Tales From Caledonia:
an interview with Paul Stephen Milne
My brother Paul and I sat in the shade of an ancient live oak tree not long ago and talked about the places he'd been and the things he'd seen. A dog-eared copy of Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent lay nearby, and a half finished game of Risk sat waiting for someone to come play. Paul thumbed through the most recent copy of Fortean Times, waiting for me to arrange my gold plated Senheiser microphone assembly so we could start. The sweet smell of honeysuckle reminded me that a Texas summer was upon us, and Paul was going to have to return to his home in Dunbar, Scotland soon. His powder blue Armani suit shimmered in the sun, and the banana pudding I'd ordered for lunch was late. No matter. I pulled the galvanized steel bucket with beer packed in ice up close, and extracted a Hobgoblin Ale for my middle brother, and an Old Tennis Shoe Blond Lager for myself. We began.
Do you remember moving to Oklahoma?
What I remember about that is leaving in the middle of the night- being bundled into the car by my various uncles - complete strangers as far as I was concerned - but like most kids that age, you just do what you're told and don't ask questions. There's a lot of acceptance of bizarre circumstances among children, so long as your mother is okay with it.
What stands out in your memories of living in Oklahoma with Granny and Granddad?
So many things stand out. One odd thing that sticks in my memory is the gas fires, that you had to light with a match on cold mornings. The smell of cinnamon toast from the toaster oven, the orange glow from the hot elements. The taste of ice water in the shade of a lone tree in the middle of a vast field after riding a tractor which Mom was driving. The water was usually in a quart jar, and had a slightly metallic taste.
Climbing the oak trees out in the yard - the deep cool gloom under those trees on a hot summer's day. Oh, and the butane tank under the Chinese mulberry tree - we spent a lot of time climbing all over that tree and that tank, it was like a big climbing frame (monkey bars to you Yanks), it was just a huge toy for us. It was probably very dangerous, but you know, who cares.
Didn't you have a run-in with a tractor once?
Oh, yeah ... Mom, like most able-bodied adults on the farm, took her turn ploughing the fields, and once I was riding along on the tractor behind her - it wasn't one of these la-dee-dah fancy tractors with an air-conditioned cab and piped in music and espresso makers and caviar in the glove box - no, it was an old Massey-Ferguson (or was it John Deere? Can't remember) and it was small and tough and open to rough riding, but there must have been a place handy for a small child to perch on behind the drivers seat. I think Mom must have been turning at the end of the row, because somehow I fell or got caught up in the lifting mechanism, that lifted the plough clear of the soil - I was all right in the end, just frightened to death with a huge scrape down my right side - Mom of course was scared too, probably thought I'd fallen into the discs and got ground into mince-meat.
Sounds like we just came that close to losin' you, bro! Any other scary happenings?
(laughs) When I was very young, I guess we had first moved there, maybe it was 1962 or 63, there was this EC horror comic book under the couch. Now THAT was scary - one picture in particular, though I can't remember it now. Probably somebody being disembowelled or eaten alive - ah, the good old days! Somehow it had got kicked under the couch, and I would peek underneath - yup, it was still there. I was too frightened to pull it out and look at it again. I don't remember how long it was under there. Perhaps it's still there ... waiting.
Waiting ... and watching. Now, when you were a kid you also had an incident involving matches, and a bed ... care to comment?
Ah. I knew this would come up. See, I was playing with a box of kitchen matches under the bed, lighting them and looking around, must have been playing at caves or something. Anyway, the bedspread hanging down had long twisted candlewick tassels edging it, so I took it into my head to set fire to one of these tassels - intending to blow it out, of course. Well, it didn't blow out. What happened next is confused in my mind, but I ended up in the closet in the same room, hiding, whilst people came in with buckets of water to douse the flames. I later came out of hiding, but I don't remember being punished for it - I guess they figure the sheer terror I went through was punishment enough. And the moral of the story is never let your kids play with matches
Terry & I set Grandad's calendars on fire one time.
See what I mean? Matches only brings out the arson in us.
Speak for yourself! So, what other cherished memories do you have from growing up in Oklahoma?
One Christmas, when I was about 6 or 7? I got up in the wee hours of the morning to sneak into the living room and see if Santa had come.
So you still believed in Santa then?
What do you mean, "believed". Are you implying something?
Just, you know, I've heard rumors. The Big Fat Man might not be, you know .... real.
Paul glares at me suspiciously, but I smile my winningest grin, and he settles down.
It was just a rumor - probably nothing to it. You were saying?
