By Jud Snyder
He puts it this way - “Hell, if I can write a book, anyone can. It just takes a lot of work.” Gerald Haslam is not self-effacing. He knows the realities of authorship and hardly expects a would-be writer to boot up his or her computer and churn out a polished manuscript.
But in conversations with Penngrove’s most-published resident, you get the impression if he saw a frustrated horsefly buzzing against a grimy stable window he’d turn the incident into human characters and come up with a story.
In his latest book, “Grace Period,” he took a grim outlook on his situation in 1996.
“I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, pretty serious case, and went through surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, immunology and hormone therapy to finally beat it down. I thought about writing a book about it. I wanted to ‘personify’ the experience,” he said.
“Grace Period” was published in 2006 by the University of Nevada in its Western Literature series.
It’s about two middle-aged cancer survivors, both Catholics and each with children of their own from previous marriages. The man, Marty, is a Mexican-American journalist who falls in love with Miranda, a physician and breast cancer survivor. Their relationship deeply affects their children and forms the core of the novel. The story takes place in Sacramento and towns down in the San Joaquin Valley.
Haslam has had only a few novels published. “It was a complex book to write. They both know the situation and events dictate the conclusion. Mainly, it’s about putting shattered lives back together again.”
A retired Sonoma State University English professor, the 72-year old Haslam can easily be called the premier chronicler of life in the lower San Joaquin area. Born in Bakersfield, he claims Oildale as his hometown. So much so he’s been invited back to Oildale November 7 this year as keynote speaker for the town’s Centennial Celebration. “Haslam’s Valley,” published in 2005, points out the connection.
But his fiction and non-fiction books about Oildale and nearby towns have really caught the connection. Titles such as “Okies: Selected Stories,” “Hawk Flights.” “The Man Who Cultivated Fire,” “That Constant Coyote,” “Condor Dreams,” “The Great Tejon Club Jubilee,” “Straight White Male,” “Coming of Age in California,” “Workin’ Man Blues” and others have nailed down his premier chronicler status.
Oildale-type anecdotes provide sparkling bits in his stories. Like a burly ex-boxer who sees the visage of a saint on his grimy wall.
“That’s not the face of Jesus,” he says. “That’s John the Baptist.”
“How do you know?”
“Jesus told me. Would he bull—— me?”
Sitting at a picnic table in Penngrove Park with Sheba, his mixed breed black pet dog who’s minus her right hind leg (another survivor), Haslam said, “I can think of a lot of stories yet to come out of Oildale. I don’t have to go back there - it’s changed a lot.
“But I remember growing up they had about 25 Pentecostal churches, only one Catholic church, no Mormons and no Lutherans. I thought everybody was blue collar, ‘poor white’ folk.” Haslam went to a Catholic school in Oildale and then on up to San Francisco State College (now a University) and earned both a BA and MA before his PhD at Union Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio.
His San Francisco State years enabled him to gather information on the campus president, the late S.I. Hayakawa, a renowned intellectual, editor of ETC magazine, striped bass fisherman and wine expert. Haslam’s currently involved in writing Hayakawa’s biography.
Next week, he’s taking part in the famed Squaw Valley Writers’ Conference. Just another invitation and a further step in his writing career. Walks with Sheba every day provides time for self-analysis concerning his current and future projects.
He’s married to the former Janice Pettichord and they have five children. Their daughter, Alexandra, has assisted her father in assembling some of his stories.
“This Squaw Valley conference will have no one but writers. I’d say about a quarter of them are already published writers. There’s little distraction up there,” Haslam said. “There’ll be a lot of polishing up on manuscripts, like using paragraphs for they’re needed visual clues. It’s OK I guess, for writers like Jean Paul Sartre to have paragraphs that go on for three pages. I have to say writing is a lot more than following a formula.”