Meeting the Man Whose Book Changed My Life

 

 

Mark Winegardner & ‘Crooked River Burning’

 

Once in a while you read a book and something within you changes. Maybe you gain a new perspective? Perhaps you learn something about a piece of history? Or, maybe it takes you on a journey that extends way beyond the story’s end. And, for that reason, you never want the story to finish, so, when you realize that you have only a 100 pages left, you slow down your reading to five or seven per night so that you can extend its life forever. For me, Mark Winegardner’s Crooked River Burning was that book.

 

For Christmas 2004, a year after I first moved to Cleveland, Daniel Baxter – bridge engineer, Statler neighbor and one of the first friends I made here – gifted me the novel. Daniel’s dad, Charles Baxter, the talented author of the award-winning Feast of Love, travels in the same literary circles as Mark and Daniel thought that CRB would make for a nice read. And, while the cover, with its view of Cleveburg — river, bridge, Tower City and all — intrigued me, the nearly 600 pages overwhelmed me. So the book sat there on the painted white built-in book shelf in my then freshly moved-into Cleveland Heights walk-up.

 

Then, one day, I picked it up and opened it. Part One starts with “The Birthplace of Rock and Roll. The Sixth City: 1948 – 1952.” The first chapter references a historical Indians game. I never really understood baseball. Maybe it’s because I’m an immigrant? Or, perhaps it’s because my brain never computed stats. Could it be because my heart was and always will be with basketball? Regardless, I didn’t let that deter me. This is a book about Cleveland and, at the time, it was still a very new place for me, so, perhaps, this book would provide some sort of insight about this geography, which — almost equidistant between Chicago, where I grew up, and Rochester, where I had earned my MBA — felt familiar yet completely distinct from any place I had ever lived.

 

So, I stuck to it. I read the book every night when I’d get home, late from work from my corporate job. From the very first chapter, something about Winegardner’s writing permeated my senses. From the vivid details to the well-researched people, places and things interwoven throughout the pages, Winegardner created a world that freed me as a writer and, unknown to me at the time, completely re-navigated my life’s path.

 

In 2006, on two separate work trips, the book was packed in my suitcase, en-route to England. It was then packed (and shortly unpacked) in a box as I left Cleveland Heights and returned to The Statler. The narrative had implanted something into my subconscious. If The Statler kept pulling me back to its transient legacy of actors and mobsters, Crooked River Burning cemented my unexplainable attachment to this place, this place where I have no family, no roots and, (eventually), no real reason to stay.

 

In 2007, while taking a walk downtown with my Statler neighbor Sonia Bacchus on the night of the last NBA Championship game that the Cavs played in, we wanted to explore the excitement of the city as the whole world looked on; as I noticed that most of the municipal cops were surrounding the arena, I turned to Sonia and said, “There’s parts of the city where there are no cops tonight. It’s a perfect night for a crime to be committed.” Her response? “You have to write that story.”

 

And so it began. I started writing my first screenplay. I kept writing it. And writing it. And writing it. Evan Lieberman, professor of film at CSU, told me what books to read, what structure to follow and what tools to use. Sonia and I spent our Sundays walking around downtown, taking hundreds of photos of Cleveland’s beautiful places and creepy alleys. And, almost every night after a long day at work, I’d rush home so I could write.

 

With Crooked River Burning vividly playing through my brain’s projector, I imagined what kind of drama — professional and personal — could occur in the present. Winegardner’s tale was like the secret key that unlocked the mystery of what motivates Cleveland. His narrative explained the East Side vs. West Side battle, the strange hold Cleveland mothers have on their sons and what ultimately led to the city’s demise: the hardworking, religious population believed in its factories, churches and sports teams and paid little care to the advancements of other cities here in the U.S., much less internationally.

 

As each section of Crooked River Burning descended the city’s presence — “Best Location in the Nation. The Seventh City: 1954 – 1960,” “Home of the Browns. The Eighth City: 1960 – 1964,” and “Cleveland: Now! The Twelfth City: 1965 – 1969″ — this downward spiral, in my head, had to end somewhere. But, to end there, it had to reach its bottom. And, in 2007, as the Cavs lost the Championship, we thought it did.

 

But it didn’t. That would take another two years.

 

In 2008, as I was wrapping up my script, Michael Symon had already won the Iron Chef and East 4th Street went from a ghost town to a tiny yet captivating culinary center. In 2008, the city still had hopes for the Cavs (and the Browns and the Indians) but, as usual, the sports teams let us down. And, while housing, always available and affordable in N.E. Ohio, seemed so obvious for citizens that don’t believe in rent, what no one was paying attention to was the economy.

