ABOUT THE BANANA

In completing the book, Dominic Drive, the one my brother, Rockin’ Ron Lund, started, we include a story about a surfboard. We called it the Banana. It was based on a real surfboard called the Jolly Green Giant.

As described in the book, “It’s a big, ugly yellow [green] board. Most of the guys in the neighborhood learned to surf on it.” This was true. We don’t remember who owned it before Larry or who he sold it to. (Maybe Tom Closser?) Unfortunately, Ron would probably know. He might also know if it was still around and who had it and who the succession of owners were! But he isn’t here to ask.

The one thing we do know is that everyone who bought or sold it paid (or got) twenty-five dollars for the transaction. Every time. No exceptions.

The board had a yellow fin, so when Larry owned it, he cut out pictures of the character from a couple of can labels and epoxied one on each side—just so there would be no confusion about the board’s moniker.

Rockin’ Ron Lund and the Jolly Green Giant

I don’t know if Ron ever actually owned it. This photo might have been taken when Larry owned the board. My brother-in-love, Casey, said he remembers only once when Ron went to Doheny with them. He said he saw Ron start to paddle out, but he doesn’t remember him ever riding a wave in.

Like the character of Dan in the book, he may have tried it a couple of times, but he wasn’t interested in learning how to do it. He’d much preferred to ride his bicycle or drive around in an old car.

He did own a couple of longboards, though. When he got his first classic station wagon, he said he wanted a longboard or two to stick out through the back window.

Larry had an old Gordie his friend, Randy Kiefer, left with us when he moved to Las Vegas. A few years later, we saw him when he came back to California to visit his mother. Larry suggested he take his board back with him.

“Heck, no. You keep it. I’ll never use it again.”

So, it languished in our garage for years. When Ron said he wanted a longboard, Larry offered him Randy’s. He also let him have his own old blue Hobie. Ron put them on his cars for special occasions.

Ron with his VW at his 50^th high school class reunion

In telling the story of Dominic Drive, the tale of the Joly Green Giant (the Banana) was just too good not to include.

Do any of you remember it? Did anyone own it? Do you know what happened to it? Learn more about it in the book

 

COUNTDOWN TO JAPAN

The world is counting down to the Olympic Games to be held in Japan next month. Because of the pandemic, the games were delayed for a year. But now, it seems, they are really happening.

We were supposed to go back to Osaka this year, too. March 31 marked the twentieth anniversary of the opening of Universal Studios Japan. We spent from August of 1998 through the spring of 2001 there helping to build it.

During our time there, I sent home email messages every couple of weeks about places we’d visited, things we’d seen, and all our adventures living as expats. (Today, it would be called a blog.) These ended up being sent to about 150 people. When we returned, I discovered they had been forwarded to even more.

Friends insisted they had to be published as a book. Sounded easy. It wasn’t.

The individual subjects were timely when they were written, but they didn’t fit together well for a book. So, I started over.

After a few chapters, I discovered I needed—and wanted—Larry’s input. What he came up with was a totally different book than the one I intended.

We remained at an impasse until our friend, Julie, suggested we join her writing group and ask them for advice. At the first meeting, one of the members suggested a solution, and we began the book again with each of us writing our own chapters, identified by our names.

When we finished, we looked for an agent. Two of them liked the book, but they both had the same issue: it didn’t fit neatly into any category. It was about Japan, but it wasn’t a travel book. It was about building USJ, but it wasn’t exclusively a theme park book. It was about doing business in Japan, but it wasn’t specifically a business book. It was a memoir, but we were told memoirs wouldn’t sell unless you were famous. We weren’t.

Time passed, and interest in the building of the park was waning. So, we decided to use subsidy publishing. This is where you pay something for the publication, but not nearly what it costs the publisher.

After three grueling edits, 31 Months in Japan: The Building of a Theme Park was finally published in the spring of 2005 in hardback, paperback, and ebook. In 2018, we added the audiobook with a great narrator. It went on to be one of two finalists for best ebook memoir of the year in 2006, was named one of Rebeccas Reads best nonfiction books of 2005, and was listed on the Forbes recommended reading list as well as several theme park websites.

If you would like to learn a bit about Japan in preparation for the Olympics, this is the book for you! If you plan to visit Japan, this book contains many tips to make your trip easier. If you want to learn about the trials and tribulations of building a world-class theme park, this is the only book ever written about the building of a Universal Studios theme park. (There is one other about a specific ride: Revenge of the Mummy.) And if you plan to relocate to Japan, be sure to check this one out.

If you have any questions about what it was like to live and work there, please feel free to ask.

