Reflections of a Life, Prologue: Dreams of Youth and Beyond

REFLECTIONS OF A LIFE
A Memoir of Dreams and Striving
By Robert Hartley

Prologue

Dreams of Youth, and Beyond

It is a summer day in June, and I am ten years old. I sprawl on a cushion of grass, looking up at the cloud ships moving across a tranquil sky. Out of nowhere a boy’s dreams flow like the gentle wind. At ten, anything seems possible.

* * *

Experts tell us that the dreams of youth—of great manly deeds, heroic endeavors, leaving footprints on the sands of time—are not likely to be fulfilled, and will fade with the disillusionment of age. I cannot agree with this fading of dreams. I think dreams can be with us all our days.

Not all dreams are realistic and attainable. For myself, a skinny boy, dreams of great athletic achievements were not realistic and would only cause frustration unless put aside for others more reasonable. Still, all my life I have dreamed of becoming a better golfer, and probably did to the limits of my ability, even being a tiger in matches with mediocre golfers like myself.

I have had an enduring dream from early childhood to be a writer, even a great writer. While few of us can achieve greatness, I have always been a good writer, ever since I delighted in writing dog stories hoping to influence my parents to buy me a dog. I found the ability to write—better than most of my peers—reports, term papers, and essay exams to be the major reason I didwell all the way through graduate school. For I had no great mental ability otherwise: my memory was average, my reasoning maybe a bit above average, but there was scant aptitude in music, mathematics, and oral speech. (In my aptitude tests, acting and politics were dead last. To be a writer was first.)

How well have I achieved my dream to be a writer? In academic and nonfiction writing I could probably be given a "B+" grade. One of my supplemental books, Marketing Mistakes, has gone through 11 editions (as of 2008) in the 30+ years since it first came out. These books have given us the income to have a nice house, a Lexus, and a country club membership, things few of mycolleagues could afford since college teaching is not a great source of income unless supplemented by consulting, speaking, expert witnessing, or writing. Today, my dreams for writing are as passionate as decades ago. Only now they are more fiction driven.

I had my first story published in 1960 in a little Wisconsin literary magazine, Creative Wisconsin. I was a Penney store manager in Superior, Wisconsin, a small port at one end of Lake Superior, and the story was about a young bride whose husband was a sailor and away for weeks at a time. There was no pay, but they gave me a copy of the issue. (See Appendix A.) After that, almost thirty-five years were to pass before I could again turn to writing fiction, and in particular,novels. But success eluded me (and I would consider success to be just getting accepted by a publisher).

I have written three novels, but they seemed forever destined to be "closet manuscripts,” with rejected queries numbering in the hundreds. Still, I just could not accept this relegation to the closet or attic, unread and forgotten by those who would follow me. Finally,early in 2001, I self-published my first novel, one I had been writing and revising since 1996. Printed by a local firm, it turned out to be an unattractive book, not one a prospective customerwould likely pull from a bookshelf. But I could hardly be surprised, knowing the impossibility of getting published that legions of writers face. I self-published my second novel in 2005 with Xlibris, a print-on-demand publisher, who produced a good-looking book. Still the resultswith little publicity and no credible reviews (a stigma facing self-published authors) were about the same. My dream is to write novels that touch the heart, that may even bring readers to tears,and be inspiring. But first these efforts have to be read. Now in my 83rd year, landing an enthusiastic agent who might convince a publisher seems unattainable. Still, this stubborn dreamtantalizes and torments.

A person without dreams and goals surely must have an empty life, a life devoid of hope. Some people mired in poverty face such hopelessness. Even wealth does not insulate from emptiness and hopelessness, as the words of an old Jo Stafford song suggested: "Is This All There Is?" But dreams do not have to be of heroic proportions, but only of help and compassion toward others, of guidance and inspiration for those who follow, with this perhaps best done by example.

In these “reflections of a life," I have sought to recapture events that were notable to me, and to flesh them out with remembered thoughts and feelings. In so doing, I have added dialogue to some of the encounters to give them more interest and immediacy. I can only hope that the trace I leave may be read by one who follows me, some empathic and compassionate soul. But I’ll probably never know.