The idea for “Elroy McGrady’s Blues” came from a visit to
the Whitefish Bay Public Library with my wife. She noticed that they were
having a writing contest with the stipulation that short stories had to be 1000
words or less. Now, I’m not a typical fan of writing flash fiction, or stories
under 1000 words, but I started working on an idea for it. My initial concept
had to do with a science major reading a peer reviewed study on how peanut
butter doesn’t affect the earth’s rotation (yes, that is an actually peer
reviewed scientific study).
Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite sure what the story would be
with that concept, so I scrapped the idea. One day while at work I was
listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, and that’s where the concept for “Elroy McGrady’s
Blues” started to form. Those of you who are familiar with Skynyrd’s oeuvre probably
know the particular inspiration for this story, but for those of you who might
not know how Skynyrd could have inspired this story, the particular song that I
was listening to at the time is “The Ballad of Curtis Loew”.
In “The Ballad of Curtis Loew” the singer reflects on his
time going to visit a man who played blues on a Dobro for the singer when he
was a kid for the price of some liquor. The tale in the song is allegedly based
on the true story of how members of the band would see a man hanging outside a
liquor store in Jacksonville, FL with a guitar and would offer to play guitar
in exchange for money for booze.
Originally, I really wanted to play with dialogue in this
story, so you probably noticed a lot of dialect in the writing compared to my
other stories. This came from my work on a one act play that was very well
received; you’ll see that play at a later date. I hadn’t really worked with
dialect prior to that, but I really enjoyed it and was pleasantly surprised when
it turned out I did it well. Eventually, the story turned into an examination
of race in the ‘50’s and that’s an examination I will continue since I’m not
ready to hang up the character of Elroy McGrady and plan on giving him his own
collection of short stories.
Stay tuned...
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