George Sparling has written dozen of stories. Here is his latest one at Thieves Jargon.  I don't know if the above picture is an actual picture of the real George Sparling.

Everyday Yeah: Hello George, it's one of those days over here where you get out of the shower and you start sweating. Rumor has it you either lived in Mexico or still lived there. Must get a lot of those type of days down there?
Anyway, what are your thoughts on the recent election? Actually, I'm joking. I'm more curious on what third grade was like for you? Or when was the last time you broke a bone? What was the last disappointing book you read? And did it motivate you to write more? There must be some ultimate goal you have in mind chugging along, writing and submitting, sticking to the grind?
George Sparling: In the sixties I went to the School of Americas on the Toluca highway. I think it was in Mexico City proper. I took a creative writing course and we had to write a short story. "A Nude Funeral Sort of Time" was the title. I had a seven-page stream of consciousness sentence about a woman stripping at a burlesque show and dying in the process ("Only a procession of nothingness remains").
The old teacher wrote lots of comments about it, telling me to see him, which I did. He never told me he didn't like it, instead telling me he'd lived below Hart Crane's apartment in the Bronx, and Oh, what went on, always loud and screaming parties, all kinds of ruckus. "I fail to get the point of this manuscript," he said. I quoted Samuel Beckett from one of his novels on the title page to make things less accommodating, too. I think the professor thought I needed help, perhaps a thoroughly debouched invert as Proust might say. It was psychotic he must've felt. I was in pre-psychotic mode back then and couldn't disguise it in fiction.
I'd take speed and crash, dozing in the grass as I waited for the bus to pick me up after classes. I read a small article in a newspaper that Neal Cassady had died on the railroad tracks. I identified with him, dying on railroad tracks, I believe. "The Tracks of My Tears," as Smokey Robinson sang I conjured up. I reviewed Amiri Baraka's short story collection, "Tales," praising it in the college newspaper. All night long I'd write poetry high on speed, trying to make lines end precisely to the letter as the line preceeding it. I got high for the first time on pot, listening to the Beatles's "Hello Goodbye." Yes, my first word stoned was "Wow."
I knew people who knew a lot about Mexico but essentially I lived alone as I do now. My single regret I have from that period was drinking pulque for the first time with two American friends in the home of a peasant woman.
One friend knew the women well. I made faces ("pulled a face" the Brits might say) and there was nervous laughter. To this day I feel I'd insulted the Mexican woman, insulted the Mexican nation itself.
I do remember an incident from third grade. Kids threw large chunks of ice from a low roof at me and another student.
We couldn't get into class. We were so scared. Finally we ran the gauntlet and made it. That left me with the impression that one could get really hurt (physically) in the world. Why would anyone want to heave hard chucks of ice at anyone if not because they were just plain no good. At that point, evil hadn't left its mark on me.
The book most disappointing was "A Tale of Two Cities," which was required reading in high school English class. Maybe disappointing because I couldn't get through but fifteen pages. Reading can lead to writing more (better).
Lately, I've read three Philip K. Dick novels which inspire me.
I wrote a story titled "The Infinity Key," from a Dick novel. The key could open any conceivable lock. I attributed it to him in the story.
I've written enough for a collection of short stories, I'm sure, but would need to re-type them and upload them to a publisher. I write to validate and vindicate my life. At least that's what I tell myself. There's no grind. I write when I feel like it. John Gregory Dunne said writing is like laying pipe.
Yeah, it's physically difficult to type one sentence after another, trying to be coherent. I get lots of rejections, mainly because I don't connect, one sentence flowing into the next.
And I often don't take the time, I rush thinking first thought, best thought. Damning confession, no?
The goal is trying to write another story. Maybe becoming a minor writer would be considered a goal.
