era had been encouraging me with the message of equality and freedom since I was in the cradle—Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, Caesar Chavez, and my father—Walter Stewart of the Congress for Racial Equality (or CORE) among other politically motivated groups.
He may have been a factory worker by profession, but my father was a civil rights leader by calling. He graced the covers of Black Citizen magazine and numerous newspapers. He spoke with the most famous voices of the era about strategy and philosophy from the telephone in our kitchen. When I could first talk, I chanted protest songs. When I could read, I then understood the picket signs we held in our hands. I remember the rich smell of chicken and greens permeating Martin Luther King’s house on a Sunday, when he offered me a plate.
But I also knew that the civil rights vision I had been nursed on like mother’s milk growing up was not yet reflected in the reality that surrounded me, even at that cute house on 94th Street. We all knew it. The healthy glow of our neighborhood’s green grass in the afternoon was dampened by the orange glow of crosses afire at night. Reflected flames danced in the window glass and sparks drifted down to earth, among the flowers. The white hoods of the Klan came out of hiding in the black night to warn us colored families who were brave enough to move to this area. To scare away the people who had the audacity to think that these well-maintained houses were for black families. To challenge those who believed that black and white could mingle in the same neighborhood. How dare we?!
The crosses didn’t look as sinister in the light of day as I was walking to school. They lacked the raw power they had at night. By the time the sun came up, the flames were long gone and so was the immediate fear. Clutching my bag filled with books and a sack lunch, the crosses were only tall ashes that still stood in Christ’s shape.
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Ghostwriting, Portfolio | Comment (0)Ghostwriting: The Peacetime Marines
Writing Sample – The Peacetime Marines
Kate Jonuska • Names and details changed
I have experienced many things in my life.
I’ve been complemented on my toilet-cleaning abilities but I was never a janitor. I am an expert vegetable peeler and chopper but I have never been a chef. My card tricks may dazzle and amaze but I have never been a magician.
I’ve ridden on horseback across pristine, sandy beaches. I’ve crouched behind a woman’s bed, naked, while she distracted her husband so I could make a break for it. I’ve been carried on the shoulders of imprisoned men who saw me as their leader.
Yes, these experiences are varied and colorful yet, if I am not any of these things, what am I? The truth is that I, Joe Smith, am a Marine. In the three years I served, I learned lessons, acquired skills, accumulated memories and gathered regrets. These stories of travel, adventure and rebellion may have shown me many things about myself and the world at large.
The most important, though, was one thing for me and one thing only: once a Marine, always a Marine.
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Ghostwriting, Portfolio | Comment (0)Ghostwriting: A Mother’s Legacy
Writing Sample – A Mother’s Legacy
Kate Jonuska • Names and details changed
I was well on my way to adulthood when I found out something that completely changed my mother’s basic identity—her name. That’s right. I had been walking my way through life thinking that Laura Simpson was my mother when, in fact, her legal first name was Inez. She had always used her middle name of Laura and simply never thought the fact important enough to advertise. My mother, I have learned, does a lot of things simply, quietly and without fanfare.
I suppose she was right. Educating your children about your legal name is not a pressing, important concern. My realization of the error later in life, however, made me begin asking questions. Did I really know my mother? Where did she come from physically and where did her thoughts, character traits and actions come from as well?
We were spending a bit of time together during a family trip to Las Vegas when my mother spoke about the natural distance between generations. She and my father, she told me, had made it a big priority to raise their children to be independent and self-reliant. “We did such a good job,” she said, “that you guys never really needed to come back for anything.”
We chuckled over the truth of her statement. Inside my head, though, the wheels began to turn. If a child never returns to his parents as an adult, he can never gain perspective and knowledge about his parents’ true identities. If he never understands where they come from, he also leaves an entire part of himself undiscovered. He leaves a gap in the self he passes onto his children in turn. After all, here I was a full-grown man before I knew the truth of my mother’s name!
It was obvious to me that my mother retained her sharp memory, sharp in places where mine had already grown dull. It was also obvious that time is a finite commodity in this world. We lost my father, Lloyd Simpson, in 2003 and that event drove home the transitory nature of life to our entire family. I knew our family needed to take advantage of my mother’s memory and the time we were given by preserving her legacy. I felt it necessary that we—her children—became educated about that legacy and that we introduce her grandchildren, great-grandchildren and the great-greats to come to her memory as well.
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