I wish I could find an old shirt I used to love, today. It was a rugby shirt, kind of fleecy on the inside, with white and blue-gray horizontal stripes. It was supremely comfortable to drive in, and so that’s what I did.
Years ago, I was called home to the MotherShip for an annual convention in Rockville, Maryland (think Washington DC and you won’t be far wrong). That’s a really strong two-day drive for a young man and I was both of those, back then. As these things go, I had a friend and mentor who lived about half way there, near Cincinnati, Ohio.
After our arrival in the third year, his wife at the time enquired as to whether or not I owned any other shirts. She then dug out the photos from last year and the year before, showing me in the same damned shirt.
Her husband was Mike Banks, a freelance writer who hung out on the online network I was using at the time, GEnie. Mike wrote about modems and all of the things one could do online and how it was going to change the world and so on, plus a whole lot more. He made the life of a freelance writer look like something I wanted every part part of. And he worked hard to get me a regular gig at the old Computer Shopper magazine, where I wrote about Apple Macintosh hardware, software and peripherals for years.
We would take them out for dinner as “payment” for our lodging, but I always got more out of it. Mike would wind-up before agents or editors or publishers or how I should stay away from this or that magazine, and try to get on with these other titles… it was like a MasterClass and a Ted Talk with dessert and drinks. We’d stop on our way there from Lincoln to Rockville and again on our way back.
I haven’t heard from Mike in months. He was going to agent a book of mine and I sent him an outline and a sample chapter and never even got so much as a .pdf of a contract back but that was fine. I always trusted Mike and I knew he’d be working for me. A couple of days ago, Mike “liked” a post I’d shared here on Facebook about an old WWII German transport plane once owned by a writer that Mike had represented for years. Martin Caidin wrote the book which became the movie Marooned and was widely known for his aviation titles about flying in the old skies. It had been months, but Mike “Liked” that post. And the next day, he died.
I never imagined an online world without Mike. When I was at the old Telecomputing magazine, I’d reviewed and even blurbed a book of his. He was always as close as this or that Messenger. He always had a tip or an opinion about The State Of Writing Today. And now he’s logged off. Late stage cancer that had moved on to pretty much everywhere.
And I just wish I could find my damned shirt.
