Hi. This is a small but informative, hopefully, excerpt from the first draft of my first novel. 'Raising the Bar.' It's about a transplanted couple that live and work in Manhattan. I deal a lot with backstory and this is a glimpse into the character Tom's life. His partner is Sharon and later I'll put up a segment on her. Thanks.

Tom had a dream that same night after his drunken afternoon with Veronica but it did not include her. It was a very blustery, snowy afternoon in the city. Tom was walking home from somewhere and was watching his feet touch the ground and leave tracks in the snow. Over by a trash can on the corner of the block he noticed a tiny gap where the snow had not yet accumulated and it looked like there was a piece of paper sticking up there; so he went over to investigate. Turns out it's a ten dollar bill. As Tom picks the bill out of the snow it looks like there is something else under there and damn if it's not a twenty so he as non chalantly as possible stuffs the bills in his pants pocket. A few more steps to the side street and he sees another bill carried by a gentle breeze blowing down the gutter so he goes to pick that one up. As he does he finds a small rectangular box just the size of a bill hiding under a small mound of snow. When he looks in the box there are dozens of tens and twenties all jumbled up so he pushes them further into the box and as he does he sees in the snow where the box once sat some hundred dollar bills. As he begins to pick them up more hundreds reveal themselves just under the fine coating of fresh fallen snow. Suddenly there are almost too many bills to deal with. He glances around but sees that no one is watching him so he begins to stuff the hundreds into the box and his pants and jacket pockets because there are just so many of them. At this point the feeling of wondering what to buy and being rich with a new found fortune are tempered with the doubt that he will ever get away with all this cash without someone finding him out. No sooner did those thoughts occur then a door appeared and Tom looked behind it and there was a man there but the man did not look at Tom. After a sigh of relief, Tom left the side street with the box and his pockets loaded with lots and lots of money. No sooner did he set feet back on the avenue when he found himself inside an official looking waiting room of a police precinct. A woman officer came up to him and said, quite plainly, that the money he had found had been stolen and that he would have to give it all up. Tom's mind raced to think how he could possibly give them the money but still be able to keep stashed at least several of those hundred dollar bills in one of his many pockets. The officer made him throw all the cash on the table. It was now obvious that not one dollar from the snow soaked cash was going to remain in his possession. As the regret began to sink in the dream melted away like the snow.


Snow never did play too large a role in Tom's life; but it was fun when he was a kid growing up in Pennsylvania because if the accumulation was deep enough then school would be cancelled. When the snow would begin say early on a sunday evening then the anticipation would begin about whether or not there would be enough snow to cancel school on monday morning. It didn't mean one could sleep in. Tom still had to get up and get dressed and then go sit with his mother at the kitchen table and listen to the local radio station. On the hour at eight am the newscast would end with the listing of schools that would be closed that day. Once the announcer said all Windgap area schools there was a fine whoop of satisfaction from Tom and probably a not so satisfied groan from his mother. tom's mom and dad were solid working class people who knew the value of a buck. Tom's dad, Jake, was an auto mechanic. Had his own garage and was always washing his hands with Lava soap to get the grease and grime from under his fingernails. When Jake was working in the garage he would often have Tom nearby to hand him a wrench, pliers or screwdriver. It wasn't that Tom minded helping out his dad but the thought of having to work on cars all one's life was not something Tom wanted to think about. It was boring to him and as soon as he would get a good daydream going about anything that would be the moment that dad would call him into assistance. He always did admire his dad though for being independent and running his own business even though it did eat up an extraordinary amount of time Tom thought. Mom also known as Alice, would help out her husband by keeping the books and making sure that the money due to the business was indeed paid in full. This side of the business was of much more interest to our boy Tom. Besides it was much more comfortable to sit in the house with a pen in hand then to stand around in a drafty, gasoline smelling garage. It became obvious to Tom by the time he was ten years old that he was not the mechanically inclined son his father may have hoped for. Alice soon caught on to Tom's inclinations and so whenever she could she'd have Tom busy with some errand for her in order to decrease the number of hours Tom might have spent in the garage. Alice showed him how to keep a ledger and how to balance a checkbook. Mom was easier to talk to than dad and her lessons helped Tom nurture a healthy respect for her and the work she did too.

One of Tom's earliest dreams was to live in New York City. His sixth grade teacher, Mr. Hertz, one day told his class that he had lived in Manhattan for a couple of years going to school. He told them about riding the subways and touring the museums and riding the roller coaster, The Cyclone, out at Coney Island. he told them how the streets and sidewalks would swell with people at rush hour and how interesting it was just to go for a walk in the neighborhood. The descriptions that Mr. Hertz let fall on his class totally piqued Tom's interest and so at the library he would take out all the books he could find on New York City. he learned the names of the five boroughs and how the island of Manhattan was purchased from the Native Americans for twenty four dollars worth of trinkets and such. One day Mr. Hertz announced that the class would be making a field trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York City. Field trips were kind of like snow days anything to get out of the class room but a trip to Manhattan was something the kids had never even hoped for. The last field trip had been to DaysStart dairy farm to see how the cow's milk went from cow to bottle. At the end of the tour everyone received a pint of chocolate milk and that had been a big deal but now the cows and the mechanical milking machines faded quickly in to obscurity.

Actually walking a sidewalk in New York City was all the inspiration young Tom needed to make a decision he promised himself that he would keep. He knew he had a ways to grow up and become a man but he also knew that there was nothing could get in the way of his eventual move to Manhattan and the chance to live life in the big city. 'The big city.' It sounded great just rolling off the tongue. Tom used to tell all his friends and any kid that would listen that "the big city is calling me, can't you hear it?" "That big old city is calling me, that big old sit tee. Sit Tee."