Yours, George Sparling
I read that you've done everything from welfare casework to working the lumberyards. You've been a gold miner in the northern wilderness of California, a bookstore clerk, a postal mail carrier, a crab butcher on the early morning killing docks, and a salmon processor. Can you give a little description of what each of these jobs were like or other ones you've worked? Also, how does one go about working all these jobs and still end up retiring early?
I walked down 8th Street in the Village and a passerby pointed to a billboard saying there were welfare caseworker job openings if you passed the test. I passed and that was my first job since graduating from college. With all the liberal arts graduates looking for work, I realized that being a caseworker would appeal to our idealism and place us in a tenuous yet still middle-class position.
I was a frustrated writer then, and dictated my home visits in such an expressionistic and convoluted way that it proved impossible to write up. It was the first time I'd ever seen, up close and person, poverty, apartments they rarely showed in movies and on TV.
My desk was chaotic, I was hungover most of the time, and the job proved too much for me. I knew it was the end when I gave almost $1,000 cash grant for moving expenses, for the purchase of better furnishings. A man from high up in the administration at the East Harlem office where I worked came into the area of my unit asking, "Who's Sparling? I want to find Sparling." He was irate that my write-up for the grant had to get high administrative approval. I decided to quit after six months.
The lumber yard work happening during my teens. I've tried writing about, failing so far, but I won't give up. I lived a sheltered life in suburbia and I met the working class for the first time. I unloaded boxcars by sliding boards down rollers to a man at the other end who stacked the lumber in neat piles.
I was a mail carrier for maybe four months. I was on anti-psychotics then, and the job proved impossible. I couldn't case the mail very fast.
Yes, I did mine gold, though it wasn't a professional operation. I've lots of material for a story (could be a novella) from both the one complete summer and part of another summer in the Trinity Alps. It was maybe 8 or 10 miles from trailhead and primitive. I lived in an A-frame both times. I panned and kept the sluice box clean so water flowed through, allowing any gold to get caught in the sluice. A dredge was used and two divers in wet suits pried up the bottom of the creek bed, then sucking the debris up with a suction hose.
Crab butcher, yes, I wrote a poem about that. I ripped the guts out of thousand and thousands of Dungeness crabs. I put them on a belt that dropped them into a cooker. The job started at 5 a.m. Also, I wrote a short story about being a "salmon processor" for Pindedlyboz ( "Going PinkEye" ). I cut heads off salmon, weighed them, threw ice in the slit bellies and on top of coho and King salmon, the boxes weighing maybe 160 pounds. We loaded 8 boxes to a pallet.
I was a bookstore clerk for 15 months. "Times Square and Other Delusions" was published in Juked about that period.
I reference it in stories. I rang the books up, but mainly shelved them after a delivery came from downtown Manhattan. I liked the work because I knew authors, publishers and titles. I was compulsive and kept the racks and shelves neat.
I "retired early," meaning I was on federal disability. I stretched the definition because I thought a euphemism sounded better. I officially became retired at age 65 and eight months. I'd rather say that than writing I was mentally disabled. I thought I wouldn't have the cred if I told the verbatim truth, that editors would hold that against me. Maybe I was wrong. Hmmm. I wrote a short story ("Handis"---keepgoing magazine) about the life style of being mentally disabled.
The work I've done stopped in 1980. Since then I've received disability payments, known to those on disability as "pay check" (another euphemism).
You've had quite a life. What are your three biggest regrets? Are you happy with the way it has ultimately turned out?
My three regrets are not having traveled too much, not having written a lot more than I have, and not having a marketable work skill.
I'd probably would be happy if I stuck it out as a mail carrier, putting my feet up drinking a Bud, watching the World Series.
Due to what gets called a personality disorder, I believe it's difficult to be happy at all. I remember that scene in "Five Easy Pieces," Jack Nicolson's character crying (he told the director he didn't think his character---too much of a cad---should cry with his near-dead father in a wheel chair), complaining about his "auspicious beginnings." I've lived under that delusion, thinking, shit, I've blown it.