Renegade Creek

By Reed Harp

Renegade Creek is a noun, alright, but in this case not a place or thing. He somehow works his way through the culture without being too very unsuitable . . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reed Harp
• Release date: May 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781886678101

Book preview

RENEGADE

CREEK

Reed Harp

Copyright © 2012 Reed Harp

all rights reserved

Published on Smashwords

N.P. books

* * *

All rights Reserved.

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some other books

* * *

Renegade Creek--

a noun, alright, but in this case

not a place or a thing . . . .

fiction—of a modern

post-novel biographic journal

ebook ISBN 1-886678-10-3

paperback ISBN 1-886678-09-X

* * *

some other books

by Reed Harp

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fiction—short-story cycle

MALONE

fiction—short-story cycle

MODES

verse

DESTINOS

vignettes

ORIGINS

philosophy

VISAGES

journalism—of the feuilleton

CRIBS

reference—across disciplines

query for availability, ebook and paperback,

at [e-mail]

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RENEGADE

CREEK

Reed Harp

Harp, Reed Delon, 1943-

RENEGADE CREEK

ISBN 1-886678-10-3 ebook

ISBN 1-886678-09-X paperback

fiction—of a modern

post-novel biographic journal

ebook and

archival

perfect-bound

4 ½ x 6 ½ paperback

N.P. books

sine loco, sine nomine

reedharp.com

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Contents

Intellect

Subsistence

Embarrassments

Endurance

Perspectives

Panache

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1

Intellect

Renegade Creek is a noun, alright, but here it's not a place, or a thing.

The maternal grandfather ran away from the Creek tribe when he was a boy . . . the Southeast Creeks (the British called Seminoles) who refused to go to the Oklahoma reservations.

That grandfather went to St. Louis, got a suit, went on the road for the Brown Shoe Company . . . (honeymooned at the World's Fair, St. Louis, in 1901).

. . . the name is Renegade Creek. It was a name his grandfather wanted him to have, his mother’s father. Everywhere, it’s said, that grandfather went, he was called the Creek, so changed his name in midlife to Joseph Lee Creek.

2

So when his grandson was born, Joseph Lee called him Ren, and when asked why, said quietly it was short for Renegade, the name that stuck, while only Ren ever appeared on the birth certificate, with no middle name.

Despite any derogatory, pejorative, anti-social connotations of the word renegade, it's probably an absence of understanding of the general concept that has led to the popular notion it means anything less than a pretty good idea. Dictionaries, you know, only tell how a word usually is used, not necessarily what it means.

So the accounts here constitute some parts

of Ren's version of a . . . modern post-novel biographic journal . . . in progress.

~

Flying about for years, there came the lake, where. . . trouble with the truck. That old joker at the boat barn said the same old things, the same kind of . . . possibilities in a world so in need of definitive solutions:

3

May have been just a little flat spot on that main bearing, and most certainly probably a loose ground wire.

~

The same stuff applied to the writing effort. It was an old question, a place where the fearful go, the shaky, the conformists. And that old question reared its head again in the form of a logical query.

It went like this:

Oh, what do you write?

Applied philosophy . . . trying to make academics a little more popular, palatable, more like applied philosophy in some various, more poetic, forms.

Her eyes kind of rolled, just a little bit.

"You see, I’m not wanting to be a guru, because a guru must believe he’s a guru, whether anyone else believes it or not. No, I might aspire, though, to be, say, an honest scholar. Now, there’s a thing. An honest scholar doesn’t need to believe he’s a guru,

4

while others might think so. Big difference, eh.? Too, I’m very interested in government, but have no interest whatsoever in politics. Ya see?"

The curiosity continued—that flighty fear of action about anything of any substantial nature, of anything about anything . . . real, now—a cultural cloak, smothering.

. . . an apologia, pro publication, cited in that beautiful evening just in from the cobblestone streets.Without his being too rancorous, or scatological, or crude (he really was trying to be nice here), just a little tirade, about six blocks from his humble casita, down at Tio Luca’s jazz bar, the party district:

Oh, so you self-publish, she said.

Introduced herself as an L.A. media lawyer, and her petite brunette friend as my partner (at law?).

Well, no, m’am, not exactly. That’s just a name at the website. A lot of other people are involved .