About C R Foster
|
I was born in Longview, Washington, a small town that, I believe, sprung up only to support the lumber mills. I mention it mainly because that’s where my parents met in high school and married. It must be a good town. It’s only slightly smaller than the town where I currently live. My dad’s work took us south with stops in Klamath Falls, Oregon and into California’s San Joaquin Valley through Modesto, Merced and Fresno.
My youth was pretty well chronicled in the movie, American Graffiti, except there was no Suzanne Somers glancing at me from a Thunderbird. There was, however, an incident in high school involving long-haired brunette and a phone booth that was equally significant. In high school I learned to play guitar. There were two reasons for doing this. One, because there was a vicious rumor circulating that if you played in a band, you could get a date (untrue), and second, if you were always on stage, you wouldn’t have to learn to dance (partially true).
|
In those days I was described as being mechanically inclined. It was a euphemism for always taking things apart. It was clear to me that the only way I would earn a living was to become an engineer. My other option was to pump gas, a career path that soon after became extinct. Out of college I worked for Ford Motor in Dearborn, Michigan. One Saturday I asked my bank teller to go for ice cream. We've been married for fifty years. For a variety of reasons, including work, we moved back out to California and have two married daughters that live nearby.
My career in engineering lasted over forty years and was always challenging, fulfilling and rewarding. Long business trips allowed me to do a lot of reading. It seemed a natural progression to challenge myself by writing short stories. After retirement, with more time on my hands, I embarked on the most difficult path humanly possible. I wrote this novel. There’s more to the story than that but that seems like fodder for another time.