Anyway, I think that was the Christmas when we got bicycles. I remember the Christmas lights were on the tree, filling the room with a twinkling, magic light. I heard someone grownup coming up the hall, so I hunkered down in one corner. It was Granny. She spotted me straight away and sent me back to bed. But I remember being in the dark room lit only by the Christmas tree lights, casting a blue glow over the heaps of presents.
What else? We had an orchard of pear, apple and peach trees, but mostly pear trees. I was so small and skinny, I could climb out on the smallest branches, and get the big, juicy pears that were left, and throw them down to a waiting grown-up. Those pears were the yellowest, ripest, juiciest pears I have ever eaten in my life.
And I clearly remember butter and sugar sandwiches ... and fried baloney sandwiches on white bread.
I still enjoy the occasional fried baloney sammich - do you?
I haven't eaten baloney in about 20 years. (sighs) But I think nostalgia gilds the baloney for all of us ...
Okay ... moving right along ... We would go every year to all the homecomings (well, Bennington, Bokchito & Boswell, anyway) and the county fairs and the rodeo.
I remember going to the Keukelhan Ranch Rodeo in Texas when we were living in Oklahoma. It was about 30 or 40 miles away across the river. The thing I remember most is coming back from the rodeo in the back of Granddad's pickup. We would have spread blankets and quilts all over the pickup bed, and have blankets to cover us up with on the ride home. Granddad would put those high sideboards up around the pickup bed. I remember snuggling under the blankets, lying on other blankets laid on straw, and looking up at the starry July sky above us, the pickup bumping along dirt roads as we got closer to home.
I think I'm going to go to that rodeo this year. I last went in 1993.
I guess we all loved going to the homecomings as well - it was like anarchy - kids running loose everywhere like a bunch of calves let out of a pen. Do you remember the bottle rocket war one Bennington homecoming?
Remind me.
Well, it was just that - somehow two teams of kids started launching bottle rockets at each other from opposite sides of the street. Amazing what we could get away with in those days.
What are some of the funniest thing that happened while you were growing up?
We used to have a Shetland pony named Mickey, and I must say she was the orneriest animal alive, pound for pound. Mom thought because she was small she would be good for us kids to ride, but that was emphatically not the case. Whenever we went out for a ride, she would drag her heels going out, and gallop uncontrollably on the way home, usually trying to scrape off whoever was riding her on any conveniently low tree branch. Terry fell off Mickey once, but looking back now I don't think that's funny any more.
I do remember Granddad always taking the piss out of everything. I think it's funnier now than I did then.
In 1971 we moved to Texas. Sam Rayburn School.
I remember sitting in the hall outside of the office. Mom was enrolling all of us 4 children at once since we had moved in the middle of the school year. I had just started 6th grade, and I remember kids from the new school passing by in the hall, giving us the once-over.
Ronald and Donald White, along with Donald's son Mike, stayed the weekend with me last year. They asked about you and we enjoyed reminiscing about our visits there, & growing up in general. Do you recall those visits to Windom, Texas much?
I remember a lot from visiting those guys. Too much to go on about here. I remember those kids worked like dogs from sunup to sundown. They probably thought I was a lazy so-and-so because I didn't get out hoeing someone's field at the crack of dawn with them. I'd wait till they all left then have a mid-morning nap in the hammock. I remember driving the old ford truck between the rows of hay while they piled it high.
They talked about that truck, how first gear was so low they would just let it idle down the row with no one behind the wheel.
True. At the end of the row one of them would have to jump in and turn the thing around and get it pointing in the opposite direction. At the hay barn I'd help mainly with kicking hay off the truck or stacking it. I wasn't much good at tossing those bales around like they were. I remember eating oatmeal for breakfast. And Uncle Sot or Aunt Dort' rousting some recalcitrant sleepers in the morning with an electric cattle prod. Much, much more besides.
What qualities in your character do you think you've taken from your early upbringing in Oklahoma & Texas?
Emotional self-sufficiency. And a sarcastic sense of humor.
What do you mean by "emotional self-sufficiency?"
Not sure. Enjoying my own company, maybe? Not feeling like I "need" anybody?
Skip was the oldest one, I was the youngest one, Terry was the girl- did you ever have a problem of identity or self image, being a middle kid?
Don't think I ever thought about it, so I guess I didn't.
Didn't you live with him & Karen for a while, during your college years? I guess you get along pretty well.
I'd say as kids he and I had a love hate relationship ... it's far too complicated to go into here. We get on pretty good now, though, especially since we don't see each other for years at a time! I remember scouting through the woods with Skip and Alan, but I don't remember many details, except for skipping stones on a pond down behind their house somewhere, and doing bird calls to communicate with each other out in the woods.
