"BARE NAKED WAYNE"

Bare Naked Wayne, my book of memoirs, was just published online.  You can download it in full in your preferred ebook format. It's completely free:
http://smashwords.com/books/view/301945

I hope my Preface and Table of Contents, below,  will pique your curiosity:

              Preface

Here is the life of Wayne -- sometime environmentalist and one-time land developer, Jesus freak and atheist, hippie-mailman draft dodger and newspaper reporter, recluse and family guy.

I like to write stories, and these are the best ones I know. All are true, insofar as it's possible to tell the bare naked truth about yourself.

This ebook tells of my miserable, preacher's-kid youth and my search for purpose in life, which turned me into a prominent environmental rabble-rouser in the Great Lakes region in the 1970s and 1980s.

I've chronicled colorful characters I met along the way, such as Michigan's conservation behemoth and my boss for a decade, Tom Washington, and my friend and provocateur extraordinaire, Abbie Hoffman. I describe the karmic price I paid for bad behavior; my retributive tab included being for way too long the sixth husband of a wacko white witch.

My stories are frank, sometimes raw or vulgar, and occasionally embarrassing (e.g., "Fortunately, my horrid taste in clothing took some of the focus off my hideous head."). I cut out only a couple of good stories that I could have told. One was in deference to my parents' memory; another had to do with my uncertainty about the legal statute of limitations in Michigan. You can understand.

I wrote this memoir for myself, first, but I also wrote for my family and friends, letting them in on my perspective of events that may have affected their own lives. Even if you are a total stranger, however, I expect you will find something here to entertain you. Consider, for example, that Uncle Sam once officially diagnosed me as a "non-aggressive sociopathic sex deviant (with a hernia)."

Writing a memoir is a self-indulgent undertaking. After all, everyone has stories; some are interesting, some not. In picking which of mine to tell, I followed author Elmore Leonard's rule: "I try to leave out the parts that people skip."

These stories come from the first half of my life; for my next book, I'm working on stories from the second half -- some painful, some lovely, and filled with surprises, successes and failures, and more characters.

"What mystery lies within." That was the caption on my high school senior yearbook picture. All my life I've saved letters, journals, pictures, and memories; always in the back of my mind was the expectation of this moment late in life when I would use them to try to unravel that mystery.

I know that others may remember some of the events here differently. If you don't like the way I've told my stories, then write your own.

 

--April 1, 2013 - Cottage Grove, Oregon

Senior Yearbook - 1964
Bendle High School - Flint, Michigan

 

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Growing Up with Jesus
-----Dr. Dino
-----Born on the Fourth of July
-----We Eat on Picnic Tables
-----The Great Commission
-----Victorious Christian Youth
-----Schmidt for God
-----Sisters in a Nutshell
-----My Father's Son

Chapter 2: Roots
-----Dad Talked to God
-----Mom Married a Guy Who Talked to God
-----Happily Ever After
-----What War?

Chapter 3: First Love
-----Light My Fire
-----Summer of Love
-----Hippies, Not Communists

Chapter 4: Looking for Wayne
-----Goodbye, Vietnam
-----Bad Shit
-----Living Life My Way
-----Summer Days -- 1969
-----God Sends Maggots
-----California Dreamin'
-----My Wheel of Karma Turns
-----Epiphany

Chapter 5: Looking for Love

Chapter 6: Looking for Work
-----Small World
-----Dead Ends
-----Thank God for LSD

Chapter 7: Tilting at Windmills
-----Tom Washington Shit in My Hat
-----The Fij
-----Ring-around-the-Collar
-----Politicians, Pony Tails, and Liberace Soap
-----Purple Paws
-----I Burn Miss Utah at the Stake
-----Drains, Sex, and Farts
-----Freeways and Hanging Ropes
-----Saving the Great Lakes
-----I Wore Abbie Hoffman's Coat
-----Not the Last Rat Off
-----Speaking in Tongues

Chapter 8: Just Open a Vein
-----Fake Fred, Secret Salaries, and Rat-tailed Maggots
-----The Nature of Michigan
-----My Writing Life

Chapter 9: Season of the Witch
-----Warning Signs
-----Compared to Fucking What?
-----Fuck Me
-----What the Fuck?!
-----Why the Fuck Not?
-----"I Am Not a Cunt"
-----What Was That?

Postscript

 

Download a free copy of Bare Naked Wayne at:
http://smashwords.com/books/view/301945

 Available formats include Kindle and Epub (for iPad/iBook/iPhone and most ebook reading apps).

 

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