"Mike, in my book, you're a giant."

In my day job, I'm a Realtor. This summer I sold two buildings on my courthouse square for a brilliant man named Mike Kraft. I wanted to say something about Mike in my blog, and finally decided to simply post the letter I wrote to him after we closed the sale.

Mike,

The Wild Building: 20 N. 9th St. in 
Noblesville, Indiana, one of Mike's restorations.

I want to thank you for allowing me to take you through the process of handing your Noblesville properties to a new owner. The trust you and Betsy put in me was humbling and inspiring. Far too often I work with people for whom the homes and historic buildings are simply houses and structures.  You and I both know your buildings, and what you did with them have meant much more to Noblesville.

I admire you more than I can say. You were a pioneer on the courthouse square in Noblesville with those two buildings at the very time I was struggling to do the same thing in the surrounding residential neighborhoods, in my own meager way.

In the 1980s most of the locals had given up on the courthouse square. When some business leaders were urging the county commissioners to tear down the courthouse to make way for more parking and move county offices to the highway, you bought and restored those two buildings and nurtured first class tenants. You inspired others. The money and effort you expended gave others permission – made them feel it was reasonable to do the same with their buildings. You inspired a mayor – Mary Sue Rowland, to promote downtown and gave her a solid example to point to as a model for downtown’s future. And when her Main Street downtown redevelopment program looked for it’s first office, you gave them one for $1 a month.

The home of Alexander's Ice Cream, Mike's other
stunning project at 876 Logan St., Noblesville IN.

You showed vision when it was lacking. From your office in Washington, DC you respected your hometown history when many of the folks here had forgotten or given up on it. When you bought those buildings twenty five years ago our square as a dingy, sad place. Back then I walked my children in strollers down its cracked and broken sidewalks and imagined it alive and vibrant again. Today we have one of the most dynamic courthouse squares in the Midwest. The seeds you planted 25+ years ago are a big reason why. Families walking their kids in strollers through downtown today have the luxury of taking it for granted. I’m so happy they can.

A few days ago my wife and I walked downtown and ate at Matteo’s, another tenant you nurtured in another building you once owned, and on Friday night we walked downtown with her 10 year old son to one of the buildings I just helped you sell, Alexanders, got ice cream and sat out on a bench. On both of those nights we looked out on the courthouse square – nearly every parking space taken, people on the sidewalks window shopping, the restaurant full, music spilled out of the sports bar down the street, trees growing up around the restored courthouse. Those nights I thought of you and the seeds you planted.

When I had my first weekly newspaper column in the 1990s, you sought me out on your trips to Noblesville, just to sit and chat. Do you remember that? I know you sought me out because I was a lonely voice of opposition in a town that didn’t care much for opposing views. Your encouragement meant the world to me and gave me reason to keep writing, erasing some of the doubts that preyed on me, countering the nasty letters to the editor in response to my columns. When I was the first Main Street president, fighting to get the rest of the courthouse square moving in the direction of your example, while I was being ignored or rebuffed by building and business owners as a starry-eyed meddler, your notes of support kept me going.

Do you recall 10 years ago you visited town while I was salvaging architectural detail from a house on 10^th Street the city was planning to tear down? It was a house I rented when I first moved to Noblesville. You told me you had taken piano lessons there as a child and asked me to find you a memento. In the attic, I found the original ornate screen door that was once on the front door of the house. There was an old brass bell still hanging from a wire at the top of the door, a bell that would have rung when you as a young boy came through the door for your lessons. Made me happy to hand that tarnished old thing over to you.

Mike Kraft, on his recent 80th birthday.

Your sentimental love for this town blows me away. 

The years have taken their toll. I know your feet, your hands, and your mind are all moving more slowly now. As we worked to sell these properties it broke my heart a little when I sensed over the phone and through the emails that you were feeling powerless and of little use to the world around you. But you have moved mountains in the town where you grew up, the same place where I’ve made my life and where my own kids grew up, on the same streets you ran and loved as a child.

In my book, you are a giant.

Follow this link to buy Kurt's new novel The Salvage Man

Follow this link to buy Kurt's novel, Noblesville

I Don't Write Science Fiction! (not that there's anything wrong with that)

The Hoosier Contrarian has been on summer vacation. I've gotten married, helped plan my oldest son's wedding, finished editing my 2nd book and prepared to move my new wife and her three kids into my home and my 2nd novel is about to be released. It's good to be back.

My first novel has a time travel element. I did that only because it got my character where I wanted him to go, and then I quit talking about time travel. Yet the first publisher classified my novel of romantic historic fiction as “science fiction.”

