It seems that I’m making history.
The other day a relative e-mailed me some information she had dug up in “Google” about my family. Among other things, the article said that my mother had two sisters-in-law, named Edna and Paula. Edna and Paula are the names that I assigned to my two aunts, in my book, “Mother and Me.” Their names weren’t Edna and Paula. As I explained in the “Author’s Note” at the beginning of the book, I assigned fictitious names to some of the characters, since I could not rely on my sixty-plus-year-old memory to treat them fairly and didn’t want to embarrass anyone. Apparently the author of the article did not bother to read that disclaimer, and my two aunts will go down in history under assumed names.
Then there is the matter of my father. Those of you who read “Mother and Me” may recall an incident along the road from Warsaw where we encounter a Polish military convoy with a broken-down truck and a young lieutenant who wants to commandeer ours. To stop him from doing that, my mother tells him a big fib about the truck belonging to my father and about my father being a senator. I believe that I made it quite clear in the book that this is one of the fibs that my mother would use to solve problems and which drove me crazy. But, apparently, the fib fooled not only the young lieutenant, but the author of the “Google” article as well. My father, who had been a businessman in the textile business, is now duly ensconced in the annals of Polish history as a senator.
I can’t help wondering how accurate the rest of the supposedly authoritative articles on the Internet really are.

‘T was a dark and stormy (not really) Thursday or Friday afternoon, some twenty-five years ago, when my late wife, Phyllis and I set out from Greenwich, Conn. for the Berkshire Mountains. A senior early-childhood educator, Phyllis was friend and mentor to a young elementary school teacher named Arlene, teaching in a well-heeled town on Long Island. Somewhere along the line, Phyllis had advised apartment dwelling Arlene to invest in some real property, and it was Arlene and her husband’s new summer house in Austerlitz, NY that we were on our way to visit.
Arlene and Jerry’s house turned out to be a comfortable, three-bedroom ranch, built on a slope, with a garage underneath, nestled in the woods, off a dirt road, and, the following morning, I dutifully took to that dirt road for my daily run. It was a dark and cloudy morning (for real this time), and, as I passed a particular stretch of woods, I could glimpse a body of water, gloomy and forbidding, beyond the woods and clicking my imagination immediately into high gear.
What my imagination concocted was a vicious murder that a passer-by might witness through the trees, in which a man was beating another man to death with his bare hands. The man witnessing it has the option of intervening or calling for help or ignoring the whole thing, but the one that he chooses to follow – and this was the creative part – is a fourth and quite unusual option. I’m not telling what this option is, because I may want to re-visit it one day, but it could have lead to a rather original thriller.
Of course it would take a certain kind of man in a certain set of circumstances to choose this particular option, and over the next days, while visiting with our friends and later, I set my mind to creating such a man and such a set of circumstances. I named him Kip and made him an undistinguished literature professor at an undistinguished college in the Midwest, dealing with some unique identity problems.
But Kip wouldn’t stop growing on me, and the more real that he became, the more interested I became in him, to the extent that pretty soon I considered him far too interesting to be subjected to the requirements of a “thriller” plot. But other matters called. Not having yet retired to my present full-time-author state, I had a business to run and a living to make, and no time to give to Kip’s problems. Then I got involved in writing my “Mother and Me” memoir series, finding a publisher, and promoting the books. Kip kept rattling around in the back of my mind, but never settling down to some constructive thinking. It wasn’t till a couple of years ago that I had the time to return to my undistinguished friend and build him a novel worthy of his personality.
I took Arlene and Jerry’s Austerlitz house, moved it to a coastal village in Massachusetts, and placed it near a woods, with a river flowing to the ocean beyond. Kip inherits it from a colleague, almost as a challenge to sit down and write a book. I gave him a beautiful postmistress named Amanda, whom he lusts after, and a beautiful married woman named Lill who – well, you’ll need to read the book to find out. There is also a large sailboat, named The Black Dog, being built for a cantankerous local, named Tillman. Recognized to be the best sailor in these parts, Tillman has designed the boat himself and intends to sail her, as soon as she’s ready, down to Florida, where he plans to go into the chartering business. There is speculation among the villagers as to the Black Dog’s seaworthiness. The boat isn’t ready till the November chills and storms, and Tillman has invited newcomer Kip to sail to Florida with him, since no one in town will sail with him, even in good weather. No sailor, Kip, nevertheless, believes himself to be in a situation where honor compels him to accept. Then there is the matter of a married lady’s hot tub and…..
