Bubble 'n' Squeak: A Collection of Short Stories

By Stephen J. Groak

Through the dynamic interplay between memory and imagination, Stephen J. Groak explores his colourful childhood in 1970s West Auckland, New Zealand, in a collection of twenty-seven stand-alone short stories. With Nigel Sorenson as an alter ego, the author experiments with POV in a hodgepodge mixture of voices and tales that chronologically gel together like the English-style breakfast bubble and squeak-a meal traditionally made on a Sunday morning from the leftovers of the previous evening's roast dinner. From childhood loss, terrifying visits to the primary school murder house, Huckleberry Finn-type adventures with sister-mate Helen, discoveries of American fast food, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and women, Bubble 'n' Squeak offers a poignant and humorous portrait of a Kiwi country boy's coming-of-age Down Under.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Jun 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781977230317

Stephen J. Groak

Stephen J. Groak follows up on his first book, Christmas Yve: A Kiwi elf's dream to join Santa, with a poignant and humorous exploration of his colourful childhood in West Auckland, New Zealand, through a collection of short stories. Stephen currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and family.

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Bubble ‘n’ Squeak

A Collection of Short Stories

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2020 Stephen J. Groak

v5.0

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Outskirts Press, Inc.

http://www.outskirtspress.com

ISBN: 978-1-9772-3031-7

Drawings by Danielle Gro’ak

Cover Photo © 2020 www.gettyimages.com.. All rights reserved - used with permission.

Outskirts Press and the OP logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For my mother, father, and sister.

Contents

Foreword

Preface

1. Over the Moonbow (6 years)

2. She’s With Jesus (6 years)

3. 4 × 7 (6 years)

4. Sweet Strawberry Gone Sour (7 years)

5. Rocket Park Swings (7 years)

6. The Murder House (7 years)

7. It’s American! (7 years)

8. Farting Mates (8 years)

9. All Blacks and Chocolate (8 years)

10. 100 Stroke Dash (9 years)

11. Give Ya ’Nother Game (10 years)

12. Bubble ‘n’ Squeak (11 years)

13. Dad’s Giddy and It’s Starting to Show (12 years)

14. Helen’s Diary (12 years)

15. The V-Lad (13 years)

16. The Go-Cart Incident (13 years)

17. Pride Comes Before a Bite (13 years)

18. Playing Possum (13 years)

19. The Face of Death (13 years)

20. Fog of War (14 years)

21. Epiphany (15 years)

22. Sleeping Beauty (15 years)

23. May I Ask Who’s Calling? (16 years)

24. The Christmas List (17 years)

25. For the Record (17 years)

26. Kiwis Can Fly (17 years)

27. King of Queen Street (18 years)

Foreword

My mate of thirty years, Stephen Groak, keeps his heart pinned close to chest and words spare, and is the classic survivor. In addition to surviving himself and an unruly childhood that unleashed many a future demon, he’s also survived and triumphed over the institution of marriage and its many tentacles, a stint as a copper in yesteryear’s New Zealand, a geographical and psychological flight to a new country and its expected challenges, fatherhood (no challenges there, of course), student hood, and everything else life in Downtown Crapsville, USA throws at us all. I admire him greatly. I admire that inner grit. It’s that grit you now hold in your hand.

The often-heard advice of writing what you know has informed my friend’s writing. He writes nothing but what he’s known. He has no interest in fakery or the contrived BS of moving plots along. When you’ve beaten the odds and gone head to head with the devils of your past, you’ve got a lot of carnage to pull from. Stephen’s raw material is abundant and funny. Always funny. He’s reaching for it and yanking it out like crimson guts, but I’m not sure how deep that reach needs to be. The material—though from almost fifty years ago, at times feel so close, so recent, so dripping wet, that it’s like yesterday—still smells of fresh mown grass, warm milk at school, and lolly shops in Groakland.

My Kiwi mate’s Bubble ’n’ Squeak is both raw autobiography and self-exorcism, and the emotions it explodes are as authentic as the oily fingerprints on my computer screen. From the contradictions of sibling love in The Go-Cart Incident to the existential ruminations of The Face of Death, Stephen drops us face-first into a troubled psyche that celebrates memory while also cursing it. We get intimate with the material real fast, and that’s because it’s bloody honest and unapologetically direct.

These stories lurk behind the occasionally opened door of my mate’s history, and they pile on to make a picture that reminds us that pain, pleasure, and comedy are universal and so often three faces of the same beast. This (literary) exorcism is the process that carves words on paper, and instead of catching green vomit in the face, we readers catch a firm assurance that the truth smeared here is a shared one. We’re not alone. We’re all red inside.

In every story, my writer pal’s personality is embedded like cancer. To know Stephen you need to read Stephen. He saves the juicy bits for his art. His art IS the answer to the question you’re dying to ask him. Don’t look elsewhere. The truth is splattered here, folks. Some farts and urine too.

Mark Savage

Orange County, California

2020

Preface

At some point in our lives, we’ve all known somebody—the high school class clown, a close family friend, a charismatic relative—who has the gift of storytelling. They had their repertoire of anecdotes that they shared at a moment’s notice to regale any receptive audience. Often such stories were told before the teacher arrived to class, at family barbeques, or over a festive Christmas dinner.

Frequently, the yarns they spun were personal: in some manner, we were a character in the tale being recounted. Out of respect, deference, or even appreciation of their craft, we smiled, or harnessed our tongues, as known facts got smudged, embellished, or even altered. We chose to remain audience groupies and not argumentative arbitrators…we were there when the neighbour’s dog barked at us when we walked past their home one summer evening, yet we nodded in agreement when the same incident was presented for the hundredth time as a life-and-death struggle with Cerberus, the hideous hound from hell.

I became keenly aware of the dynamic interplay between fact and fiction as I completed several short story assignments as part of my MA degree at Southern New Hampshire University. My source material was my colourful New Zealand childhood. As I wrote and re-wrote each stand-alone short story, experimenting with POV and incorporating the constructive feedback I received from my peers and teachers, I noticed the narratives took on lives of their own. A hodgepodge of voices and tales began to chronologically gel together like the English-style breakfast my dad used to make on a Sunday morning from the leftovers of the previous evening’s dinner.

The mental map of each tale began shifting as competing armies of memory and imagination engaged one another. Sections of narrative were annexed, redrawn, conquered, and subjugated by these two powerful faculties, creating a unique southern hemispheric world that you are invited to explore.

There are several West Auckland credentials I want to share to set the stage for Bubble ‘n’ Squeak: I grew up in Forest Hill Road, Henderson, Auckland, from the late 1960s through 1981. I attended Oratia Primary School, Bruce McLaren Intermediate, and Kelston Boys’ High School. As a teenager, I also played rugby for the Waitemata Rugby Football Club.

Some housekeeping: Playing Possum first appeared in the online 2014 Spring/Summer edition of towerjournal.com. The Go-Cart Incident was first published in penmanreview.com on July 4, 2014. An earlier version of Four Times Seven was first published in SHJ, Issue 12, Spring 2015 (servinghousejournal.com).

I want to acknowledge my dear Aussie mate Mark Savage for his gift of Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye for my fiftieth birthday, and the seeds it planted for using personal anecdotes in short stories. We all have an ego—but an alter ego…hmm…such literary possibilities.

I laud my beloved wife, Teresa, for typing many of these stories as I dictated them to her during our daily two-hour roundtrip commute to and from work, and my daughter, Danielle, for her editorial insights and for reminding me to keep my fiction honest and on point.

Finally, I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to the following collegiate professors in whose classes my fascination and fervour for the craft of storytelling was ignited. In their own unique style, they encouraged me