A Writer's Journey Part X

Title: A Writer’s Journey

Part X      

“Adrian, you have a big butt!” my eighth grade classmate said.  She was pretty and said in it in an unkind tone.  My mother had tried to tell me the same thing but somehow hearing this from a pretty girl made it finally sink into my consciousness.  This was the 1980s where shredded abdominals weren’t the thing every star had to have, so guys diets weren’t a big cultural thing.  At least, I don’t think they were:)  I loved food too much anyway, so I decided to take up jogging.  Jim Fixx did it, right?  I had learned how to do this in gym class earlier in the year because Mr. Earl had us do an aerobic activity three times a week and keep track of it for a month.  This became a life style for me.  After years of running I learned it had practical applications!!  I had to wait for rides from drama practice when I was a kid and one day I realized, “I run a few miles for fun every day.  Why not just run home?”  So I did... in dress shoes.  I would learn to bring shoes with me.  Although running in dress shoes wasn’t so bad but I’m sure it was really hard on the shoes!!

This new freedom was felt in other ways too.  I was a city dweller and so several library branches and the main library were now in range!  (I didn’t drive until I was 24 years old but that is another story for another time:)  I would run there with a backpack on my back.  When I arrived I would rest and read comic books (again, not the cool thing kids did in the 1980s) and then I would pick out some books to check out.  After that I would run home.  I have no idea what patrons of the library thought having this sweaty teen guy in the main area of the library, reading comics, but little did they realize that I was getting my PHD in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe).  I would also run to the mall.  I didn’t do that too many times but I really enjoyed it, I remember that!  As I said in a much earlier blog, I would also run between VBS across town as a college student. 

This doesn’t mean I actually knew a lot about running.  Only a few times in my life had I experienced lactic acid and I certainly didn’t know enough to call it that.  The first week of soccer practice I would feel it (if only I understood ice bathing then!) and the day I ran a half marathon on a lark!  Did I get a tee shirt for my trouble?  Oh, I was too dumb to run an official half marathon!  I lived in Erie, PA and my family was going to the beach for a picnic with Uncle Don’s family.  “I’ll just run there!”  I thought happily.  I had fresh energizer batteries and my walkman (a primitive device that played cassette tapes and occasionally ate them), so I was set!  I started out on Buffalo Road running across town to the beach.  My poor, rough area, gave way to the older section of town and then to the sad looking factories on 12^th street.  I ran and ran and ran.  Finally I ran past Waldameer Amusement Park and descended the mighty hill to the peninsula below.  I hit my second wind and started really pouring it on!  “What a great day!” I thought.  A strong breeze blew off the lake kissing my face and the water was on my right hand side, big and beautiful!  I’ve always loved water!  Suddenly, I literally stopped running!  What was this???  I tried to run but my legs wouldn’t go!!  Finally I managed to jump start them and slog along for ten more minutes but all too soon, my legs quit.  I could not run another step!  I had hit the wall and brother had I hit it!!!  I didn’t understand lactic acid at that point in my life, all I knew is that my legs were broken!  I had to walk for another half hour to get to the beach where my family was.  When I got there I miserably collapsed onto a wooden bench and died next to my family.  I remember my cousin Danny was very disappointed but I couldn’t move!  I moved like an old man for three days after that.  The assistant soccer coach at my school needed a player for some adult league game and I had to turn him down.  “Sorry,” I said, sincerely, “I can’t move.” 

Just because you jog a lot doesn’t mean you understand cross country.  I played soccer from 8^th grade through three years of college (one year my college didn’t have a team) but I didn’t understand the 5K or even speed work.

How did I become a cross country coach?  I was to the end of a pastoral candidate process that had gone nowhere fast.  No one wanted me.  I had been a popular youth pastor (with the kids anyway:) but when I tried to make the leap up to pastor, churches right and left took a hard pass on me.  It was very discouraging.  Finally, I decided to go Seminary at BBS in Clark Summit, PA, and began to make plans.  Things were moving along smoothly until my wife got pregnant with Autumn (aka the bear).  Autumn kicked the daylights out of Gail’s insides to the point she was positive, she had a boy in there!  Gail was also very sick when she carried Miss Autumn.  She would get home from work and collapse, leaving me to try and pack up and watch the kids, plus make plans.  Then this guy named Glen White called again.  (He had called in the fall and I had called him back in the winter.)  Could I do pulpit supply?  Why not? 

I was so discouraged I didn’t even think about being called by the church.  I told my wife, “This will be nice before going off to Seminary."  A place to speak is always nice:)”  We got there early that Sunday morning (a Cardinal sin at Austinburg Baptist:)  Slowly people began to filter in and so I taught Sunday School to a growing group and then preached.  Glen asked, “Can you come back and Candidate two weeks from now?”  Here I was in this “remote” area, a city boy all my life, and I was being asked to candidate.  “Sure,” I said.

