Echoes: A Travel Thru Memories

By Bernie Keating

This book is a journey down memory lane as Bernie Keating eyeballs his many books. He provides a glimpse of each one he wrote during his fifty-year career as an executive of a multi-national company.

The collected works include two early uncompleted novels followed by fourteen published works.

His eclectic writing pursuits include science, frontier history, religion, music, economics, and several novels. They reflect the experiences of a lifetime as a cowboy, naval officer, manager, and family man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524641894

Bernie Keating

Bernie Keating’s was raised in Buffalo Gap, South Dakota, served as a naval officer during the Korean War, completed graduate school at U.C. Berkeley, and then began a fifty-year career as executive, becoming Manager of Quality Assurance for the world’s largest packaging company. As an avocation during his long working career, he also wrote books and the current one is his twenty-second. He and his wife live on a ranch in the Sierra Mountains near Sonora, California.

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2016 Bernie Keating. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/28/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4190-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4191-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4189-4 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.   The Novice Author

Strike Vote

The Holy Grail Was a Paper Cup

2.   Exploring My Roots

Buffalo Gap Frontier: Crazy Horse to No Water to the Roundup

Riding My Horse: Growing up

in Buffalo Gap

Chasing Tumbleweeds

3.   Historical

1960’s Decade of Dissent: The Way We Were

They Rode with Custer

4.   Science

A ROMP THROUGH SCIENCE : Plato and Einstein to Steve Jobs

5.   U. S. Navy Career

Sea Stories

6.   Owens-Illinois Career

When America Does It Right

My Fifty-Year Career With O-I

7.   Investing

Rational Market Economics: A Compass for the Beginning Investor (published in 2011)

8.   Music

Songs and Recipes: for Macho men only

Music Then and Now

9.   Novels

Ebenezer Sackett’s Christmas Carol

10.   Religion

Riding the Fence Lines: Riding the Fences that Define the Margins of Religious

Tolerance

Searching for God

Pivot to Asia:

Ethel: A 20th Century Woman

11.   Some Final Thoughts

Epilogue

With fading echoes

In twilight hours

When day is done

And shadows fall,

I think of all

The joys we knew.

T HESE ARE MY TWILIGHT HOURS and echoes fade, so now is time to look back. Happily, I am able to capture memories from the dozen books I have put to pen, or more precisely, scribbled with pen on yellow pad and typed into computer.

Why make an effort at this particular time? I learned, surreptitiously, that my children were plotting a party for my upcoming 88th birthday and it made me realize that some others, certainly not me, think I am getting old; so, in deference to them I will take a moment to listen to some of the fading echoes from my past. I remember when I was a teenager hiking into Calico Canyon west of Buffalo Gap and standing at the quarry looking into the dark canyon beyond and gave the traditional yell: hall al al ow, the echo returned to me but with less gusto than I had delivered. I would feel the same again in the quiet moments of twilight hours as the evening sun slowly ceded its dominion to the night and I realized my day was unfilled. Such is life.

Writing a book is a complex enterprise. I began each with enthusiasm as I pursued the theme I felt compelled to triumph over, but somewhere along the way the process of putting words on paper did not reach the passion I felt. Long ago (six decades hence) when I was taking a course in fiction writing in night school at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, the professor taught us that the most important thing in writing fiction was to relate to the reader. That might have been true for the horsey books he was writing for teenage boys, but over the years I have learned there is much more to writing than that, for instance: what about the author – is he only chopped liver?

After I got my master’s degree at U.C. Berkeley and wrote a thesis that was accepted by my graduate committee of three professors, I thought I knew how to write; after going to work on my first job I decided to write a book. When I reached page ten, on serious reflection, I realized I did not know how to write a good sentence or paragraph, let alone a book; hence, the night courses I started taking in how to write. My literary pastime started with that and eventually replaced the time I spent on golf and skiing. Writing books