The Fogles' place. I was always jealous because you boys could do that hoot owl thing to call to each other & I couldn't manage it.
I still dream about the Fogles' farm, it is a recurring image in my dreams to this very day. Far more in fact than our house at Granddad and Granny's. Now I wonder why that is?
In the mid 1970's Skip was in the Navy and had driven out to meet us in Oklahoma. He had a souped up Dodge Challenger and we'd go out racing in the little back roads at night. A big group of people would gather at the start and finish lines, and challengers would come from around the county, having heard about this Navy man and his hot car. I remember flagging the finish line of one race. Skip won.
After he got out, Skip and I would drive out into the Merced Mall parking lot late at night. I would grab a shopping cart out the passenger side window, and we'd go barreling around the lot, letting the cart go at strategic curbs to watch it flip through the air. Or we'd go into the side street, get a good fast run, and make the sharp turn at the end, letting the cart go on to hit the bank at the curve with a spectacular crash.
Let's go back a little further before we move on. Terry & I were too young to remember Mom & Dad being together, but you & Skip were older- do you remember anything about that time?
I remember watching cartoons - Cecil the sea dragon?
Beanie & Cecil?
Dunno, sounds right though. And Rocky and Bullwinkle. I remember jumping on the bed.
We lived in a house with upstairs bedrooms. I remember coming downstairs when Dad was getting ready to go to work and having breakfast with him. He would go out to work very early in the morning and I would get up and have breakfast with him. We would be the only two people up in the house. I remember coming down the stairs in the dark, and going into the lighted kitchen.
Give us a barebones timeline of places you've lived.
From birth: Japan, Norfolk, Decatur, Bennington, Ivanhoe, Oro Loma, Merced, Arcata, Ketchikan, Ojai, Homer, Denali National Park, Kantishna, Skagway, Juneau, Petaluma, Edinburgh, Dunbar. Don't know if I've left anywhere out.
Regarding a particular place, and leaving aside for the moment the circumstances of your life, which of those places would you return to, if you could?
Alaska, by a long shot.
What are some of the jobs you held in Alaska?
Museum attendant, busboy, child minder, receptionist, typist, salmon slimer -
'Salmon Slimer'? You can't just throw that out & let it lay there!
Salmon sliming is working a line in a salmon cannery, that checks the fish when they come off the "chink". That's the machine that does the main cutting and gutting of the fish, and yes, it's racist. So you take a slab of fish off a belt, check that the head, fins and tails were removed and the thing properly gutted, then chuck it down a chute to another belt. If any thing had been left behind, you sliced it off with a very sharp knife. Towards the end of a run, the chink would sometimes let through whole ungutted fish. And sometimes when the fish had been left in the storage brine too long, it was almost impossible to work with the what was left - disintegrating fish.
Any other jobs come to mind?
Chamber maid, caretaker, tour guide. That was an interesting moment. We used to doctor small gold pans - we'd have tiny vials of gold flakes, about 2 dollars worth of gold in each vial. We'd dump a vial in to a pan, then chuck some river sand on top of it. When the tourists arrived they'd be issued with a pan "that we'd got started for them earlier" They'd go down to the stream and find their gold. Then we'd give them the original wee vials to keep their gold in. Some of the them made a point of saying "This is a setup, right?" We never denied it. the tour company wanted the two of us to pretend we were actual miners, but we refused to do that.
Tell us some of your adventures or memories of Alaska.
In 1980 I was working in a salmon cannery in Ketchikan, Alaska. We were having a lunch break, all of us in our white aprons and damaged fingers sitting outside in the sun. Overhead a bald eagle was carrying a large salmon, and was being attacked by at least 2 ravens. The ravens worried the eagle until it dropped the salmon. The scrap of fish plummeted down and landed with an almighty splat in the parking lot in front of us. I don't know that it qualifies as an adventure, but that moment has stuck with me.
I remember the dead of winter, 1984, in the outback of Alaska, getting up in the middle of the night to go out to the outhouse. (Handy hint: Styrofoam makes the best toilet seats under these conditions.) I was just sitting there, with my pants pulled down - just enough - with the outhouse door open and all the stars like hard little diamonds, or glittering shards of ice.
Snowflakes swirling around the Coleman lantern, hanging outside the window of the sauna on a winter's night in Kantishna. Running outside after the sauna, throwing snow on each other. The snow felt like sharp sand.
Any brushes with danger?