At my very first book club talk there was a guy at the end of the table in the Greenfield library looking very much like the middle-aged comic book dude from The Simpsons – receding hairline, but long and back pulled into a pony tail, pasty white complexion and a little plump, high-top Chuck Taylors and a They Might Be Giants t-shirt. He couldn’t wait to raise his hand.

“I have to say, you got the time travel science totally wrong.”

“Oh good,” I’m thinking, “he wants to talk about the least important thing in the book?”

“You see, the magic beam your protagonist stuck his arm through to reach into 1893 . . . that would have sheered his arm right off and sent it across the universe because the earth is millions and millions of miles away from where it was in 1893.”

Are you f@#king kidding me!?! The first book talk for my first novel and this is my first question? KILL ME NOW!”

I took a deep breath. Thank God I’d been a high school teacher, used to presiding over hostile audiences. “Did you like the Terminator movies?” I asked.

“They’re passable,” the comic book nerd shrugged, “the second movie being the best.”

“I agree. So when the liquid metal robot who’s morphed himself into a policeman drives a motorcycle out a 3^rd story window, jumps off, grabs onto a hovering helicopter, smashes the windshield, morphs back into liquid metal and oozes through the broken glass to take over the helicopter . . . so, at that moment, were you thinking, ‘that’s so fake?’ or did you suspend reality and just enjoy the movie?”

The comic book nerd shrugged sharply and crossed his arms, suddenly indifferent, “Sure, whatever.”

The discussion turned to the meaning of the book and the changes that have come to small town life over 120 years. Future book talks were far more welcoming.

My very first online review appeared on the Barnes & Noble website, starting with, “I don’t normally like science fiction, but . . .” I was so apoplectic I almost didn’t read the positive words that followed.

I DON’T WRITE SCIENCE FICTION!!! 

Within six months of publication, my publisher filed for bankruptcy and all the books immediately became my property. One day while I was doing yard work, a box truck appeared in the driveway with several thousand books. We unloaded them into my garage.

Being an author sounds way more glamorous than it really is.

With no publisher, I was left to promote and sell the books myself. I arranged book talks in big towns with big libraries and had few people show up. I did talks in small towns with no library to standing-room-only crowds. I’d show up at one book store event and be treated like a celebrity, and show up at another to find the manager on duty didn’t even know I was going to be there.

Such is a writer's life when you're a bottom-feeder.

That first novel was re-edited and re-published last year under the new title, Noblesville and in little over a week from now, my 2^nd novel, The Salvage Man will be published. After parenting, writing is the hardest I’ve ever worked without meaningful pay.

Last Friday I got a call from a framing shop that had a print of mine ready for pick up. At the cash register a woman looked at my bank card and then up at me in reverence, “Are you Kurt Meyer, the author of Noblesville?”

I smiled, “Yes, I am.”

“I must to tell you how much I love that book. I just finished it and was overwhelmed. How wonderful to be touched so deeply by a story.”

This is where I get uncomfortable. Not as uncomfortable as I was with the comic book nerd, but still uncomfortable. It is a notable Hoosier quality to want recognition, but then not know entirely what to do with it once it arrives. Indiana is the land of corn, race cars, and self-deprecation.

I responded in a way that would make my mother proud, “Thank you so much. That’s very kind of you. I’m so glad you liked it.”

But I was especially relieved she didn’t call it her favorite science fiction novel.


Buy Kurt's novel: Noblesville

Buy Kurt's book: The Salvage Man

$5 Out The Window, For Better or Worse

Pulling off the ramp from I-70 to Emerson Avenue last Saturday I came upon a panhandler at the stoplight. He sat on the guardrail, a cane in one hand, a small sign in the other, hollow cheeks, goatee, and a baseball cap. He looked really, really tired. The sign, made of a piece of jagged corrugated cardboard looked to have been torn from the lid of a box and was scrawled with the words, "Vietnam Vet. Please help."

I rarely give money to panhandlers, have never settled my conflicted feelings about the whole encounter – the similarity to aggressive salespeople and pamphlet carrying evangelists – strangers asking you to do things with money and emotion that for me normally require more careful, private consideration. And there’s the ugliness of being the overfed guy in the shiny car soothing his middle-class guilt by handing money out the car window to poor people. Yet, something made me grab my wallet and a five-dollar bill and roll down my window.

“God bless you, sir," he said.

"Take care of yourself, brother,” I replied.

"I'm trying," he nodded.

The light turned green and I rolled my window up, and rolled away.

