Last Friday
morning, I shared with my once-a-month breakfast group, Women in Transition
(WIT), the tentative name of the novel I’m writing about my father’s life in
the 1920’s and 30’s.
Cat Skinner drew non-responsive stares - which
compelled me to explain the name. I didn’t want my friends to think I’m
descended from a psychopath or that I’m promoting cruelty to animals. I recently
helped to start a non-profit benefiting animals at our local shelter – for heaven’s
sake!
Following is
an excerpt from Chapter 1:
He was used to being in charge and in
control, whether it was operating heavy equipment: Caterpillar tractors, bull
dozers, crushers, backhoes, blades, shovels, dump trucks – or men. He’d been a
shift boss on a lot of jobs. He knew how to lead and get things done. He was a
Cat Skinner. That’s what they called heavy equipment operators. Webb liked the
moniker because it recognized his skill, but he joked with friends about
“skinner” since it referred to a man who drove a mule team. Skinning a mule
just meant you were smarter than the mule. “A questionable gauge of
intelligence,” Webb would say with a belly laugh and a drink in his hand.
There are
those who know what’s meant by the term, Cat Skinner, but usually they’re folks
with lots of miles behind them and a penchant for starting sentences with, “Back
in my day…”
So here is
my dilemma. What should the subtitle be?
My dad was a
Cat Skinner who was self-educated. He only attended a year and a half of high
school – maybe not even that long since he and his brother were told to leave
home when Webb was fourteen and his brother Ray sixteen.
The term Cat
Skinner fits him so well, I don’t want to change the name, but the subtitle
needs to explain he doesn’t skin cats. It has to succinctly convey the essence
of the novel which is a working stiff’s story of love and loss in the 1930’s. Does
that do it or do you have other ideas? All offerings welcome. J
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