You mean apart from the time when I was a tour guide and I almost drove a school bus load of tourists off a cliff, snapping the door to the bus off in the process? Well, there's the night I spent sitting by the banks of Juneau Creek, because a bridge I needed to get across to get back to town had been washed away. There was plenty of sign of bear around. I made a fire from the wreckage of the bridge. I used a rope at one point to try to get across, but the river was to swift. I had to sit all night by the fire in wet hiking boots. The next day a helicopter rescued me, for which I had to pay.
You once wrote me a letter in which you described a caribou or elk hunt you were on, in Alaska. Do you remember any of that?
Oh yeah, very clearly. We spotted the caribou herd from a plane, then flew back to the airstrip and came out on a snowmobile. Dan Ashbrook, well, he wasn't the best shot in the world and didn't get off clean shots ... he blamed the hand-packed ammo, of course, but we got them field cleaned pretty efficiently and back to the road house for butchering. It was out of season and illegal, as I recall, so we had to clear away the evidence of butchery in case any park service planes came over. Foggy day, a grim business. Not fun, but exhilirating.
Venturing off to faraway places- do you think it takes courage to strike out for points unknown as you have?
I think in my case it's a combination of wanderlust and boredom and running away. Maybe courage, except I have never felt particularly courageous.
What one thing would you like to change about yourself and why?
I think I'd like to be bigger. You know, muscley-er - not bigger round the waist.
Hmm ... we'll let that one pass. What's it like knowing your brothers have broken with family tradition and common sense to become staunch political conservatives?
It sucks. But I didn't realize liberalism was a family tradition. I just thought I was a weirdo. But it may give you some consolation to know that I consider myself an independent now. I think all politicians are liars and are only out to line their pockets. But that doesn't make them any worse than the rest of them. It just makes me realize they can't be trusted more than the rest of us.
You were in a mariachi dance troop in Dos Palos, and a Russian dance group in Alaska. Do you still enjoy folk dancing?
The only folk dancing I do these days is Scottish country dancing at ceilidhs. But I do enjoy it immensely, especially the eightsome reel. I tried doing some salsa with Eileen, but the rhythm completely escaped me and we gave up in the end. Maybe I've lost my touch.
Regarding your Scottish resettlement, Richard Wells asked the following questions:
Hae thee by the bonnie swags gelivt or by the scurly beards aye the laest dayes o thee gedraught?
(Eyes Richard with a raised eyebrow) Are you as glaikit as you look, or are you in a dwam?
Next question from Richard: Peat moss or Kingsford self-lighting charcoal briquettes?
I make my own charcoal from the ancient forest behind my house. It takes 3 years for the perfect kilo of charcoal, but the crown heads of Europe all agree my barbecues take the biscuit.
And finally, "Do you acknowledge my claim to the throne of Scot Land and Ireland, or are you an insurrectionist?"
When I see you sitting on the Stone of Destiny, only then will I acknowledge you. Until that day, the sight of you anathema to me and my clan, and you will be slaughtered on the spot ere you reach the heather.
Some quick ones. Do you like to drive fast?
Yes, but I don't do it very often.
What's on your mousepad?
Oooh, I don't usually use novelty mousepads. Whatever I can pinch from work will do me fine. Usually covered with logos of various educational quangos.
If you could meet one person, alive or dead...
Shakespeare. No, Jesus. No, Thomas Jefferson. No, Robert Graves. No ... oh dammit, can't make up my mind. I'd like to meet Shakespeare, but I probably wouldn't understand a word he said.
If you could have one job, any job you wanted, what would you do?
Novelist. And masseur. And tree surgeon. All at once. Oh, and Chief Druid.
Moving on. You have three kids over there. You are paying on a home. Do you ever entertain desires to move back to the USA?
I used to have a five year plan, but that was long long ago. I feel settled here now, and since there's no way I could bring R and K over to the states to live with me, so long as they are still underage I will be here. I might move back in the future, after Danny's bigger as well, so you could say I entertain desires, but there are no hard plans. In many ways I feel very much at home here, right where I am. And if I move, it will probably be to some other country altogether ... like France ...
Tell me about your house in Dunbar.
It's part of a complex of old farm buildings that's been converted to houses. There's a field on one side and woods on the other. The house itself is red sandstone on the outside, 3 bedrooms, it's pretty small actually. But it's got good light. Eileen has completely renovated the gardens, made them a showcase instead of just boring squares of grass.
What's your website address?
http://homepages.ed.ac.uk/paulsm/
When was the last time you posted some new fiction?
Not long ago. You'll notice a lot of the stories I post are ghostie, spooky type stories. One of my favorite authors is M.R. James, Oxford don who was a master of the post-victorian ghost story. Don't know if anyone finds any of my stories atmospheric, but I enjoy writing them anyway. Actually there's a lot more new poetry than new fiction. Been taking it all a bit more seriously on that front.