My mind tripped through a series of recriminations: I bet he's not a Vietnam vet – how much Jagermeister can you buy with $5? – does he have a meth monkey on his back? – and then I immediately hated myself a little for being so suspicious. We live in a curious cultural time in which we mistrust the poor as if they’re all lazy con artists. The pretty blonde anchors on FOX News spend their days shaming the poor, yet the Bible tells us to love and protect them. If I can ease a man’s suffering, I want to give. But another part of me wonders if my $5 bill is a crutch, added to his cane.

No sooner had I reached the arc of the overpass, I saw a younger man on the opposite ramp on the other side of I-70 with a cane in hand and a milk crate for a seat. He looked frail and tiny against the sprawling, bleak asphalt, interstate backdrop. His sign read, "Gulf War Vet. Lost my job. God Bless." A woman at the stoplight in a black urban assault vehicle was staring ahead awkwardly, pretending not to see the panhandler standing just a couple feet away.

I’ve been that lady before, too.

I was raised in a small Indiana town. I didn't encounter beggars and panhandlers until I did a college semester in London. There was a little bristle-chinned, raggedy-dressed man who tap danced on the corner of Queensway and Moscow Road in my Bayswater neighborhood, his jacket laid open on the sidewalk to catch change tossed by passersby. Sometimes a second elderly man played harmonica while the first guy danced a jig. One night walking home from the pub with beer swirling in my brain I saw the little tap-dancing raggedy-man curled up asleep on the sidewalk against the iron fence of Kensington Gardens Square.

My first week in London I threw change on the jacket each time I passed. But the novelty wore off and I realized if I dropped change in every basket, hat or hankerchief I'd soon be broke. And so I grew callous toward them and they became evermore invisible. Soon this small town Hoosier boy became another jaded big city resident, avoiding eye contact with the panhandlers and the homeless and giving nothing, leaving their care and maintenance to the tourists and social services.

It is so easy to grow callous. It’s all around us. Consider the insistence that folks on welfare be drug tested.

Assuming the poor are all drug addicts is just a taste of the inflated sense of superiority and accomplishment we in the middle class save for them. Nevermind that the early evidence from states that do the tests reveals it costs taxpayers more than it saves and finds few addicts. Critics said of George W. Bush: “He was born on 3^rd base, but thinks he hit a triple.” Folks born in the middle and anointed with its blessings who call for drug testing of welfare recipients remind me of that quote.

If we’re going to test welfare recipients, why not test the wealthy farmers who take farm subsidies? Over 90% of farm subsidies go to large corporate farms. And why don’t we test the professional team owners and athletes whose stadiums are funded by taxpayers?

We clean up the welfare we give the rich by calling it “tax abatements,” and “subsidies,” and, “public/private partnerships,” but it’s taxpayer money being handed to people who haven’t specifically worked for it, assuming it will do good for the community. That’s welfare, for the rich. Had we tested those rich welfare folks, we might have caught Jim Irsay before he got arrested . . . the most recent time, anyway.

Of course, I wouldn’t roll down my window and hand Irsay a $5 bill if his private helicopter landed beside my car on an interstate ramp, but I’ve handed him far, far more than that through the taxes I’ve paid for the stadium his team plays in.

But of course, life is not so simple. We want things to be black and white, right and wrong, good and bad, so it’s all clean & easy to choose: “Opportunities were waiting for me to grab, so why are those poor folks complaining, and taking from me?” But the adult world is not so simple. There’s not a lot of black and white, just a lot of gray, and all of us pretending it’s clear cut so circumstances fit our prejudices.

It is maddening how much gray I see. Wish I didn’t. If I was better at seeing black and white I might give a $5 bill to every panhandler at every exit ramp until I was broke. Or I might harden my heart and see them as scam artists, too lazy to get a real job. Instead, I’m the guy giving out of an urge to relieve suffering, but wondering if I’m really making things better.

Buy The Contrarian's Novel, NOBLESVILLE

View Kurt's Behind Noblesville Posts

Ode to Cindy or "The Pimp With The Limp"

KEY WEST, MARCH 2015     I took her hand and stiffened my arm so she’d have something solid to lean on. The uneven dock planks presented endless trip hazards for that right leg and foot that drag a little. Cindy had a stroke when she was 35. She’s giving it her all so not to hold up the line of tourists behind us. Once on the boat I get her to a bench, then gather our snorkels, masks, and fins. The boat is full and festive as we head south of the southern most point in America, toward Cuba. The sky is blue, the ocean is beautiful. Several times I watch her as she’s looking out across the water, her short, dark hair fluttering in the breeze off a tanned forehead. Her impassive, intent expression reminds me of our father. Nine miles out we reach the world’s 3^rd largest reef, and anchor. As we don our gear, she smiles at me, “I may be the “pimp with the limp” on land, but in the water, we’re all equal again.”

Somewhere in the buoyancy and rhythm of the waves, the limp is released and she swims easily.