Anyway, the book is entitled “Writer’s Block” and it is due to be released by Fireship Press later this winter.
Phyllis passed away in 1986, but Arlene and Jerry were among the first people I introduced my present wife, Donna, to and the friendship continues. How that’ll fare after they find their house so shamefully abused, remains to be seen.

It’s been two months since my last posting. For about five weeks I was fighting a cold and couldn’t run, thus cutting off the prime source of blog material. Then my film deal fell through turning my thoughts from stalking readers for my books to formulating new writing plans. I strongly considered abandoning this blog. I didn’t know if anyone was even reading it. But then I discovered a reader identifying himself as “Jockomo” and expressing a concern for both my health and further postings. I couldn’t help but respond to Jockomo.
Yes, I am healthy and trying to get back into shape. I can run two miles and am working up to three. Strangely enough, I have had little contact with people during my runs, perhaps due to winter weather, and thus little inspiration for the blog. But, I will tell you about what has occupied my thoughts for the last few weeks.
The sequel to “Mother and Me” was released by my publisher this past November, under the title, “A Ship in the Harbor.” There is a second sequel (trequel?) named “Loves of Yulian,” at the publisher now, hopefully for release next year. This second sequel ends as my mother and I sail into New York harbor in May of 1941 and Mother drags me on deck at some ungodly hour of the morning to see the Stature of Liberty. I am nine years old and would much rather go back to bed. Since this ends our odyssey of escape from the invading Nazis, I considered it a proper ending for the memoir series.
But readers have become so interested in the character of Barbara, my mother, that they have been asking for a fourth book, telling them what happened once this firecracker got to the States. And I, like any author, have fallen in love with my leading characters. If Barbara wouldn’t allow herself to be loved as a mother, she could not stop me from loving her as a character and wanting to give her a final curtain call worthy of her earlier heroics.
Unfortunately, that is not the way it happened. Some of the traits that made Barbara an exciting character in the drama of WW II, revealed themselves as tragic character flaws later in life, making for an ending that was not in keeping with the endings of the other three books. I know that life is messy and everyone has dirty laundry, but I’ve discovered that I am not a tragedian, and my mother’s tragedy is not how I want to end my memoir.
Still, there is so much more to the story, and, as a storyteller, I cannot resist. Were this a work of fiction, I could easily shape the ending to my taste, but it’s not – it’s a memoir. And I have spent several weeks pondering this problem. How do I put an ending acceptable to me, on an uncooperative memoir?
Finally, I wrote a prologue that lays my problem out for the reader. Book IV, I explain, will be a memoir, most of the way, with a just a few changes. Those who really, really want to know what really, really happened, will not be satisfied. But those who, like me, have come to love Barbara as a character of literature will, hopefully find satisfaction and fulfillment in her last hurrah.
And so, there it is. I don’t have a title for it yet, and I don’t know if my publisher will want to publish it. I don’t even know if I will ever finish it. But that’s where I’m at now.
I hope to be back in a week or so with more material. Any of you who may want to contact me directly can reach me at julianpadowicz@julianpadowicz.com. Just make sure in the “subject” line that I don’t mistake if for spam. And as for you, Jockomo, thank you for getting me back into harness.

I’ve been sick. I’ve been sick for the past two or three weeks -- it feels like months. I haven’t been sick enough to feel bad, but sick enough to not want to make it worse by going out for my regular run/walks.
It didn’t stop me from going to Cincinnati with Donna or our stopping at the B&B I wrote about last time. But I spent the time coughing into my elbow and blowing my nose into a growing stack of Kleenex. (I’m speaking figuratively, you understand, since I don’t want you to think that I actually go around dragging used tissues from state to state.)
