In the meantime...

by Pete Jordan

I was going to finish my tale about Corte Madera but first wanted to take a break to clean out my bag. One thing I hadn't considered when deciding to travel light on my book tour was that people would be giving me so many things along the way. I've got all my stuff spread across the floor and have stacked in a pile all the items handed to me over the past 11 days. They are:

--Not one, not two, not three, but four books signed and handed to me by the authors

--one of my old "Dish Master" T-shirts

--Eleven business cards (I can't recall the last time someone had given me a business card before this trip!)

--a "Hobart" baseball cap

--a CD loaded with photos from my reading in Philadelphia

--two DVD copies of an unauthorized "Dishwasher Pete" film

--fourteen pens (I left home with three pens, now I have seventeen of them--no two are the same!)

--three letterpressed note cards

--two eight-foot-tall posters of my book cover advertising my Pittsburgh reading

--five letterpressed posters advertising my Baltimore reading

--three cheezy T-shirts given to me in LA to deliver to friends in Portland (one has a picture of a pink rose beside the text: "Always a Lady")

--a seven-year-old's portrait of a "pengutuin"

--the book The Faith of a Writer by Jocye Carol Oates

--a hand-stenciled child's T-shirt that reads: "J'ai pete" (French for "I farted")

Thanks for indulging me with my list. Next time: Corte Madera, Part Two!

Later,

Pete