A new/old Facebook friend recently asked me to tell him about the book we are writing. Don, this one's for you:
The GOOD-BYE MAN is the story of how Linda Brown learned of her father's clandestine career. And how that career has extended its effect into her own life in the most unusual of ways.
Linda epitomizes what I love most about the denizens of this high desert region: She is private, practical, down-to-earth and gifted in unusual ways. However, she would be the VERY last person in the world to seek the limelight for those gifts. The most boastful thing I have ever heard her say is that she hasn't been thrown from a horse in years. To which I mentally hear her add, "And I'm not about to start now!" (She is also a very determined person, once her mind is made up.)
Which is a very good thing, because she will have to sacrifice some of her beloved privacy as a trade-off for seeing this story through to the end. The interest in the Linda Brown's whereabouts and activities extends all the way back to the years just after Townsend's death. Kiwi extraordinaire, Nate Cull , another forum friend from down under, recalls the story as he heard it:
"...and I'd swear there was also something somewhere, mid-late 80's, about Linda Brown (hello!) living out in the desert (presumably to await the alien invasion), and having had a boyfriend who was a secret agent in the Big Conspiracy. Seriously. Hints and rumours. I don't know where I heard it. I may be imagining it. But again, that feeling of deja-vu. Who might have written that, and why, and where?
Well, I suppose there are a few grains of truth mixed in with the hyperbole, but no one has told me beans about any forthcoming alien invasion and I haven't noticed Linda and George digging foxholes behind the horse corrals. Although the former boyfriend part is pretty close to accurate, the thing about the Big Conspiracy (as opposed to the run of the mill every day conspiracies) is that no one knows what it really is. That's what makes it Big. And Conspiratorial.
Anyway, I don't know if we'll ever be able to answer Nate's questions about the source of the story going around in the eighties. It won't matter by the time we get to the end of the tale as Linda knows it, There will be new and bigger questions waiting to be asked. .
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
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1 comment:
Thanks for the kind words. :)
For the sake of any readers I wish I could source my feeling of deja-vu about the 'Linda Brown hiding out in the desert' story with more precision. I *think* I read the rumours I referred to in small-press print such as The Antigravity Handbook in the 1980s, but my memory has played tricks on me before and it could as easily have been the 1990s.
Looking back with a 2010 sensibility, my top suspect for those rumours is John Lear, and I'd take all of his stuff with a large grain of salt. This is pure speculation on my part: even if my memory is correct and not just deja-vu, it might not have been him, but he was probably in a position to know Linda and talk.
Prior to say 1993, most of my sources would have been dead-tree books/magazines. After about that year, when Usenet and Keelynet feeds started hitting the computer BBS culture, and The X-Files started taking the alt.conspiracy culture mainstream, all bets are pretty much off for sources; I could have got anything from anywhere.
Worst case, I dreamed it or something, which would be very annoying indeed; I don't *think* that's ever happened to me specifically (I'm usually very clear on dreams vs reality), but who knows.
I'm fascinated to know how memes and 'urban myths' spread, and I guess it only takes one person talking offhand in print for a whole story to get constructed. So I wish I could substantiate this, for my own peace of mind as much as to make sure the public record doesn't get polluted. But at the moment this might have to get filed as 'hearsay' unless I can find a specific instance of this story in print. If I do, I'll certainly get back to you.
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