 

In late Fall 2008, a new wind had blown into town and suddenly the news stories started coming in — something was amiss with Wall Street. And, something was very amiss with Cleveland.

 

By that point, my script was almost finished and my childhood friend Jacob Livshultz, an NYU grad, was helping me edit it. Then, in November 2008 I met Ivan Schwarz, Cleveland’s new Film Commissioner, and pitched the story to him. He was open and we’d agreed that I’d email the screenplay to him on Wednesday December 10. On Tuesday December 9, I was let go of my job. Later that month, the market tanked. And Cleveland found itself in the center of the foreclosure crisis.

 

Four months after losing my job, Ivan sent me to L.A. (Idyllwilde, to be exact) to the CineStory writing retreat. Industry mentors – commercial screenwriters and producers – taught me more than I could possibly comprehend at the time. But, it also prepared me for what was to happen next: six months after that fateful trip and less than a year after my exit from Corporate America, I got a call to take over another instructor’s Art of Story class at Tri-C. I stepped into the role. And loved it. The following year, I also started teaching Screenwriting and, eventually, Film Appreciation. Then, in summer of 2011, I started teaching Business Environment at CSU. After twenty years of contributing to corporate profits, I suddenly found myself preparing others for life, both in business and in writing.

 

This is how one book changes someone’s life. This is how Crooked River Burning changed mine.

 

A couple of years ago, I connected with Mark on Facebook and asked him if I could send him my copy for an autograph. He agreed, I shipped the book to his university and that was that. Then life, with its responsibilities, propelled forward.

 

Then, a couple of weeks ago, Mark had notified his Cleveland contingency that he’d be in town doing a reading, on the last night of a week-long MFA writing seminar at CSU. When I read this, a part of me thought, “Awesome!” The other part? “Oh, fuck.”

 

Good writing simultaneously inspires you and, also, shows you just how much more work there is to do.

 

Regardless, I asked Mark if he’d be open for an interview and he kindly accepted the invitation. We agreed to meet on East 4th Street at 5PM on Saturday. We said our hellos at The Corner Alley – he was much taller than I had imagined – and then proceeded to a quieter place. Exiting the Alley, we encountered two wedding parties (one pink, the other purple) that, with multiple photographers and many participants, filled the already crowded street. For the first time in my life, I saw a bridesmaid in a wheelchair, looking excited and exhausted in the heat. This is life, a contrast of opposing emotions occurring simultaneously. This is drama. Life is drama.

 

Mark and I headed to the House of Blues and sat in the far corner of the bar. The place was still empty and it provided the perfect setting for our conversation. What I hadn’t planned on – what I couldn’t possible foresee – were the parallels, coincidences and overlaps that would rise throughout the discussion.

 

“As small-town kid, I knew I’d eventually leave (Williams County, Ohio)…Cleveland and Detroit were these beacons. In certain ways Crooked River Burning is why. You don’t love things because they are perfect,” Mark revealed.

 

Crooked River Burning was first inspired when, one day, he attended a baseball game with his friend Carl Kaske. Carl shared his story with Mark, telling him about the time he attended the 1948 Indians / Dodgers game that clenched the World Series. This captured Mark’s imagination and he thought about what would it have meant for a kid from a segregated neighborhood to have attended a game where not only did black players represent both cities, most famously Jackie Robinson for Brooklyn and Satchel Paige for Cleveland, but it was also the last time the Indians won the Series.

 

Something about the history of that day stuck with Mark and what had originally started as four novellas began to evolve. As Mark began his research and notes, he also picked up various things about this city and realized that he was “motivated by how much he loved Cleveland.” He also wanted to explore how a city that Ebony magazine once called the “Best place for a Negro to live,” eventually demised to be the butt of all those jokes. What happened between that history-altering baseball game and the fire that wasn’t even unique to this place, but sprang up in other cities that had moved on?

 

Mark had also moved on. He wrote the sequels to Puzzo’s classic franchise, including The Godfather Returns and The Godfather’s Revenge. When I asked him how he felt writing about characters he didn’t create, he quipped, “I didn’t create Louis Stokes, either.”

 

In addition to writing, Mark also teaches the craft at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where he’s worked closely with MFA and PhD candidates for fifteen years. Since women get the work / life balance question – not to mention The Atlantic’s latest cover regarding NOT having it all, I was curious how a professor, author, husband and father of three manages the various aspects of his life. “I have a pretty good job. The better you get at it, the less you do. (And) it’s like anything anyone else juggles…I am very grateful.”