Two weeks later Gail and I returned.  “We are going to vote on you today,” I was told.  Oh, my!  One church I candidated in, it was a long six week process, only to get a sixty-something percent of the vote.  I turned it down.  I told the older gentleman in charge of that church, “Studies show I’m going to get a lot less popular and there is NO WAY I am beginning with that low of a call from a church.”  One week and Austinburg Baptist was ready to vote on a 28 year old who had been a youth pastor.  Before they voted, we were taken to see the parsonage (trailer) in some place called, “Troupsburg.”  I told Gail, “Babe, we don’t need to worry about the money.  All we need to know is does God want us here.  Everything else will work out.”  They voted yes that day (100% in favor!) and we felt led to accept their call. 

When I passed the two year mark I realized it wasn’t enough money and told the church, “I’m going to have to work too.”  They took that in stride.  I applied to several restaurants (I had been a cook for years) and at several hotels.  I asked for minimum wage and figured someone would bite!  I had been making the exorbitant sum of $8 dollars an hour at Friendlys when I left, so I was a deal!  Not a single call!!  I asked for prayer at prayer meeting and poured out my heart before the Lord.  Still nothing happened.  Then at football ministry, a JT senior named Mike Miller who knew I jogged, asked, “Do you want to be our cross country coach?”  My eyebrows shot up.  “Mike, I know little about cross country!”  I said honestly.  “Well, if you don’t, no one else is going to and it is my senior year!”  I put in an application and met this guy named, “Scott Helgeland.”  (I had seen him when I was coaching a Tee Ball team but that was about it.)  He talked to me and then hired me.  It was only for twelve weeks and at one point I asked the Lord, "Father, this isn't going to meet our needs."  Little did I know what God had in store for me:)  

I took the job seriously and I called my former Dean, Mr. Sorber, who I remembered knew something about cross country.  After grilling him I hit the library.  I found a book there I didn’t understand at all.  It had all these mysterious numbers like 10 x 400 with 2 minutes rest.  I had no idea what that meant.  The book assumed you had a clue, so it didn’t explain anything.  I got through that year and the three seniors graduated, leaving me with one underclassman who didn’t come back out.  Then Jay Dreher and Courtney Cornell showed up at the XC picnic bench (I think officially it is FFA’s now:) and “Generation One” started (I call Mikes group, “the Proto Generation”).  We ended up with nine boys, three girls, and four modified girls that year.  When I was telling my brother Yon-Yon about my team he said, “My cross country coach has us do 400 repeats!  It is really hard!”  I liked the sound of “really hard!”  One Thursday night I took the team behind the school to the track.  “We are about to do a VERY hard drill,” I said grimly.  Fear in those young faces.  “You are going to run around the track, walk to the school wall, walk back and do it again.”  Everyone loved 400 Rs that day.  Don Mosher was like, “This is an AWESOME drill coach!”  Lot’s of smiles and no tears.  This wasn’t what my brother described at all.  Then I realized you needed the WATCH too!  The smiles stopped and the tears began the next time we did it.  You can tell a VET XC runner when they endure 400 Rs stoically and ignore the groans and gasps of new runners.  I tell people now, “XC is all about pain management.  I hurt you and you learn to take it!”

In writing, the editing process is my 400 R.  I have been running 400 Rs for five generations of XC (six if you count the proto year) and although the pain is an old friend, it doesn’t get any easier.  You feel the deadness begin to seep into your muscles, the fatigue of your heart, and you think, “I really can’t do another one!”  I have found editing a book to be similar to this experience.  Like a VET runner, I have become a better writer, so my book pages don’t bleed red anymore (or black on the computer screen), but that doesn’t mean it’s not painful!  In the early days I remember my wife said, “You have to rewrite this whole chapter!”  “What exactly didn’t you like?”  I asked, scratching my head.  “Everything!  It is terrible!”  My mom’s question marks everywhere (“What is exactly going on here?”  or “This section is weak!  Consider rewriting!")  The time my English editor sent me a whole envelope with comas in it (that she had cut out by hand!!)  There was a note inside that said, “Feel free to use these liberally!”  Speaking of that, I have the first round edits of “Two Paths” to get at!!  So I bid you, Adieu, my friends!”

*** Author Adrian Essigmann has eighteen books in print on Amazon.com, soon to be nineteen!  All of them are $.99 cents on Kindle, with the exception of “An Assumed Risk” which will be (Lord willing) an e-book before summer.  All of his books are available in soft cover too!  Type Amazon Adrian Essigmann and his author’s page should come up ***

                      

Book list

Fiction

Wolf Hunting – Action/suspense

Wolf Hunting 2: Trick Shot – Military action/ science fiction

American Fairytale – Colonial America/ Fairytale

Life, Liberation, and the Pursuit of Video Games – Dystopian

Asylum Series (Tribulation genre meets CS Lewis meets lost)

Asylum

Killer Robots

Werewolves

Elf Princess

Zero Book – 666

C-3 Series (Pilgrim’s Progress meets Ender’s Game)

An Assumed Risk

Heavy Opposition

A Distant Boom

Two Hearts

The Magnificent Six

Don’t Pass Go!

Two Paths – Coming Soon!!

The Princess of Ashes Series (C-3 Series spin off)

Falling Ashes

Non-fiction

Miracles Can Happen: The Jim Ross Story – Jim Ross was miraculously sparred from death... twice!

Attack on Girl’s Track – A look at boys competing in girls sports, from the perspective of a track coach.  The book uses five years of track results from Section V (2012 – 2016) to prove its point.