But the inability, or at least my unwillingness, to go for my daily run/walks has been a great loss. It’s my encounters with my “stalking” victims that generate ideas, and I haven’t had a new idea in two weeks.
But my new book, A Ship in the Harbor has just been released by the publisher, Academy Chicago. It’s a direct sequel to Mother and Me: Escape from Warsaw 1939, its opening scene being the closing scene of the first book, where my mother and I limp into Budapest’s posh Bristol Hotel, disguised as peasants and quite the worse for wear, after our trek through the Carpathian Mountains. Mother, who had stayed at the Bristol many times before the war, can’t resist a little joke. Positive that the desk clerk won’t recognize her in her disguise, she demands a room.
The desk clerk tells her there are no vacancies.
Mother retorts, “Nonsense, the Bristol always has vacancies.” At which point the desk clerk falls into her trap.
“Madam has stayed with us before?” he asks in his haughtiest tone.
“Of course, many times.”
“And under what name?”
She tells him her name, he does a double take, and they hug across the counter, to the horror of the guests and staff around the lobby.
Mother quickly contacts her Budapest friends and tells them about our escape. She is immediately lionized as a “heroine,” and I, having just turned eight, am miffed that I’m not equally lionized, since I walked every mile that she walked and faced every danger that she did. While Mother is asked, time and time again, to tell her story, I’m put to bed with my teddy bear.
But Mother’s celebrity soon hits a snag in the person of a Polish intelligence officer who reminds her that Hungary is a Nazi-sympathizing country, and she had bragged to the border security man that, when we reached America, she was going to write a book exposing Nazi atrocities. The Nazis, the man tells her, are not going to want her to reach America. Mother and I need to go into hiding, until he can get her a new passport and a visa to a more neutral country.
But asking Mother to give up her fifteen minutes of fame and her comfortable hotel room is like asking Jack Benny to surrender his wallet. Mother pooh-poohs the warning, and I begin seeing Nazis behind every tree.
I could tell you more, but you’ll enjoy reading it for yourself. I don’t know how many stores have it in stock yet, but they can all order it for you, and I know that Amazon has it. But, if you haven’t read Mother and Me, I suggest that you read that first.
There is still another sequel coming. Its working title is Loves of Yulian, and it takes place in beautiful Rio de Janeiro. I fall in love with an older woman – she is twenty-two to my eight – and Mother falls in love with a handsome Brazilian and has to decide between her heart and the book she wants to publish in America. I don’t know when it will be out.

If you haven’t heard from me for a while, it’s because my wife Donna and I just took a sentimental journey to Cincinnati to visit some dear friends who moved there a couple of years ago. With our busy schedule, who knows if we’ll ever be seeing them again.
On the drive back, after spending a day with Donna’s father in Virginia, we realized how long it had been since we took a “vacation vacation.” With Donna’s 92-year-old dad in Virginia, a son and grandson in California, and a daughter in North Carolina, we devote all our vacation time to visiting family, and our only one-on-one time is en route.
So we decided to treat ourselves to a lunch of Maryland crab cakes in a restaurant we’ve stopped at before, in Crisfield, and then the night at an interesting looking bed & breakfast in a town called Princess Anne. Donna had found a “Booklovers’ Bed & Breakfast” with a long list of positive reviews on the Internet, and we thought we’d give it a try.
Well, our familiar old crab-cakes restaurant in Crisfield was no longer there, which was a blow. We have recently lost several favorite restaurants back home in Connecticut and come to believe that the god of restaurants must be mad at us. It was in a cautious mood that we proceeded to our bed & breakfast.
What we discovered, was a creatively decorated 1880’s house with rooms named after writers and appointed to reflect each one’s personality. Ours was the Langston Hughes room, with dramatic photographs of old New York and Harlem on the walls and books by and about Hughes on the bureau. There was even an old typewriter on the desk with a half-finished poem in the roller.
