Welcome to a new story – of sorts. I wrote A Fresh Start beginning in 2010 and began publishing it in 2011. The original I published on StoriesOnline as a ‘much sex’ version; this is the PG-13 version. Writing it was one of the most amazing things I have ever undertaken. It’s a genre I had never tackled before, and it’s always a favorite - the classic “what if” story. What if I knew then what I know now? What if I could do it all over again? This story generated reader emails at a level easily ten times what I had previously received. There is something about the topic or the characters that seems to strike a chord (or in some cases, a nerve) with people. I had never seen anything like it before!
It is critical to realize that this story was written at a time when the Tea Party was the dominant political movement. You can read that in the Prologue, where Carl Buckman describes the Great Recession and the plans the Tea Party espoused to cure all our problems.
How did the future I describe come about? I simply listened to the Tea Party! I don’t care what your beliefs are; if you listened to their speakers and read their plans, the America of the future would be very, very different. They didn’t want to just ‘shrink’ the government. The true believers wanted to eliminate the Federal government! No taxes and no cabinet departments other than the ones listed in the Constitution. Give power back to the states. End all government programs and handouts. Corporations and businesses were all good. I never thought I would live to see the day when nurses and teachers would be pelted with garbage because of their jobs. I am not making this stuff up. It was a race to the bottom!
That being said, this is not a story about politics! I can’t repeat that enough! This is a story about going back to the 1960s and 1970s. Yes, there will be some political commentary, but it will be much later in the story. The important thing to remember about politicians is that they are all lying sacks of shit. If you’re a Republican, it’s not just the Democrats that are lying sacks of shit, so are your guys. And for the Democrats, just remember, your guys are lying sacks of shit too, just like the evil ones on the other side. I am an equal opportunity abuser.
Also, always remember that this story was written years and years before Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator and got into politics. Before that, I was a card-carrying Republican myself, since the days of Tricky Dick. That being said, there is nobody knowledgeable about American politics that can sit there with a straight face and say that the Republican Party of the 1960s and 1970s is the same as the Republican Party now. Things have changed, and to deny this is self-delusion. As Carl Buckman states in the Prologue, “My father was part of the ‘Greatest Generation’, and I am glad he never lived to see the mess us Baby Boomers made of things.”
As for Chapter 1, the biggest complaint anybody had was about Carl taking on the three older boys, and whether this was realistic. While I haven’t been in a fight since my own schoolboy days, the one thing I know is the line about, ‘It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog!’ This is totally true. Likewise, I know that the best way to deal with adversaries, in any arena or format, is one at a time, and not all at once. I’ll stand by the realism in the story.
Enjoy!