Ya Git Old

[Jon Ford]

<Twisty, Was Michael Waddell married to Linda Reese Vaughn whose mother
<was
<from Menard? Did Michael and Linda have a daughter named Clara? Just
<curious.
<marilyn wheless

Michael Waddell was married to Reese Vaughn and had a daughter named Clara. 
Michael and Reese were good friends of mine in Berkeley in the late 60s 
until about 1971, when they moved back to Texas and split up. Michael is a 
good example of what we were talking about a few days on the list-- what you 
can or can't get with an undergraduate degree as  an English major.Micahel 
came from  college educated family ( I think his parents were teachers or 
school administrators).  Out on the Coast, he got a job with the UC Berkeley 
library (I think he had a BA in English, maybe some formal training in 
librarianship). He was also a poet , which you can see in some of the 
word-play in his recent essay about getting old, and a bit of a snob-- he 
once disparaged me for reading Phillip K. Dick novels because the diction 
wasn't sophisticated enough-- he couldn't accept the fact that "pulp" 
literature like fantasy sci fi could also be full of acute cultural insights 
.

Before he became a carpenter, Michael  got sick of librarianship (a pretty 
easy thing to get sick of, as it is pretty boring to shelve books all day 
and talk to students about the Dewey Decimal System endlessly).  He quit to 
go to work in a hippie mechanic shop  in Berkeley where he learned how to 
fix VWs, and probably other cars as well. Whern he moved back to Texas, he 
trained to be a carpenter and stuck to that trade for the rest of his 
career. Maybe he'll return to being a writer in his old age.

Jon