It is strange, sometimes, when seeing something triggers your memory to something else that happened years, years ago. I recently pulled up an old movie on Turner Classic Movies named “Please Don’t Eat The Daisies.” It starred Doris Day and was taken from a book by Jean Kerr. Jean Kerr was married to a famous Broadway critic. Jean Kerr was the woman who kept me from the big time in writing humor. At that time The Reader’s Digest was the top paying market for short fiction-humor. They paid over a thousand dollars when I had been selling to the fifty and sometimes hundred dollar publications. My dream was to move up to the Digest. Well one day I wrote a little article titled Who’s Homework. It was about a busy father trying to write an article as he sat comfortably in his favorite chair in front of the TV trying to write a little humor article while his four children, simultaneously, are asking for help with their homework. I’d say it was a good article, but then I wrote it. I was hoping the editor at Reader’s Digest would think it was a great article.
I guess she did because I received a letter from a Reader’s Digest editor saying they liked the article and would hold it with others for a future issue and they would let me know if it was selected. For a while I was in hog heaven, thinking of the steak dinners I might buy for our family with a thousand dollar or more check. Being married with four children and living on my meager salary didn’t allow for any steak dinners out. When I made a sale of my writing we had dinner out at Ernies Fish Emporium and Earnie only charged us for three of the children saying that little David didn’t eat much. And my wife used to bring an empty bottle and fussed over Earnie so that he would fill the bottle with the best french salad dressing you ever tasted, as a little bonus for our dinner out.
Anyway, after waiting several months I got a nice letter from the Reader’s Digest editor saying that my article was beat out by a humor article by Jean Kerr who had also written the book that was made into that movie I saw on TV. My records show that I sold the article, “Whose Homework” to a magazine named The Lector. But, and this is the biggest “but”, perhaps of my entire career. But later I included that humor article in a collection of 29 of such humor items in my first book titled “It Only Hurts When I Frown”.. It was published by Liguori Press and when they had exhausted their supply they returned my rights to the book. I republished that book myself starting my own publishing company called Growth Unlimited Inc. And when we sold out of those books we republished it again and again twice more.
Believe me, our family celebrated each of those events with many breakfasts out, lunches out and steak dinners occasionally too. The Reader’s Digest? Oh, I sent them a lot more submissions but they never held one again. I’m not angry at Jean Kerr any longer. Growth Unlimited Inc. celebrated its 25 Anniversary.
While on the topic of shopping I couldn’t resist attaching a song I wrote 20+ years and Greg Brayton and I recorded titled Graj Sailin’. Greg sings all the voices and he introduced our song at a variety show held at the Opera House in Coldwater Michigan and stopped the show in glory.
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