The Disappointing Memory of the Adventure of Clarence the California Cat

 

I have to do a heap of reconstruction when recording this memory. If I’m recalling things correctly, it was done for Mrs. Osbourne’s Reading class, which would put it in the middle year of A. J. Briesemeister Middle School. The assignment was to write and illustrate our own little book. I suppose the point of the exercise, besides testing our literary skills, was to give us some insight into how books were made.

First we had to write an original story; then we were given sheets of paper to draw directly on, which included space for the text; then we had to assign the amount of text to go in that space; then the whole mess was sent off to the local printer’s to be bound into a book, using spiral ring binding. All the books would be judged and displayed, and the best would win a prize.

Spiral Ring Binding

I was stymied. Although I already had a simple inchoate love of literature, this was a good year before my Tolkien ‘awakening’ with reading The Hobbit, an event that kicked off my own desire to produce stories and even to draw pictures. My talents, such as they were, were barely embryonic, but still as they were I wanted to make at least a passing grade, if not a soaring deathless tale of immortal literature then the prodigious first fruits of a burgeoning talent. What I came up with was The Adventures of Clarence, the California Cat.

Lord, it was not good. I could not create an engaging, original story. What I made was obviously derived from innumerable alliterative Wonderful World of Disney cheap real-life adventures with a dash of The Incredible Journey. Clarence was a cat, born in California (what the heck did I know about California?) who must travel across the nation to rejoin his lost family, or some such nonsense. I had some vague idea that even if it was not great, it would 'sell.' The illustrations I came up with, cramped with anxiety because we were only given so many pages to try, were ‘sub-Ziggy’ in quality. The only picture I remember was that of an old lady (vaguely resembling Nanny) chasing Clarence with a broom. As usual I waited until the last minute to do my work, and it showed. I turned in all in with a mixture of shame and relief.

Needless to say, I did not win any first prize. The girl who did produced a weird little fable about a young onion who tries to find out why human beings cried when they sliced up (‘killed’) her mother onion. A kindly tomato gives her some apple sauce about regret and necessity. I had every reason then (as I do now) to think that she had a parent’s help both in writing and drawing her tale. But that may just be sour grapes on my part.

I do not remember if we were given our books back; I have the strange impression that they kept them all (why would they do that?). If I did get mine back, it did not survive long. I don’t remember any great measures on my part to preserve it. But there it is. My first ‘book,’ such as it is. Or was, or whatever. Just a tossing recollection that gets cast up onto the beach of memory now and then.