Hosting us was Elizabeth, the owner, a charming lady, who urged us to take off our shoes, then showed us around the house, including the Robert Louis Stevenson room, the Jane Austen room, the Mark Twain Library and Parlor, and French Café Colette, where afternoon tea and breakfast would be served. There is also, we were told, a cat named Dr. Hobbs who would, “upon request,” come and greet us.
Elizabeth is a warm and charming retired journalist, who has recently written both a novel and a play, and who does not actually live in the house. She does, however, spend a lot of time there, and there are bells that will summon her immediately. As it happened, we were the only guests that night, due to cancellations, and had the whole place to ourselves. An author named James McBride was scheduled to be there the following night and speaking at the library.
We enjoyed the afternoon tea with freshly made brownies and read in the Mark Twain library, well stocked with good books. Elizabeth had urged us to read any of them, except for the leather-bound set of Shakespeare on the top shelf, since the bindings were coming apart. I had to fight an urge to carefully take one of the Shakespeares down and examine it. We had a good seafood dinner at a local restaurant and returned to find brandy and sherry set out for us in the Café Colette.
The following morning Elizabeth served us the breakfast we had ordered the afternoon before. Donna had crepes stuffed with peaches and I a spinach-and-mushroom omelet. When we ordered, I had forgotten to ask our hostess if she could serve some sour cream with my omelet. I always have sour cream with my omelet and the prospect of an omelet without it was like sleeping without a pillow. But, lo and behold, there was a generous pile of sour cream on my omelet anyway. It seems that Elizabeth had Googled me, learned that I was Polish, and decided – on the basis of two former Polish boyfriends – that Poles ate sour cream on everything. (That’s only a very slight exaggeration.)
During breakfast, Donna, a cat lover, asked when we might meet Dr. Hobbs. Without a word, Elizabeth returned to the kitchen, we heard some whispered urgings through the closed door, and she reappeared to hold open the door. In a moment, a black-and-white cat came into the room, walked up to Donna, allowed himself to be petted, and, having performed his duty, marched right back into the kitchen.
A few weeks ago I wrote, in this blog, how much I enjoy the serendipity human contacts that my activities expose me to. The job of a B&B hostess, of course, is to make the kind of contact with people that makes them feel cared for and appreciated. Elizabeth accomplishes this in great style. We left with our spirits well lifted and stories to tell. Should any of you be planning to drive along the Maryland Eastern Shore (I-13) I strongly recommend a visit to www.bookloversbnb, a night at the Booklovers’ Bed & Breakfast, and the gracious hospitality of Elizabeth and the hard-working Dr. Hobbs.

I love to banter. I don’t know how universal this feeling is, but, when I find myself bantering with someone, when we are both saying things that we don’t really mean and that we both know that the other person knows it, I feel that I have an intimacy with that person that gives me great satisfaction.
On a recent Valentine’s Day, I was just coming out of the front door of the Greenwich Town Hall, when I found myself facing a man coming in, carrying a bouquet of flowers. My response was the same as, I’m sure, many of you would have given: I said, “For me?” Without missing a beat, the stranger answered with, “And you thought I didn’t care.” We smiled at each other and continued on our way. But, for the rest of the day, I had a warm feeling about having reached a stranger on a certain level of intimacy.
Over a lifetime, I have had a number of such experiences with both men and women in stores, on subways, wherever strangers rub shoulders. My wife and I banter a lot, and I see it as a sign of the health of our relationship. There wasn’t a lot of bantering in my first marriage.
Going out on my daily run/walks, accosting strangers to spread the news of my book, I look forward to the opportunities to banter. When I ask a woman in a car, at a stop sign, if I might give her something, I hope that she asks me what it is that I want to give her. When she does, I say, “Well, I’d like to give you diamonds and pearls, but I don’t have any.”
This leads to my saying, “But what I do have is this letter about my book.” But I pause first, hoping that she’ll jump right in and say something like, “I’m so disappointed. I was really hoping for diamonds and pearls.” One woman said, “Well, you have some nerve, getting me to roll down my window when you don’t have any diamonds or pearls to give me!” This not only makes it more likely that they will, eventually, buy and read my book, but it also leaves me with a nice glow for the rest of the day. When I meet someone who tells me that I’ve already given him or her my flier, I ask, “And have you read my book?”
