It is no longer a wonder to me. I write because I come from a family of writers. My recent genealogy research has unveiled several of these family dramatists.

Our first recorded novelist was Emil Hickscherber, a portly man with deep-set eyes and a whisk broom mustache. He worked in Munich as a blacksmith apprentice and supplemented that income by writing travel tips and opportunity suggestions for Germans immigrating to America. His publisher awarded him with a ticket to New York to do research. He departed on a seven-deck steamer, never questioning why they issued him a one-way fare. Shortly after his arrival at Ellis Island, his name was shortened to Hicks by an intolerant customs official who handed him a telegraph message. His publisher had fired him. Emil was penniless and needed to find a way to support himself.  He turned to writing — a difficult venture for a man who knew little English. He wrote several western frontier pulp novels from his one room apartment in New York City. Although the original manuscripts are lost, the titles to his works are remembered: Gunfight at Nuremberg, Two-Gun Kid Schlessinger and Buffalo Reagenhauser Rides Again. His publisher became suspicious when Emil continued to refer to leather chaps as Lederhosen and dropped him after learning that he never traveled further west than 12^th Street. He went back to blacksmithing and remained bitter towards the New York publishing scene for the rest of his life.

Emil’s eldest son, Fritz, wrote for the government during World War I. He was bilingual and composed propaganda for the army. Fritz turned out stacks of compelling arguments, encouraging the Kaiser’s army to drop their weapons and surrender. His compositions were stuffed into the barrels of artillery pieces and fired across enemy lines. He boasted of how he had single-handedly ended the war early and saved thousands of lives, but the proof of his creations were burned in the cannon blasts and he returned home without a sample of his work.

Johnny “Shakespeare” Hicks got sacks of cash through his writing. When my father was just a boy, he remembered the excitement and celebration when Johnny would visit the old family farm. He would show up unexpectedly with several of his pals. After a meal, bath and shave they would drag bags of money from their dusty roadster into the house and stuff the bills under mattresses in every bedroom. Shakespeare Hicks was more a poet than a writer. He was also a partner in the notorious Pretty Boy Floyd gang in the twenties. His job was to tell bank employees that they were about to be robbed. Johnny used the opportunity creatively and would proudly submit his note to the unfortunate teller before the gang’s guns became visible. There are other, better poems in the FBI archives, but this one was found in his bullet-riddled, pin-striped suit the day he died: “I’ve got to have money, to put food in my tummy, so open up your safe. If you won’t do that, you’ll hear a rat-tat-tat, when I machine gun all over this place.”  This was apparently a first draft. 

My final example of family literary talent is Uncle Barney, who wrote his imaginary wealth on a number of bank checks. While in prison, he wrote and illustrated several how-to books, all of which were confiscated by the warden and remain unpublished.

These stories are meaningful to me. They comfort me while I write late at night in a cold basement where, like Kilgore Trout, I crank out one science fiction tale after another. I write to be the first published author in the family. I write to bring meaning to the sacrifice of my ancestors.

I write because I am a Hickscherber.

(Originally written October 1, 2003)