That night we link up with my musician and author friends at The Smoking Tuna to listen to one of my group, guitarist Chris Clifton. While Chris and his 4-piece band rip through several decades of American blues and R & B, we settle at a table with Shari Smith, an author from North Carolina and  singer-songwriter Eric Erdman from Mobile. When Cindy shakes Eric’s hand, the large screen print of a pistol on his t-shirt, a shirt promoting the band The Mulligan Brothers, captures her attention. I suppose a time will come with the image of a gun won't send her mind to dark places, but not yet. Still, she quickly falls into conversation and makes easy friends. Always has. When our group heads toward the Hog’s Breath to hear another group of friends, The Carter Brothers, Cindy is too tired to continue. I put her in a taxi to her hotel.

Three years older than me, Cindy was a best buddy and confidant in my childhood, the one who babied and defended me and included me in her games. We were the youngest two of four kids. When we were small, folks sometimes brushed the bangs off my forehead with the palm of their hand and said, “See? Kurt and Cindy look exactly alike.”  We did.

Once when I was perhaps 12, past the time when a cute, shapely girl of 14 or 15 would still look out for her kid brother, I was being bullied by an older, bigger kid a couple blocks from our house. He had me by the arm, explaining how he was “gonna kick my ass,” when Cindy came down the sidewalk headed home. He’d seen her coming and had time to lower his voice. Cindy flirted with the boy, chatting him up, batting her eyelashes and flipping the hair off her shoulder, enough to distract him. I got home with my “ass” intact.

For the next 43 years she's come to my aid or defense every single time I needed her. Sometimes when I didn’t know I needed her. When she was home from college and I got in a fight over a girl, she dropped what she was doing and spent her evening with me. When I was building furniture to pay for college and she was graduated with her first good-paying job, she hired me to build a bedroom suite. At the publication of my first book, she sent a copy to Oprah, insistent on getting me in Oprah's book club. When my marriage fell apart a few years ago, she was my ready supporter.

Me and Cindy at the Oldest House in Key West

Couple months back, when I posted on Facebook that I was going to Key West for a couple book events and suggested anybody headed that way for spring break look me up, Cindy sent a message saying, “I booked plane tickets and a hotel for Key West. See you there!” I had to laugh. She didn’t ask, “Can I hang out with you for the entire week? She just said, “Done deal. I’m comin.”

Fine with me. The pimp with the limp is always welcome.

Friday the 13^th, fifteen months ago, 6:30 p.m., I was walking into an Italian restaurant in Ft. Wayne when my phone rang. The screen image said it was Cindy, in Florida. I answer and she’s screaming. Her husband had killed himself! She’d come home from work and found him in a chair beside the pool, the gun still in his hand. She was in the driveway, hysterical, waiting for the police.

Sixteen hours later I was at her house, at the place where Jeff had killed himself, cleaning the pool and repairing things that got damaged with Jeff’s friend Phil. The two of us scoured Jeff’s computer, his job search notes, the stack of mail and magazines on the kitchen table, looking for a note, a clue, anything. Our goal was to make the house look completely normal before Cindy returned. If there was something upsetting to find, we were going to find it before she did. I started to pick up the shirt Jeff had laid over a chair before he went out to the pool last night, and the shoes he’d kicked off at the sliding door, but Phil stopped me. “She needs to touch those things,” he whispered. “She needs to start processing what happened here last night. Putting away his stuff is probably a good place to start.”

Phil is a long-haired, motorcycle-riding contractor, and a very smart man.

About 24 hours later, as Cindy and her grown daughter and I were running errands, trying to plan a funeral, we got notice that our father had died, back home in Indiana.

It is 15 months since that tragic weekend, and as I greet people and sign books on the lawn of The Oldest House in Key West, Cindy sits nearby, her body language is easy, relaxed. We talk with a woman who lost her husband just a few weeks earlier. Cindy offers comfort without getting emotional. In that conversation I can see how she’s healed. It’s been a long road, and she’s still on it, but she shares from her loss, commiserates and makes another quick friend.

The next night as I read on stage, surrounded by musicians and other authors, I can see Cindy’s face in the audience, smiling back at me.

Later that night, it’s creeping toward 1:00. We’re at the Hog’s Breath and several drinks into the night. The Carter Brothers are cranking through Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road. Tim Carter is banging on his mandolin, sounding like a guitar being slammed into a church bell. A little group of women have taken to the dance floor. Cindy raises here arms and grooves easily into the crowd. Somewhere in the buoyancy and rhythm of the music her limp is released and she dances without a struggle. She’s found yet another place where we’re all equal again.

Buy a copy of Kurt's book, "Noblesville"