In my developmental years at Peddie School (all three of them) I wanted to write. Write anything. When Mr. Roberts and the English Department singled me out as having a gift, it was encouragement – all the encouragement I needed – to write. I ran with it. Semesters full of spiral notebooks and even a typewriter shared with my roommate Chip (real name Ronald nickname Lead Pipe – not a very boarding school nickname one might think.) I wrote good and I wrote not so good. The key was to get it down on paper, look at it, and start over. With enough letters, words, and stories (and poems) something might happen. The not so good with the good makes us who we are. It’s not very different when I make bicycles. There are low points in each working day. And in every frame there are some fine features and certainly some mediocre strokes and passes. These bother me in the moment – and then I let them go.
All This By Hand
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