Tell me about the story you worked on for The Scotsman?
It was a collaborative novel started by A.L. Kennedy, one of Scotland's premier novelists. It petered out after about 6 chapters, two of which are mine. However, it's defunct now, more's the pity.
Do you still have any of the stories you wrote when you were living at home?
Let's see, don't think so.
l to r: Paul, Terry, Mike, 1979
Terry mentions a science fiction story she enjoyed, but my favorite was "Night of the Grunions". How about a synopsis of that one?
Insofar as I remember, it was a pisstake on some of the Lensman novels ...which Mike Fannon was heavily into at the time. Defender of mankind holds off hordes of marauding killer grunions. Action takes place on a deserted freeway in downtown LA somewhere. Broken masonry. Big guns. But to no avail. The grunions win and destroy mankind.
My own favorite was something like "Danny Goodrich and the Golden Idol" about scientist and sidekick traveling back to Roman times in a time machine, messing with the timeline, and when they return to the present America it's all different.
Who, from your high school years, have you kept up with? Do you ever keep in contact with the old road dogs from Dos Palos- Timmy Antonetti, David Mumby? Richard Eddy? Mike Fannin? How about from Sam Rayburn? Bennington?
Richard Eddy, although I've let that one lapse, unfortunately. I've been in brief contact via email with both Dave Mumby and Mike Fannon, and Paula Woodward. And Beth Bailey emailed me as well. Nobody further back than that, I'm afraid.
l to r: Kieran, Eileen, Danny (in front), Paul, Rowan,
2000
What are you most grateful for in life?
My kids, Danny, Keiran and Rowan. Kieran is funny and a bit sulky sometimes and is into war gaming using little figurines on complicated game boards. He can be difficult, but I reckon it's the age he's at. He's a good and decent human being and is inheriting that sarcastic sense of humor I mentioned. Danny, my youngest, is bright but suffers from dyspraxia, which makes him feel self concious and a little inadequate. He is as smart as a whip and very tender hearted.
Rowan is thoughtful and quiet and competent at most things. I'd say she is the one that takes after me most in looks and temperament. She has a wicked sense of humor as well. She is the kind of person who will sit in companionable silence for long periods without feeling the need to keep up a line of chat ... as you discovered for yourself.
(Last year I drove from San Jose to Santa Cruz and back with Rowan. I was very comfortable but realized after a while that we had been sitting there in silence for a long time. I worried about it later to Paul, thinking perhaps I had made her nervous by just sitting there, but he'd assured me that that probably wasn't the case.)
A delightful young woman. And speaking of delightful women, how did you meet your wife Eileen?
Eileen and I met at the opening of a Czech artist whose name I forget at a gallery in Edinburgh. I followed her and her friend Hazel around the gallery for awhile, then made small talk, and the rest is history.
You had sort of a delayed honeymoon, didn't you?
Yes, it was some time before we went on our honeymoon on Kos in Greece. Oddly, one thing that stands out about that trip is all the death we encountered! On a walk up some arroyos (or the Greek equivalent) we, I mean Danny, Eileen and I, stopped under the shade of an olive tree for a picnic. A couple of trees over there was something, a round object, hanging by a rope from a branch. Upon closer inspection it turned out to be a foxes head, from which the body had become detached and lay on the ground underneath.
Gruesome!
Indeed. Some days later in the village, there was a funeral procession. They paraded down the middle of the street with an open coffin. A very old person (man, I think) was in the coffin. More death. Then there was tremendous rain on this holiday (another memory) and there was flooding all around the apartments we stayed in. When the water level went down, we went out, and there was a huge rat, drowned, lying in the middle of the path.
Sounds like the honeymoon from hell!
No, no! Those events stand out precisely because they were incongruous. Danny was a year old at the time, he enjoyed the trip, we all enjoyed the trip. I have this mental image of him there, pushing around a broom. He was just learning to walk, and he was using it balance himself, as well as cleaning the floor.
You were on the chess team in high school. I know you've taught Danny to play. Will the day come soon when he will be a serious threat to the old man, on the checkered board?
(Laughs) Someday? He already does. Just won second place in a chess tournament not all that long ago.
Now let's go all the way back. How far can we go?
I remember crossing the street - my first conscious memory. I must have been about 3 years old. It was as though a light blinked on in my head. I was crossing the road in Decatur, Georgia, and *ping* I thought, "Here I am. I am me, I am crossing the road."
© Michael S. Milne April, 2002. Edited, revised, and history rewritten from time to time by Paul Milne