Tales of an idyllic childhood

Rural settings in which children have the freedom to wander and play magnify the magic of another age, and McClure, Illinois, native Ford R. Phillips has written a collection of short stories to capture the essence of his own childhood experiences, which he says may have a universal application.

A devotee of noted Southern short story writer and novelist Flannery O'Connor (1925-64), Phillips uses O'Connor's "conversion theme" throughout the 11 stories in his "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" collection, which has been published by Denver-based Outskirts Press.

The book title is from a Norwegian folk tale about a place that does not exist, as he says McClure, eight miles east of Cape Girardeau, no longer does in the form he knew.

"I grew up going fishing every day, hunting in the woods, playing baseball and finding Indian artifacts in the fields," said Phillips, a St. Louis public relations and marketing communications agency owner.

"McClure, which I call 'McClane' in the book, had restaurants, a movie house, a hardware store, a blacksmith shop, a gas station and a grain elevator. It was almost idyllic, but now it's only houses.

"A conversion in literature is a point where people have the capacity to do the right thing or the wrong thing, and they make that decision. Most of the time they don't do the right thing, but sometimes they choose salvation, if you will.

"O'Connor's stories are bent around that like a fulcrum. She was a religious writer, even though her stories don't all seem to have a religious theme. I use these kinds of themes, hopefully without being preachy, so people will not only be entertained but also get something out of them."

Phillips said he prefers the short story form because it requires more discipline than novel-writing and is potentially much more expressive and memorable.

His family moved to Cape Girardeau when he was 14, and he graduated from Cape Central High School in 1963 and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in American literature at Southeast Missouri State University.

Phillips taught six years at Cape Central, the last two as head of the English department, before going into technical writing. He and his wife, Brenda, have two children and four grandchildren.

"A lot of my stories are first-person narration, but some are in the third person," he said, adding that he plans two more volumes. "They're all based on some kind of incident or factual occurrence and fictionalized around that germ of an idea. They are sometimes funny and sad at the same time because much of life is like that.

"They are inter-related, and the characters appear multiple times."

The first story, "The Turkey's Funeral," deals with a group of boys who "kidnap" a turkey that was the pet of a mentally handicapped man. They hide the bird in a cabin, and when it dies, they "learn the consequences of their actions and come to a realization that they hadn't known," Phillips said.

Others are "The Gospel of Nora and the Maytag," "Ivory Soap, Harry Caray and the St. Louis Cardinals," "Devil's Island," "Potato Bug Jackson," "The Nativity of the Silver Hatchery," "The True and Lamentable Tragedy of Clyde and Velma," "Nothing Gold Can Stay," "The Saw Dust Pyramid," "Gobble vs. Socrates" and "Manna from the Missouri Pacific."

The 100-page collection is available at Barnes & Noble, amazon.com and eastofthesunbooks.com at prices varying from $10 to $14.95.