 

Given all his experience – and tremendous talent – and that teaching is still a relatively new career path for me, I wanted to explore how Mark recognizes if a writing student of his has the “it” factor. “It’s not hard. Most of what I’m teaching is what the corner piano teacher would do. I’m just teaching them to play the piano. Once in while you come across the sick and freak genius. And how do I know if it’s a sick and freak genius? If you happen upon a grizzly bear, you wouldn’t mistaken it for a cute little bear. You recognize it as a grizzly bear.”

 

And advice to young writers?

 

“Being a writer is so hard, that you should just focus on being good. Also, it makes sense for people to work in more than just one medium. Adaptability to different forums (bookwriting, screenwriting, gaming, etc.) is important. Read a lot. Be curious. Understand the fundamentals…The tricky thing about writing is that no one cares if you finish but you.”

 

“Ultimately, the common denominator is story. Figure out how to tell a story. And write what you want to know.”

 

Winegardner is taking his own advice and is currently busy at work, at the cottage near his house, on a new book, Red-Blooded American Smut. Returning back to N.E. Ohio, the also historical tale explores the “business side of the porn industry in the ’70s and ’80s, envelopes the Kent State massacre (two members of Devo were there that very day, Mark shared with me) and the various characters involved. Mark hopes to finish the book by end of this year and Saturday night, at the the end of the Imagination Conference, for the first time in front of an audience, he read pages from his new book.

 

“(What happened at) Kent State, that was obscene. Pornography is just dirty pictures.”

 

Speaking of dirty pictures, I asked Mark what his thoughts were regarding the popularity of a certain, recent best-selling trilogy and how he felt about this year’s NBA win. His colorful reply to both? “Fifty Shades of Grey is like LeBron James: people are paying attention only because other people are paying attention.”

 

I confided in Mark that, after all kinds of debates with people I know who love the book, I finally realized that the reason I didn’t care for Grey was that, because when I was about twelve or thirteen years old, I was reading Harold Robbins novels. Turns out Mark was, too. When he was ten. I also learned that Mark had, at one point, considered teaching at DePaul, where I had earned my B.A., and if destiny had played a different card, given the mentioned dates, he would have been my professor.

 

After an hour of talk, we left HOB and walked to the Gallery. As Mark took the elevator, I waited for him in the lobby, which was set up for a huge wedding. Perhaps one of the ones we saw earlier? When he returned, he brought down my worn copy of Crooked River Burning, along with a fresher edition that I had once ordered for Ivan a few years ago, to welcome him to Cleveland. I stood there, checking my email, as Mark signed both books. I then shook his hand, said thank you and proceeded to my car, parked on Vincent St.

 

As I drove a few blocks down to CSU to attend the reading, so much emotion flooded my heart. Life moves in the most unpredictable ways and that short drive to campus in the heat made me dizzy.

 

What I didn’t realize, at the moment, was what was about to occur.

 

After parking and then finally finding the right room for the book reading (after asking all kinds of people all kinds of directions), I sat quietly in my seat, reviewing my interview notes and rereading the personal inscription in my book, one that I had waited patiently several years for. One that is even more important given that it was signed in person, after the interview. I realized that this was the only way this could have happened.

 

A few minutes later, the conference students started strolling in and I recognized a familiar face: Nicole Hunter. Nicole is a talented writer (Waiting for the World to End) who shared a cubicle wall with me at my very last corporate job. I hadn’t seen Nicole in three and a half years. Not since that day. When I said her name, she looked up and saw me. Within a split second, she had the biggest smile on her face, grabbed her backpack and rushed up the stairs. She put her backpack down and gave me the biggest hug. I felt the tears on my cheek. I have them now as I’m writing this. Some people feel like home. Nicole is one of them.

 

Nicole attended the conference for the whole week. (Just two days later she defended her MFA thesis.) As we caught up on lost time, family and friends, I then saw another familiar face walk through the door. Birkan Ozgur, who is from Turkey, was my student this past summer semester at CSU, the semester that had ended for me just the night before, as I submitted all my students’ grades. After I introduced my former coworker to my former student, Nicole insisted that Birkan sit between the two of us.

 

So there they were, my past and my present, sitting next to each other. As I sat next to them. As we all sat in a giant lecture hall listening to the words of one writer, whose poetic novel, all those years ago, reconnected me with my most authentic self.

 

And for this, Mark, I thank you.

 

Reprinted with permission and gratitude from CoolCleveland.com.