Writer Jon Wilson switches gears with ‘Graceland’ • St Pete Catalyst
His 37 years as a dedicated and highly respected newspaper reporter gave little clue as to the breadth of Jon Wilson’s literary gifts. Neither did his informative books about the African American history of St. Petersburg or, for that matter, the novel he wrote about a 19th century stagecoach’s mad run between Brooksville and Tampa.
Nothing Jon Wilson ever wrote suggested that Helpless at the Gates of Graceland might one day materialize. Not even Jon Wison saw it coming.
The book, a slim collection of short stories and poetry, is published next week by St. Petersburg Press.
These are not Stephen King short stories, or O. Henry. Wilson’s creative narratives are impressionistic, mostly non-linear and sometimes even dreamlike in the telling.
“Even though I’ve written mostly non-fiction over the years, I’ve always had some stories kicking around in my head,” Wilson, 80, explains. “Or more like bits of stories, really. I finally decided I’d try to have some fun, create some fiction, and kind of enlarge some of these vague ideas that I had.”
Some ideas were on random slips of paper tucked away, or a word or phrase jotted down in a file inside a nameless computer folder.
In one Helpless story, the narrator meets a vexing and unusual young woman with the unlikely name of China Clarence. This came from a random computer file. “I think ‘China Clarence’ was almost all I had as a starting point,” Wilson explains. “It was just ‘China Clarence time travels,’ something like that.”
The ideas, he says, literally introduced themselves to him. “I found a music box one day at Brocante Vintage, and it played a hymn. Inscribed on the lid inside was the name Jenny. For some reason, that just made me think of a story … the music box seemed a little mysterious to me. What was its history? So I just took off with a story.
“Who knows where these things come from?”
Jesus Up the Creek, Playing Baseball with Jackie Robinson and The Lady and the Lion all take place in St. Petersburg (although the latter, full of snappy ’40 detective patter, announces its setting as “St. Petersnoir.” At 22 pages, it’s the longest single entry in the book).
The Day We Found the Hummingbird follows three kids on an adventure in the wilds of Western Nebraska.
That’s where Jon Wilson grew up, near a town called Scottsbluff. “Until I was 9 or 10, I lived on a farm,” he reflects. “And there was no one my age around to play with. So I would make up my own stories. I’d play baseball by myself, if you can imagine that. Or make-believe Army games, where you break through the bushes and imagine you’re fighting in a war.
“If I didn’t have anything to do, I could always go into my mind and create a story. Give myself something to do. It’s funny, I kept that up even when we moved into a town and there were kids my age available to play with. I think I always had that little spot in my mind where I could go and amuse myself.”
His family arrived in St. Petersburg in 1956. A graduate of Dixie Hollins High School, Wilson joined the Army in 1966 and was on active duty for four years. Upon his return he studied English at the University of South Florida, earning master’s degrees in journalism studies and liberal arts.
Wilson wrote for St. Pete’s Evening Independent and its sister paper, the St. Petersburg Times, for nearly 40 years. He was a Florida Humanities communications consultant for another decade.
His “Cracker Western” novel, Bridger’s Run, was published in the 1990s (“It was more of an experiment than anything else”). His non-fiction books include The Golden Era in St. Petersburg: Postwar Prosperity in The Sunshine City, St. Petersburg’s Historic African American Neighborhoods and St. Petersburg’s Historic 22nd Street South (with Rosalie Peck) and Days of Fear: A Lynching in St. Petersburg (with Jane McNeil).
Wilson was a key member of the team that established St. Petersburg’s African American Heritage Trail in 2012.
After all that serious, important business, Wilson says, Helpless at the Gates of Graceland was “a lot of fun for me to do. It showed that I could create some fiction and some poetry – although the professionals might call it something else!
“The big reward, to me, was getting all that stuff together, little bits and pieces of ideas, and expanding on them.
“I consider it to be an accomplishment of sorts, not a big deal, but people who have read it tell me they liked it. And that’s rewarding.”
Helpless at the Gates of Graceland will be available at Tombolo Books, through Amazon and directly from St. Petersburg Press.