About Ghosts

Summer (along with the heat) has arrived, and it's time for a fun beach read. I have one: Ghost Writer.  It is a virtual trip to Laguna Beach, California--complete with a charming and annoying ghost. Here's a little bit about it--and ghosts.

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-leggedy beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us!

~ Old Cornish Prayer ~

“I don’t believe in ghosts.” This is how Ghost Writer begins. My character, Nan Burton, adamantly insists she doesn’t believe. That is, until she's confronted with the noisy one living in her house.

I, on the other hand, do believe in ghosts. We had one living in our first house. Not a person, however. Ours was a cat.

Shortly after we moved in, I woke up on occasion with the sense of something walking across the foot of our bed. It felt like a small animal. I’d never owned a cat, but this didn’t feel like a dog, so I suspected a beastie of the feline persuasion.

After a couple of months, Larry and I both woke at the same time.

“It’s the strangest thing,” I started. “It felt like a cat has been walking across the bed during the night.”

“I’ve felt it, too,” was his matter-of-fact reply.

“Thank God! I thought I was going crazy.”

We speculated for some time about the cat, but he (or she) continued the nightly rounds.

Several months later, the woman who had grown up in the house stopped by. We showed her what we’d done to the house. She was very complimentary and told us stories about growing up there.

Just before she left, she asked, “Have you seen a cat around?” She went on to describe the cat, including what he like to do and where he liked to hide in the house. She mentioned that he’d patrol the house at night, his route taking him across each of their beds. Unfortunately we had to tell her that we hadn’t seen any animals resembling hers in the neighborhood.

“He disappeared the day my folks were moving. We came back and left food and left our contact information with all the neighbors, but we never found him.”

Her parents were the original owners and had lived there for seventeen years. The house had been on the market nearly a year before we bought it. So, any chance of locating the cat seemed pretty remote by that time.

We assured her that we’d keep an eye out, and she left.

A few weeks later, we realized that we no longer felt the cat walking across the bed.

“I wonder if it was the former owners’ pet. Maybe he was just waiting for them to come back before he could move on,” I told Larry.

“Hmm, maybe.”

A couple of years later, we adopted a stray kitten who appeared on our front porch. Like our ghost, our cat was nocturnal and roamed the house at night. We always kept our bedroom door closed, but in the morning when our daughter opened it, he’d take a stroll across the bed. And it felt just like the ghost cat.

How about you? Do you believe in ghosts? Have you seen any? Felt any? Sensed their presence? I’d like to hear your experiences.

ABOUT A DOG

 

I recently shared about Luanna Rugh’s book, Up in Flames, in which a scarlet macaw plays a major role. She has another with a dog in a central role in Love From the Sea.

Two strangers find a near-drowned puppy buried in seaweed on the beach. They rescue him together and name him Sandy. Amber Winslow wants to keep him. However, pets are not allowed in her apartment. Wyatt Andrews has a home with a kennel, but his hours are not conducive to meeting the injured pup’s schedule requirements for recovery. They decide to compromise. Both will care for Sandy together. Over the weeks and months of Sandy’s recovery, will Amber and Wyatt find love along with their love of the puppy?

In this book, Sandy, the dog, contributes to the narrative from a personal standpoint.

We spent a delightful day at the beach with Luanna’s dog, Gina, shooting photos for the cover.

Not long afterward, Gina passed away. Luanna was delighted that Gina will be forever honored as the cover model for this book.

If you enjoy sweet romance with humor, you will love this book.

LUANNA RUGH was born and raised on a dairy in Central California. She always loved animals, cats and dogs, cows and horses, not to mention the many wild animals living in the area. At ten, she decided she wanted to become a high school biology teacher.

Her family moved to Southern California the year she entered high school. Luanna followed her path in college until the summer of 1966. She worked at a local restaurant where she met the love of her life, Len Rugh. They were married in February of 1967. A year and a half later, Len was drafted and sent to Vietnam where he was critically wounded, but that’s another story.

When Len returned to California, she finished school and earned two teaching credentials in 1984.

At age fifty-seven, she discovered she could write when she co-authored the first of the six books in the Aspen Grove Romance Anthologies. She contributed to all six of them.

After she and Len published their award-winning memoir, Promises Kept: How One Couple’s Love Survived Vietnam, she decided to stretch her wings, and write on her own. She loves writing animals as supporting characters. In Love From the Sea, a dog plays a major role. In Up in Flames, another dog and a scarlet macaw are lead characters.

Her books are available in paperback and Kindle editions. Most are also available as audiobooks.

She hopes you enjoy reading them as much as she loved writing them.