Edward R. Hackemer's Blog

Cobble Tales

ENGLAND, 1814.
Using pen and ink by candlelight or oil lamp, either in Sussex, Surrey, or Kent, J. Rutherford Pendragon described life as he lived it from boyhood and beyond. It was not only foot paths, dirt roads, or alleyways he traveled. From the country lanes of Cock Marling to the cobbled city streets of Maidstone, he chronicled legend, happiness, heartbreak, adventure, tragedy, and mystery across southeast England. His journals and stories have been collected, interpreted, researched, and transcribed into this volume. Whether it was by foot, stagecoach, wares wagon, or goat cart, it was not only dirt or dung that dropped to the gravel or cobbles along the way. Wash water, chamber pots, garbage, and life itself were emptied, dumped, discarded, tossed, and thrown from the windows and rooftops above. Tales of happiness, love, trauma, tribulation, and tragedy were ground to dust and wedged between the brick and fieldstone pavers. Be it paradox, parable, and parody, the stories fell from the lips of passersby and settled into the gravel and dirt underfoot. As the years passed, the dirt, grime, and muck may have been washed away, but the timeless sagas hidden between the cobblestones below remained to be told once again as
COBBLE TALES.
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During the first days of 2020, the citizens of the world were forced to deal with a global flu pandemic that grew its first roots in and around Wuhan, China.

In March 2020, just as the entire globe was forced into this unexpected and unprecedented “lockdown-shutdown mode”, I was contacted by my paternal fourth cousin, Jonah Hackemer Chatham of Oreville, Kent, England. Together, Joan and her first cousin once removed, Euphema Pendragon Arnold of Rye, East Sussex, England had discovered a common relative dangling from a tangled branch of an ever-expanding family tree. His name was Jedidiah Rutherford Pendragon.
After fourteen months of reading, research and a good deal of diligence, patience, and assistance from Cousins Jonah and Euphema, I was able to piece together the basic bits of Pendragon’s as well as other shared ancestors’ lives and times from the photocopied pages of the journals that J. Rutherford so earnestly kept.
After reading Chapter One, you will discover that Pendragon was a bookish scribe who endeavored to keep descriptive records and expressive dialogue of important life events from his youth through maturity. He clearly enjoyed describing the characters and settings and occasionally drifted off-topic as he transferred entries from his journals, and added personal anecdotes.
On the pages of Cobble Tales , you will find my interpretive rendition and assemblage of the autobiographical journals of J. Rutherford Pendragon.

The SS Phryné

SS Phryné :

The French steam merchant ship “Phryné” was the first French ship that was lost in World War II. Phryné was constructed in 1938 in Rouen. On 24 September 1939, Phryné was on a voyage from United Kingdom to France but she hit a mine from a German Submarine. She was 3.5 nautical miles, 6.5 km off the Aldeburgh Lightship. No one on board the SS Phryné was lost.

Type: cargo ship
Tonnage: 2,660 GRT
Length: 322 ft 6 in
Beam: 43 ft 8 in
Depth: 21 ft 4 in
I stumbled across the SS Phryné in 2018 during my extensive research while working on “Phryné Isn’t French” …
Remarkably, my character was in Rouen and Paris from 1938-1946.
However, Phryné Truffaut did not hit any mine and did not sink. She bravely sailed on!

Hard Covers

Finally!
All six Throckmorton Family Novels, both Truffaut Tales, plus Fables Follies & Foibles are now available in hardcover on Amazon.

Phryné Crossing the Channel

1946
Le Havre, France ~ Bournemouth, England

Phryné Crossing

Passport and Citizenship Checkpoint:
at the France-Switzerland border crossing; Basel, Switzerland,
aboard the Arlberg Express, August, 1945:

“My name is Phryné Althea Truffaut. I don’t know where or when I will end my journey. I intend on crossing every natural or man-made border I encounter until I find the peace that I am owed and the love that I deserve.”

¤copyrighted material¤

How it all started ...

copyrighted material
"In a Cream Packard"
Detroit, Michigan
May 31, 1954


A shiny new, vanilla cream Packard Patrician sat parked outside the Penobscot Building's Bank of Detroit. Underneath the long hood, a 327 cubic inch Straight Eight engine pulsed at idle, standing by and eager to break into a roar. Twenty-year-old Annie Dahl was seated on the front seat, legs crossed and waiting as patiently as she could for Alexander Throckmorton to exit the bank.

The dashboard Galvin vacuum tube radio was bubbling out Johnny Ray's “Cry”.
A soft easterly breeze brought a warm, muggy wisp of summer air across Lake St Clair.

