Daily Archives: August 30, 2023

They called the big room where they lived simply “Home”. For example: “I’m going Home now,” Tammy Beige Brown would say to her pleased boss with 5 fresh stories to print in his paper by 10:01AM. Then she’d hop on her bike — or, alternately (especially on sunnier days (disposition-wise)), hop on her hopper and head back to Marsha, Pumpkinhead (*not* Pumpkinass), Lelia, Kellyya (hmm, another L and K,  like Leroy *Kelly* after all) and the rest, all collected in what outsiders would perceive as a doll house in the next big room pictured above. They thought of it as just a house, period. A home within a bigger HOME… as in home base from baseball, as in a place they could feel safe, superior catcher always stuck sitting on the bench, never graduated to a star himself. They were still in play, in effect, 9 on the field. No sin in Cincinnati. F-ing hard city to spell.

Let’s swing the camera around and look in to what these tiny dwellers of this realm called Story Room, after the paper and the articles within, or at least that’s a byproduct of this adjacent big room, perhaps. No one knows when the appellation started, or when they started calling this other, neighboring room something other than Home as well. It became WORK.

Marsha “Pink” Krakow was originally confused about Tammy “Beige” Brown getting a job at the newspaper there. “What newspaper?” she uttered, momentarily forgetting that she’d seen this very object many times from her supposed secret perch on top of the cupboard in this very room, the place she just took child Shelley in this here photo-novel, 39 in a f-ing long series it seems, infinitely harder to figure out than the spelling of Ohio’s 2nd city. “Not *at* a newspaper,” Tammy originally replied to Marsha’s question after procuring the coveted post. “*On* a newspaper. Then she realized for the 1st (?) time that it was both and said so. After a couple of days on the job she additionally explained that she sits down at her canvas (= blank page) and spills coffee all over it, which highlights the stories she’s suppose to write on any given day. Then she just copies them down (photography, she thinks at the time — she could just take *pictures* of the articles and send it to Leroy (Leroy?) instead of having to paint it all up — inferior art form she then tacks on in her head about it), and she’s done for the day, usually by 10 or 10:01 at the latest (so far). That’s how she found out about Steamboat — it was all in the story highlighted in the stain. Thus the spiel today, her 3rd on the job. Leroy was never the same as Steamboat. The nickname never existed, although the halfback could indeed steam his way through tacklers like a boat or something, approaching but of course not reaching the heights of the great, unsurpassable Jim Brown before him. He was fresh off the bench. He was picking up steam, quickly becoming a star himself (the article said). But he, again, was never named such. Despite the memories of childhood NFL broadcasts.

And those rooms beyond you can catch a glimpse of in the above picture, one may ask? Also Story Room for the moment, including the bathroom with the floaty toy ducks in the tub and the rezzable, handy objects in the sink like a hairdryer and a razor, along with working scales. But what of Storybrook?

(to be continued)