Diogenes went looking for Larry Leonard.
My copy of Far Walker is inscribed “To Jackson – Buy a dictionary.
“All the good stories are in there.”
I had asked him for his best writing advice.
From November 2, 1988. – JDW
I was looking for Larry Leonard and I was lost. The handwritten map was not drawn to scale. Just down the road from the Willamette Valley Soaring Center, I had found the Mountaindale General Store easy enough, though I still wonder why the small black and white television had Buffalo Bob on it. Cue the Twilight Zone theme.
I found the turn off to Dairy Creek and began to look for a lane that led to Larry’s. No, that couldn’t be it.
Miles later, the road dead-ended at a tree farm high atop Meacham Road. It was cold, gray, overcast, and I was alone and late and lost in the woods.
A large hawk sailed in circles high overhead. It could’ve been a vulture.
In the crisp Fall air, I sucked it up… and decided I wasn’t really lost after all. Yeah, that’s it. I’m not lost. Sure, I’m right here. I know where I am. Leonard’s lost! Yeah, that’s it. If he wasn’t lost, I would’ve found him by now. I just haven’t yet got to where I’m going. That’s the ticket.
I was starting to lose it over getting lost.
I found Larry Leonard standing ankle-deep in felines in front of a small cabin at the end of an obscure motor-trail hard by a babbling brook.
“It’s home,” Leonard shrugs “I caught my first trout about three hundred yards from here in 1948.”
Most of his classic red Alfa Romeo was on blocks in a shed, the rest of it scattered about.
His faithful pickup truck, a remnant of the Sixties, stood nearby, ready to roll.
He looked genuinely pleased to see me. He had not a clue how happy I was about finally finding him.
I felt somehow like I’d been searching for this guy since the fifth grade.
The forty-seven-year-old Leonard, a large bearded fellow, seems bigger than his size. Could be his personality or his aura or his cigar smoke.
“I’m a difficult man,” he says, and then apologizes for the spaghetti sauce. “I hope you don’t mind canned.”
Larry Leonard is a writer and, like most, he’s done some other stuff.
Like shoveling squash in a Bird’s Eye cannery and putting the Eskimo on the tail of all those Alaska Airline planes.
“The only diploma I have is from a General Motors Training Institute,” Leonard told me when I asked about his education.
“I’m a mechanic.” He’s also a philosopher.
I am willing to concede a man might come to some truths after forty years of holding onto the dry end of a fishing line.
“The truth can’t be said in words,” Leonard says, ignoring the irony.
“The only ultimate truth is when you don’t say anything… Life is either very good or very bad. It’s supposed to be that way.
“If it wasn’t for Walt Disney, we wouldn’t be so confused…
“Every time every writer writes, he’s making a point and, if he isn’t, he’s just putting words on the pages…
“Happy isn’t money, it isn’t material things. It’s right where you are. Of course, unhappy is also right where you are.
“But we each choose whether to be happy.”
Larry Leonard has chosen to write books. He wants to do work that’s worthwhile and for which he’ll be recognized.
The recognition is sure to follow Breitenbush Books’s publication of Far Walker. Our local daily newspaper described Far Walker as “a haunting parable of discovery and non-conformity.” Jean Auel, author of The Clan of the Cave Bear, calls Far Walker “a metaphor for the individual, the one who is willing to strike out on his own and, even more, to stand his ground against the almost irresistible headlong drive of his fellow creatures racing to their own direction.”
Let’s pause here, catch our breath, and consider the implications of what was just said juxtaposed with the choice all registered voters face on Tuesday, November 8. Harsh, huh?
Leonard didn’t start out to compose a parable nor any metaphor. The book began as a favor to a friend.
“A father told me his son, David, was in trouble, getting into the drug culture,” Leonard recalls. “Seems like the kid respects me and his dad thought I might be able to get through to him. So, I started to write him a letter.”
Two pages of correspondence later, Leonard knew he should be writing a book instead.
“I wrote around the clock,” he says. “It took me two days. I read it as it came out of the typewriter. The story must have been circling the earth, just waiting for someone to transcribe it.”
According to Leonard, you should be able to tell what a book is about by its first sentence. In its own way, the whole story should be there.
Far Walker begins: “His name was David, and even the day he was born, he struck the other lemmings as most unusual.”
Conventional wisdom suggests young people succumb to the temptation of drugs because of peer pressure and/or a low self-esteem.
The theme of Far Walker might be interpreted as just-say-yes-to-yourself. The tale conveys a message to both young and old, says its author, that “what other people think is not necessarily what’s right for you. Ten million Frenchmen CAN be wrong.”
What others think of you is not necessarily accurate either.
David is a misfit among his own tribe, a little guy who can’t seem to do anything right, try as he might.
Forced to leave the lovely – for a lady lemming – Sheba, shunned by his own family, outcast in a scene that might remind older readers of the Salem witch hunts and remind teenagers of many street kids. David finds guidance in the most unlikely of places and then ultimately within himself. A danger-filled odyssey forms the book’s core because, Leonard notes, “Sometimes it’s a long walk to find yourself.” Nobody said it would be easy.
Far Walker has been compared, accurately I believe, to Watership Down and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It is more than a good piece of writing, it’s thought-provoking. Perhaps even important.
By telling simply, a child’s fable about one of the least of God’s creatures, Leonard has given us an opportunity to look at own lives and the way we live them.
If that little son of a lemming can overcome those odds, then maybe the rest of us can, too.
And maybe this time we will do more than read the book. Maybe this time we’ll pay attention. Maybe this time.
I glanced at Larry’s reflection in my rear view mirror.
As I drove off, he stood there surrounded by cats, looking like one of his favorite fictional characters.
Like one of his favorite fictional characters, Scaramouche, a man who was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was good.
Right where he is.