Annie sighed, straightened and stretched her legs, and relaxed back on the seat. Her mind drifted for a brief moment and went away to last night's tryst on Belle Isle, Detroit River: moonlight, champagne, and love on a gingham blanket.
She sighed and brought her thoughts back to the present, and reassuringly thought, “This has to end well. I know it will. I’m knocking on the door of a brand new life with the man I love”
She recognized that the innocence of her life in Milwaukee was two days and four hundred miles ago. The promise of a dreamy future with Alexander was fueled by the excitement of the moment and the endless black ribbon of asphalt highways behind her.
Her taupe nylons whooshed as she moved and shifted a restless thigh on the soft leather front seat of the big car. Attempting to dampen her anxious jitters, she reached into her handbag, took out a fresh pack of Chesterfields, and lit one with her silver-plated Ronson. As the first puff left her crimson lips and swirled around her auburn locks, the smoke nipped at her eyes. She blinked, squinted, and brushed it away as a tear appeared.
Annie pressed open the glove compartment, grabbed the bottle of Gordon’s gin, and took a swallow from the green bottle. It tickled on the way down and once again gave her those goose-bumps on the nape of her neck. Alexander had told her that the juniper berries in gin can have that effect on some people.
Four minutes into her cigarette, she took a final draw and with a snap of her lacquered nails, flicked the spent butt to the concrete curb. Alexander was exiting the bank and quickly stepping down the seven granite steps with a distinct bounce to his gait. He approached the car with what appeared to be an illegal grin.
He handed his leather satchel to Annie and quickly settled in behind the wheel of the large automobile. From inside his breast pocket, Alexander pulled out his pack of Lucky Strike, handed it to Annie and asked her to light one for him.
He checked the mirrors, put the Packard into second gear, and lurched away from the curb and onto Griswald Street. Still wearing that grin, he looked at Annie and said, “Let's get back on the road, honey buns. And go ahead and take a good look inside the case."
She lit his cigarette and passed it to him. A curious nervousness came over her.
Carefully, gingerly she dared to open the leather flap and look inside the satchel. Inside, she discovered a Smith and Wesson 38 revolver snuggled between two canvas bank bags. She gazed over at Alexander.
He reached across the seat, and rested his right hand on her leg. She inched closer to him, and began to open one of the small canvas sacks inside the satchel. Both bank bags were stuffed with rolled bundles of hundred dollar bills. Annie’s eyes glistened in wonderment, her heart quickened and she realized that her life had suddenly changed.
She looked incredulously at Alexander, caught her breath and grabbed the bottle of Gordon's again. It went down easier this time. This time she felt a tingle course through her thighs.
Half an hour later, the satchel, the Packard, its driver and passenger were heading south on Telegraph Road. They were twenty miles from Detroit, heading for Cincinnati, further to Miami and eventually, Batista's Cuba. Driving down the road at fifteen miles an hour above the posted limit, Alexander had the big engine throbbing. He was confident that the new Packard could easily muscle away from any Michigan State Police black and white Ford.
Annie thought, “The road goes on forever, and the party never ends.” Several days and many miles later, she remembered that her great grandmother was a gypsy.
© 2011-2013 Edward R. HackemerIn a Cream Packard

Escape

Excerpt from A Gut Feeling
© 2019 from
Fables Foibles & Follies
(Göteborg, Sweden - June, 1975)

Ekaterina was already halfway into her midnight blue, silk and brushed cotton pantsuit when I pulled on my Y-fronts and grabbed my socks. I was into my shirt, summer worsted trousers and jacket in a flash.

Kat was standing at bedside, slipping on her Charles Jourdan open-toe pumps. We finished fastening buttons and closing zippers as we grabbed the valise, Kat’s smalls bag, our airline duffle and papers. Without another word, we scurried out the door, down the hall and toward the double staircase to the lobby.
I checked the time; it was less than two minutes since I answered the telephone. I spotted Kari smiling like a cunning barroom vixen and waiting behind the checkout counter with the guest book open in front of her. Her eyes sparkled, flashed and burned a warning into mine. Maxim was secure inside his compact carrier, under a warm, Icelandic woolen blanket and safely swaddled in his white cotton wrap. Kat came forward, scooped up our precious little rascal, nuzzled his pink cheek, and murmured nothings. Kari managed a plastic grin and turned her telltale gaze to Kat. There was one shabbily dressed man in the lobby, seated in a chair to my left, about fifteen feet away and looking blindly into an East German newspaper. Another was standing inside the red Swedish Telefon and Telegraf booth near the entrance doors to the foyer. He had the handset to his left ear and his right hand inside his jacket.
I smiled, nodded, stuck my hand inside my suit coat and said to Kari, “Thank you so much, Miss. We enjoyed our stay.”
I grit my teeth and breathed, “Kari ... telephone man ... Kat ... go. Go, Kat, go!”
All hell broke loose. Kari dispatched the man in the telephone booth with three rapid-fire rounds from her 25-caliber Walther before he could open the door. Kari sprang out from behind the counter. The fellow in the lobby was surprised, but had jumped to his feet with his weapon pointed in my direction. He got off one shot before I spun around and finished him unawares. Two unanswered rounds from my Beretta dropped him like a wet dishcloth. Kat was nearly at the exit doors with Maxim and her personals bag. I turned and saw that Kari had turned away from me, with both hands on the counter and still holding her pistol.
The lobby shooter missed me, but hit Kari.
“Go, Les.” she said. “Go. I’ll be fine.” A bullet had struck her right shoulder below the clavicle. She pressed a hand to the wound. Blood oozed between her fingers. I felt a sharp, brief pang in my heart.
© 2018 Edward R. Hackemer

