In the last two weeks, I fell ass over tin cups in the mud, checked off multiple projects from my “To Do” list, and oh yeah, banked five sets of photos for product reviews. *gives self proverbial pat on the back* While I edit and write, I decided to post another short creative entry from the Wesleyan Creative Writing Program on Coursera. I mentioned in both Agnes & The Cage and The Doctor’s Appointment how incredible the program is and how much I learned. It’s also totally free aside from the peer grading component, meaning you gain access to useful insight without a financial investment. Let’s get to it! Here’s this piece’s prompt:

I would like you to set a story in your primal landscape – meaning, the place in which you were raised. If, like me, you moved around as a child, pick the place in which you spent the longest period of time . . . There are so many different kinds of primal landscapes on this planet. We live in dry and wet climates, we live on wind-swept hillsides or in the middle of traffic-choked cities. Small town life is unique, but so is urban, suburban, and rural life. All primal landscapes are interesting to the writer who lived there because the landscape is part of who he or she is. Your childhood landscape is in your DNA. You grew up listening to the accent, attending the gatherings, playing in the weather, being nurtured or alienated by cultural practices. . . . I would like you to set the beginning of a story in your primal landscape. This is not a memoir . . . You may use your 500-750 words to simply describe this landscape, no characters needed. Or, you may populate the landscape with characters. . . . Write hard, have fun.

Amity Gaige from Creative Writing: The Craft of Setting and Description

Fernfrond Lane

Nestled in the crook of an early-90s suburb, Fernfrond Lane looped behind the identical streets of split-level blue, gray, and white houses toward the wood line. The soporific street abutted a natural creek, paltry though the water was to earn its title, and as such brooked no further development behind it or on the side for several miles. The houses of Fernfrond Lane were the oldest, each added piecemeal as the neighborhood continued to expand with more city dwellers fleeing the confines of the concrete.

They were the upwardly mobile children of farmers, blue collar workers, and good ole American white trash, removed enough to pass but not enough to belong. They had “zincs” and “winders” and “warshed” their clothes, and most of them smoked, scrunching their butts into coffee cans filled with sand on the porch. Country music blared from their certified pre-owned vehicles, and their children were never tidy or clean.

Every neighbor knew each other by name which only made them more suspicious. The houses were packed together with small yards and tall, wooden privacy fences. Missing slats dotted the borders whose tips barely brushed the bottoms of elevated decks. Often at night, a curious voyeur would linger at the window and gaze into the home of a neighbor, watching him spank his children or sneak the whiskey bottle from behind the cereal boxes above the fridge.

Unlike the adjoining streets whose children were perfectly positioned in the front lawn with the begonias and hydrangeas, the children of Fernfrond were feral, running through the blacktop streets and knotty underbrush of the woods—barefoot, buttered in dirt, and caterwauling into the evening. They traipsed through the rocky creek bed, catching frogs and turtles and the occasional snake, and pretended they were adventurers or pirates or hunters. They only crossed the threshold of their homes to eat or when the sun faded behind the oak trees.

After school, they ran a gauntlet of ferocious games, kickball on rollerblades, hockey with baseball bats, or football on a lawn so sloped that anyone tackled rolled down the hill to the asphalt street. Swears peppered the air as they repeated what they heard at home, testing the ways the words strung together and finding their favorite. Sometimes they were too brazen, and the taboo sounds slipped through open windows, prompting a parent to scold “Stop the fucking swearing!”  

On summer evenings, the adults would grab lawn chairs and sit clustered together in the driveways, passing out Coor’s Light and the occasional special cigarette. Sometimes they would play gin rummy or poker. When the game was slow, they took bets on which kids would fall and scrape the skin from their knees or toes. Often the conversation drifted to the hoity-toity neighbors closer to the main road. “The Vans got another new SUV, did you see that? Can’t afford new uniforms for the kid’s league with all the dues we pay, but somehow they get a new car every year.” “At least they’re not like the Pines. He hits her, you know.” They all knew pieces of gossip, and together they dissected everyone until the moon crested high in the sky.  Everyone judging, everyone judged.