Travel now with Patrick as he contemplates a new life in the West

The opening paragraphs of my new novel, Zeppelins Over Denver:

Patrick Michael Hott pulled his cap down on his forehead and slumped into the seat on the east side of the southbound train. It was the last day of July 1919. He shifted in the seat, trying to bend his lanky frame into the limited space. He looked out the window. Cows grazed on brown swatches of grass that stretched all the way to the flat horizon. He passed green wavy ranks of ripening corn. There was a man laboring out in his field. An old farmhouse. More cows.

He looked in the other direction, past his seatmate and to the opposite side of the train. That was the west and the Rocky Mountains. Heads and hats blocked that view out of the passenger car windows. So many big people. So many hats. Floppy women’s hats adorned with feathers. Towering cowboy hats worn by towering cowboys. Straw boaters worn by rangy young dudes. Beat-up hats worn to protect farmers from the mile-high sun. Every blessed American wore a big hat that obscured his view of the mountains. They were all on his train.

Why couldn’t they wear sensible headwear such as the soft cap he bought in Chicago on the Fourth of July? He had joined his brother’s family to picnic on Lake Michigan for the first Fourth that America celebrated after The Great War. Not even a month ago. He bought the cap from a street vendor. He liked it immediately and spent too much of his hard-earned pay for it. He liked that he could pull it down over his big ears when the winter winds blew off the lake. The bill kept the sun off his face, which would come in handy now that he was on his way to Arizona. It also gave him a dapper air, or so he believed.

To be continued

Order Zeppelins Over Denver by Michael T. Shay now from your favorite bookstore. Just yesterday, friends ordered copies from Parnassus Books in Nashville, co-owned by the magnificent Ann Patchett,  and Mitchell Kaplan's Books & Books in Miami. Mitchell was co-founder of the amazing Miami Book Fair that began in 1984. These bookstores are key parts of the literary world that keep hope alive even when dark forces try to destroy us. 

Pardon me boy is this the Pennsylvania Station? No, Ormond Station, and the train is a comin'

We live in a place called Ormond Station. It is located in Central Florida on a line where Volusia County and Flagler County meet. Our mailing address is Ormond Beach. Our mail is routinely lost. Perhaps the postal delivery person is looking for a railroad station because Ormond Station's logo is railroad tracks. The roundabout located just outside our Groveside neighborhood's gates bear some fine railroad tracks on the sand-colored-brick structure that surrounds a fountain. We can sometimes hear trains rolling down a Florida East Coast Railroad line. When we are driving beachward down Grenada Avenue (Fla. Hwy. 40) and we hear the lonesome whistle blow, we know that our motoring excursion will be delayed at the railroad crossing. Grenada is one busy avenue. 

Groveside is not beside any orange groves. That's what I think of when I think of Florida groves. It is aside groves of wetland trees and bushes so I guess that counts as a grove. Developers develop hereabouts by clearcutting forests. It is easier to build without trees. The thinking is that this is Florida and greenery grows so fast you can almost watch it burst into maturity. So, build the houses, plant some trees, and in ten years you have groves. 

There used to be orange groves here. When we moved to Florida in the mid-1960s, oranges still grew. You could drive down county roads in the spring and smell orange blossoms. A beautiful sweet smell. There was a roadside store along U.S. 1 close to my new location that sold oranges and anything orange you could dream of. You could buy a bunch of citrus and ship it home to Michigan or even Wyoming. Too many hard frosts killed citrus north of Orlando. You could find groves all the way up to Ocala on the road to Gainesville. In Patrick Smith's wonderful novel "A Land Remembered," the poor schmucks settling post-Civil-War Florida, were growing oranges in the sandy soil. They needed the shade as Mr. Carrier had not yet invented A/C. 

Here at Ormond Station we expect a train any time. In our imaginations. I can see a train line running down Airport Road, from its terminus at Hwy. 40 to its end at U.S. 1. It passes Ormond Airport thus its name. Shuttlecraft not yet designed will fly you to college football match-ups around the state. The trains will also be modern, possibly a solar-powered streetcar or light rail. Other neighborhoods are being planted along the way. There are two schools along the line . I walk my neighborhood to the Groveside marker and pick up the early afternoon train. It takes me to the Ridgewood Line which travels down U.S. 1 to Jackie Robinson Ballpark, home to the Daytona Tortugas. I love a good baseball game on a spring afternoon. My wife Chris, also a baseball fan whose father once took her to Atlanta Braves games, is with me. My children, too, Kevin and Annie. We are spirits together, our little family who settled these parts back in its infancy, when we left the Rocky Mountains behind for a place in the sun, something aside a grove, a rail stop to the future here at Ormond Station.