Pebble Beach - the Novel

Introduction and Synopsis to Pebble Beach

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Pebble Beach Historical Fiction 150,000 Approx. Words James G. Mason James G. Mason Georgia, United States Email: atheist@destined-to-fail.com Searching for agent and or publisher Published writer: No Freelance: No -------------------------------------------------------------“Write what you know,” is a motto I repeat to myself every morning, while I’m writing, and so I chose to write this story

Chapter 1 - Salina, Kansas

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Right at the start of that day John Irwin felt inevitable change in the air. It was fast beginning to look as though stability was a dream for other people to realize and not for himself and the boys. But he would not give up on attaining that dream. # In the winter of Nineteen Twenty-One,

Chapter 2 - O.W. and Jason

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Nineteen-Ninety-Six Dawn had not yet arrived. There was a silence both inside the small room and outside, in the streets of the mostly residential Monterey, a city by the Bay in central California. Birds were awakening, gradually adding their song to the deadness of the very early morning. Also breaking the silence every 5 minutes or so was the

Chapter 3 - Flora

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Nineteen-O-Seven It was warm and pouring-down rain in Salina, Kansas. John Irwin was passing documents to the secretary in the cramped offices of The Kansas Pacific Railway Company. It was then that she came into the view for the first time in John’s life. The lacy frills at the bottom of her dress dusted the unworthy floorboards and concealed her forbidden feet, ankles and feet that must have

Chapter 4 - Birth and Vanishing

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It was the end of the winter in nineteen o-seven and the Irwin’s new house on Santa Fe Avenue was glorious and three stories tall, including the attic. With five gabled windows on the second floor, a porch that wrapped all the way around, a copper roof tinged with the patina of nearly twenty years of air, and eight rooms to live in. All for one thousand and one hundred dollars, with two hundred

Chapter 5 - Thelma

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Thelma Lincoln and Flora Jenkins, had grown up together, to become two beautiful and charming young women. Thelma walked through life in the footsteps of Flora, and a more comfortable place to be walking, she could not imagine. Flora taught Thelma to read, who in turn taught her own mother and father. They played daily. Their games and their amusements had matured with them, from dolls to mud

Chapter 6 - Of Boys and Men

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In nineteen eighteen the participation by most citizens, to assist in the war in Europe, seemed to have removed half of the men in Salina. In less than eighteen months the size of the U.S. armed forces grew from one hundred thousand men, to almost one million stationed in Europe alone. The news reports were vague descriptions that came over the wire and reprinted in the local papers days after

Chapter 7 - Corruption

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John Irwin removed his dream like stare from the photo of Flora and himself on his desk and he stood and straightened his tie. Reminiscing was not helping his depression only prolonging it. In this bitter winter of nineteen twenty-one, life was at a crawl, slow motion, like the smoke that rose from a hundred chimneys across Salina in a creeping dance toward the low gray sky. So did the lives

Chapter 8 - Leaving

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John walked slowly home in a depressed and half drunk state, eyes glazed over from whiskey and cold air. He came upon the front of the Salina Mercantile and Exchange Company, they had already locked up for night, but an electric lamp on the front porch cast light on the front wall of the store, where posters and notices, help wanted signs and for sale items were tacked on a large wooden panel

Chapter 9 - California

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Nineteen-Ninety-Six Jason had been riding his bike up the hill to the Park Place building because he loved the ride down at the end of the day after taking care of O.W. for twelve hours. It seemed as though the brisk wind while speeding down the hill on his bike, cleaned the “old man smell,” off of him. At five minutes to seven in the morning he got off the elevator with his twenty one speed

Chapter10 - The King's Highway

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Rolling and rumbling northward at thirty miles per hour, the Pacific Coastal Highway was a pleasure to ride on, and with the convertible top down the rushing winds, with welcomed permission, whipped the family’s hair, and the sun deceptively and gently burned their flesh pink and healthy looking. With the adventure of Sydney’s arrest behind them, California had seemed kind again, and with blue

Chapter 11 - Calm and Rough Seas

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The bull dozers made such a noise that John and Theodore Wexley could hardly hear each other as they stepped across the freshly torn and broken earth of the Del Monte Forest. “It takes about a month to get a lot this size ready for building, that includes tree stumps and grading and everything. Before we go to the new lodge and hotel I have to show you one of our other problems.” Mr. Wexley

Chapter 12 - Love

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O.W. had become a handsome young man, strong and well dressed, well spoken and wise, funny and fun loving, with a dashing short mustache and always a freshly shaven face to greet the world. He, like every boy in high school and college, strived to look like Errol Flynn. John had begun to wonder if O.W. would ever have a girlfriend. Socially he had been a serious teenager, not like in his

Chapter 13 - Economy Creates, Preserves and Kills

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In October of nineteen twenty nine the stock exchange sold out over a period of five days, reducing holdings and losing the capital of investors across the spectrum of the American upper and investment able class. Samuel F.B. Morse was largely unaffected and so John was largely unaffected. Morse’s holdings were in paper and lumber companies, and in his own land, what’s assets were managed by

Chapter 14 - Do the Continental

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O.W.’s graduation was perhaps the second or third happiest day of John Irwin’s life. O.W. had chosen a Bachelor’s in business administration from Stanford and had graduated third in his class with Deans List recognition. John and Thelma and Delilah drove up to attend the ceremonies with an empty trailer in tow to retrieve O.W.’s dorm room possessions. The day after the ceremonies the whole

Chapter 15 - Beyond Satisfaction

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Nineteen-Ninety-Six Jason now had to wash O.W. every morning as O.W.’s thought processes were becoming more jumbled. O.W. wanted to bathe himself but he could not keep track of what step to take next, whether he had already brushed his teeth or not, whether he had cleaned his body or should do so next. He would sit on the toilet to relieve himself, get up, forget to wipe and wash, and sit

Chapter 16 - To Remember or Not

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Nineteen-Ninety-Six On a weekday in late September Jason had just helped O.W. into bed for an afternoon nap. The rain came down in Monterey in blankets and it had been for what seemed days. Jason did some cleaning in the kitchen, some vacuuming, and some dusting. He read for half an hour until he felt himself getting sleepy, and then he got up to look in on O.W.. His bedroom door was open