Keep Notes at All Times. You Never Know When You’ll Need Them

When I worked as a course developer at the Northwestern University Center for Public Safety (then called The Traffic Institute) in the 1970s, I had no idea anything I did there would ever be relevant to a future novel. The center’s focus is police management and also accident investigation. While I worked more closely with the police management and supervision courses, I also wrote exams and handouts for the accident investigation curriculum.

The center’s courses were based in large measure on the work of J. Stannard Baker whom I consider the father of modern accident investigation. If the name sounds familiar it’s because his father was Ray Stannard Baker (aka David Grayson), a Pulitzer Prize-winning muckraking journalist in the late 1800s. While I had studied the muckrakers in college, I never asked Mr. Baker about his family because I was sure he was tired of questions about them.

I was rather in awe of him and his accomplishments in accident investigation, one of which was detailing a way to tell whether a car’s headlights were on or off at the time of an accident. I found him to be a low-key individual who was easy for a young course developer to work with. He treated me as an equal, a status I didn’t think I really deserved.

I remember the courses and, in fact, have a copy of one of his books that will very much help me write competent accident investigation scenes in my novel in progress.

I didn’t include an accident investigation in the novel because I worked with Mr. Baker, but because it was central to the story’s plot. Old memories and old employment just happened to be a research gift.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of contemporary fantasy, paranormal, and magical realism short stories and novels.