![]() ![]() ![]() I was living with my mother and my stepfather that spring, working as an assistant in my stepfather’s optometry office and trying to get the hang of California. It might have been a fine workbench, but it made a lousy desk, which is how I used it. He built it of plywood and four-by-fours, with a surface that came level to the waist of a tall man standing. Most people would have used it for suitcases and tire chains and the lawn darts set, but at some point this Ralph had built himself a big, high, bulky workbench in there. It smelled like dirt, though not in a bad way-like soil, and cold dust, and bicycle grease. It had a cement floor and a naked light bulb. His so-called room was in fact a crawl space, twice as long as it was wide, and it was not very wide. Ralph was the Christian name of a man I never met, the previous owner of my mother’s house on Colton Boulevard, in the Montclair District of Oakland, California. I started to write my first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, in April of 1985, in Ralph’s room. ![]()
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