Every artist should be blessed with a muse, and mine was visual art, more specifically painting. I dallied with writing, even as a child. It was less messy, and besides, my father had presented me with an old Underwood typewriter, on which I could barely peck out a sentence. Always practical, he told me I would need typing skills one day, but I was too impractical for that!
I was fascinated with the writings of Colette, Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant, and the old movie "The Razor's Edge," which was based on a W. Somerset Maugham story set in Paris. So I started writing a story set in the City of Light in my little den upstairs at the northern end of the house, looking out the window on the then-bare lot on Hazzard Lane. I dreamed of it being renamed "Pam Bounds Alley" someday when I became famous.
No matter that I had not yet been to Paris; I was unaware that one should write about what one knows, so I typed away choppily on my old Underwood. Unsurprisingly, I didn't finish the novel I started, and a few years passed before I faced any serious writing tasks again. Fast forward to college in New Mexico. In my freshman year, I encountered an art history class taught by Mr. Elmer Schooley, head of the Art Department, my chosen major. He was a serious Midwesterner from Iowa, and he didn't seem to have fallen under my spell as had the other professors, but he was a fascinating lecturer.
In his class, we were told to write a paper about another branch of art aside from the visual. I chose the medieval morality play "Everyman," hoping to impress this serious taskmaster with my gravitas. Unfortunately, I might also have smoked some peyote buttons, hoping to similarly impress some more sophisticated California compatriots at the Coffee House, before facing this daunting assignment. I recall coughing and trying to appear cool as I tried to maneuver the communal bong.
Needless to say, my essay rambled on senselessly, and I received a harsh rebuke in red ink on my messily handwritten paper, which probably should have been typed. Oh, and did I say I also got an F?! I redid the paper and chose the topic "French Chansons and Secular Music of the Sixteenth Century." I really did have a true affinity for this subject, as I played this album incessantly in my dorm room.
By this time I had made my parents pay double for a private room, as I was certain another girl would have not understood my musical predilections. After submitting this second essay, I received an A+ and a compliment scrawled across the top of my paper from Mr. Schooley, "I knew you could write!" I still to this day particularly remember one line I penned, which mentioned, "the kind of sensuality that lies beneath a velvet gown." Ahhh, dreamy!
Fast forward again many years, and I decided to enter a sort of contest the News Journal was holding to earn a spot writing for the community advisory board. There were 12 openings, and those chosen would get to write a column every three months and sit in on board meetings at a big, long, impressive table with the editorial board and important invited people who appeared before them. Plus, there was usually pizza!
My husband Jeff scoffed and said I had no chance of being selected because, in his opinion, I was the Queen of the Run-on Sentence! However, I proved him wrong and won. I even beat out a Widener University law professor and a chemical substation engineer, who both just became alternates. Incidentally, the Cape Gazette's own Nancy Katz, my predecessor on this column, was also chosen.
Later, when we moved back to Milton, I started writing short enticements to accompany my art which I post on Facebook. I must confess that I come from the J. Peterman catalog school of writing, as these vignettes were written in that brief, tempting, breezy style. To write my column Around Town with Pam, I often get my ideas upon waking up in the morning, or sometimes, something will happen to write about. Since I’ve been around a long time, I like to feature local, nostalgic topics that people enjoy remembering. You never know who will appear in my stories. Sometimes I interview people. I also endeavor to be humorous.
I sit at the corner of my sofa, usually late at night, and "turn on the spigot," so to speak, and out flows the maple syrup of words and thoughts. The hardest part is getting my husband Jeff, my scribe, to type up my manuscript on his computer. He is my first unofficial editor, and like Mr. Schooley of years past, he offers opinions, checks my spelling, flags any run-on sentences, and sometimes tones down my wilder ramblings, for which I pay him $10 per article so as to put a smile on his face.
I supposed if I had listened to my father and learned to type, I would have saved money, but writing gives me such pleasure, I really don't mind.
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Pam Bounds is a well-known artist living in Milton who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine art. She will be sharing humorous and thoughtful observations about life in Sussex County and beyond.