Frequently, to my great satisfaction, they tell me that they have. But if they say that they haven’t, I ask, “How do you expect me to become rich and famous, if you don’t read my book?” Of course, my becoming rich and famous wasn’t one of their expectations, nor would their reading my book make a significant difference in that respect – unless, of course, their name is Oprah. But we do part smiling, and it does remind them to read my book.
The other day, I had an interesting chat with a woman who promised that she would buy my book and read it. As she drove off, I saw a second car pull up to the same spot and signaled the driver to open the window. This one turned out to be a man, so when he asked me what I proposed giving him, I said, “I’d like to give you a million dollars, but I don’t have any.”
His response was, “I’ll settle for a couple hundred thousand,” and I felt I had a good thing going with this one.
“Gee, I’m sorry,” I said, ”I gave my last hundred thousand to the woman in that Buick that just drove away. Maybe if you catch up to her, she’ll share it with you.” At which point the man stomped on his accelerator and took off after the Buick.
I don’t want to know what happened a couple of minutes later, a mile or so down the road.

As I look for people to give my flier to, on my daily runs, I discovered that I had the best luck at the entrance to a private school, two miles from here, in New Canaan. I found that at 8:30 in the morning, mothers and a few fathers would be coming out, right after dropping their child off for school. Reaching the road, they would stop, and I could walk up to the car and ask if I could give them my flier.
I realized that I would have to be careful about this. If there were several cars coming at once, I could not approach one because the drivers behind him or her would become annoyed at the delay. Nor did I want to stand around waiting for a car – I didn’t want to give the appearance of “standing around,” but rather that I just happened to be running by when that particular driver was coming out.
For about a year, this worked very well. I always made sure that I was well shaven before leaving the house, and I would find most people to be quite receptive to my polite approach. After a while I would meet people to whom I had already given my flier, who had found it interesting, and who had either gone on to read the book or were, certainly, planning to read it. Only rarely would someone tell me that, no, she didn’t want me to give her anything, and I would smile and wish them a nice day.
One day, last spring, I came across one of the people who were not receptive to my offer, and, as usual I waved her on and continued on my run. On my way back, however, as I approached the school’s driveway again, I saw a policeman standing there. As I got close, he asked me whether I had been on that private property, earlier that morning. This was not totally unexpected. I told the officer that I may have stepped a foot or so into the property, but that I hadn’t been any further.
“What were you doing, sir?” came the inevitable question.
“I was just handing out a flier about my book,” I said. I had had this conversation in my head many times before. But as I reached for the fliers in my pocket, I heard, “Take your hand out of your pocket, sir!” and saw a Tazer gun pointed at my stomach. “Walk over to that car and put your hands on the roof,” he said.
My fantasy had never extended to this point, but I realized that New Canaan police had little to occupy their time. Having seen this maneuver many times on television, I walked to his car, keeping my hands well in sight, and assumed the familiar position. When I had been patted down, I heard, “Now turn around and let’s see that flier.”
I did as I was told, and handed a copy of my flier to him.
As the policeman read the two-sided flier, three more police cars pulled up to investigate the disturbance. Within minutes, I was surrounded by three policemen and a police woman, all reading my flier.
“My father-in-law comes from Poland,” the police woman said. “May I give this flier to him.”
I told her that she could.
“Isn’t Kowalski Polish?” I heard one officer ask another. The answer was in the affirmative, and the fist officer asked if he might give his copy to Officer Kowalski. Soon it turned out that each of the officers had friends and relatives with some kind of Polish connection, and my entire supply of fliers was quickly consumed.
Then it was explained to me that it was illegal to hand out fliers on private property. In addition to which it did not look good for a man to be hanging around the entrance to a school. I had to agree with this logic and promised not to stop cars coming out of that school anymore.
This was not a problem for me through the summer, but now that a new school term is in session, and I see cars that I can no longer approach, come to a stop in front of me, I feel a little pang of longing for the good old days.