I used to play with John R. Powers' little sister when I was a kid. He was just her big brother "Johnnie" as far as I was concerned. Then when he wrote "Last Catholic in America" I found myself reading about all of the neighbors. It was very surreal, the way he made up names for people I could clearly identify. He even renamed the local woman who used to root through everyone's trash. Her real name was Garbage Grannie, but he called her Garbage Lady Annie.
Odd tale - she came from Czechoslovakia or something after WWII, never learned English and just couldn't quite let go of trash. The grown-ups speculated it had something to do with the trauma. She wasn't homeless - she had a house. Then when she died, another woman, Rosie, who spoke English with an accent and was really very nice, replaced her, moved into her rundown shack and went up and down the alleys picking up newspapers and bottles. She kept about 100 cats. I swear when I was a kid, I thought it was a job and that every town had a woman like that.
John and I had some sporadic email correspondence in recent years. He's mainly an inspirational speaker these days. But Last Catholic was recently re-released so we may be hearing more from him as an author. He's a wonderful, very funny writer. Very nice man as well. My favorite of his is "The Junk-Drawer Corner-Store Front-Porch Blues," which you can find used on Amazon, but everything he writes is great.