The Truffaut Novels #2

Coming early to mid 2021:
"Phryne Crossing"

Phryné necessarily starts over in the sequel to "Phryné Isn't French".
The once-fallen flapper left the glitz & glamor of Hollywood for the artistic, romantic and inspirational streets of Paris, France. Once again, love betrayed her and a World War crushed her dreams.
Peace brings hope and the promise of a new life.
But where and with whom?

The New

Fables Foibles & Follies

You can donate your saliva into a DNA test tube and see the results in a few weeks. You could be in for the surprise of your life.

~ An indiscriminate garnering of random narratives ~
One: A Gut Feeling
Two: An Irish Odyssey
Three: Thoughts on a Toadstool
Four: The Needling
Five: Wanderlust
Six: From Bric-Á-Brac to Bunnies
Seven: A Child’s Tale
The dissertations found in Fables Foibles & Follies contain edited elements of fact, fantasy and fiction along with a smidgen of disconnected irrelevance and flippant authenticity.
A tree planted in the most fertile of soils under the most preferable conditions can still mature into a twisted, gnarled mass of branches.
Conversely, a rose emits the same sweet smell whether it’s planted in a raised bed or a manure pile.
If you want to know the whole story, you need to figure out who you are all by yourself. It’s a daunting task, but please, do try to have fun despite all the red tape and rigmarole.

Cadwallader Tisbury

New Bedford, Massachusetts

From the diary of Aine Faergahl, 1833
Fables Foibles & Follies
An Irish Odyssey

Our passage from the Travelers Inn was uneventful. In fact, we saw only a few children, two, perhaps three ragamuffins altogether, and two wayward souls who appeared to be nothing more than vagrant. We walked past shops of all sorts: butchers, bakers, haberdashers, cobblers, grocers and tinkers.

Cadwallader and I rounded the corner at Howland Walk. Suddenly, as if sent down from somewhere in heavens above, there before me was a wondrous, large stone building, fully four floor levels tall with yellow brickwork on the street-side façade. It was indeed a sight to behold. The morning sun set the yellow brick alight in stark contrast to the other red brick and wooden structures along the cobbled street. Its windows reflected and sparkled in the rays of daylight.
A heavy wooden sign, adorned in bright yellow letters, protruded from above the blood red, double entry doors that read: Jonathan Allen, Purveyor of Contracted Maritime Employment.
Below the sign stood five contemptible reasons for which I hired the landlord as my guide, spent five dollars, and thereby agreed to part with one of my four gold eagles. A quiver coursed up my backbone and across my shoulders. Five rugged curs, one for each of my dollars, came to life.

To a man, each dastardly dog was wrapped in clothing unfit for a corpse. We were fully ten yards down the street when their putrid stench struck me. If it was a foreboding of the fumes of Hell, then Hell it certainly was and you would hear no argument from me.
To my shocked surprise, Cadwallader drew a long pistol, a shining brass flintlock from his street coat and brandished it about. There came an indiscernible growl from his throat. He lifted his walking stick and crashed it thunderously downward onto the cobbles underfoot. Another growl and all five devils sprang from the doorway, down the stoop and toward the docks. My bodyguard Cadwallader growled in their direction yet again for good measure and graced me a wide grin that included all of his black and brown teeth. A vulgar chortle followed as he put the pistol back inside his coat.
I blame it on the mayhem and I cannot truly recall, but I most certainly thanked him. Likely disturbed by the ruckus, dogs began barking somewhere along the wharf. A cat wailed from an alleyway.
The dust of the devils’ departure settled and Cadwallader opened one of the heavy red doors and motioned me inside. There were three or four desks in a spacious room. It smelled of tobacco, lamp oil, wet shoes and men. Upon each desk was a rounded stack of papers and bound books that partially concealed a young man seated upon a stool. Truly, they were young and two appeared to be boys, and not fully men, but they wore spectacles, each and every one.
© 2018 Edward R. Hackemer