A Wizard of Oz Story Too Amazing to be True...But it is. by Kim Michael copyright March 2015

The Wizard's Coat-

by Kim Michael
copyright March 2015

(Picture provided by: http://thefilmspectrum.com/?p=3634)

I have always believed that nothing in life is random; that there is no such thing as coincidence.  And though I don’t believe in fate, I do believe in destiny and once in a while...we are just lucky enough to see it.  

I think it’s important to understand that point because certain things happen in life that are so far out of the realm of being “random" or “happenstance" that I believe they exist as markers.  The universe telling us that everything in it, was and is, on purpose; and more importantly, you and I are not accidents, and our existence, was and is, on purpose.  

With that in mind I want to share an amazing story with you that I was finally able to verify this evening.  I first heard it on a Paul Harvey broadcast years ago.  It is a story about one of my favorite movies of all time...the Wizard of Oz.  

When MGM began planning the filming of the Wizard of Oz in 1938 (it was released in 1939) the production team under the direction of Victor Fleming was given a task.  MGM did not want a costume designer to make the Wizard’s coat, which it was decided needed to be a classic Edwardian jacket.  

The idea was that it could easily be found in one of the many costume houses in Hollywood, but after weeks of going through every costume shop in the city, the design team found that it might not be as easy as they thought.  

Undaunted they turned to New York.  If it could not be found in Hollywood certainly they would find a coat fit for a wizard in New York, but after going through every costume house on and off the island, again they came up empty handed.  

Determined not to give up they decided to go to Chicago and again, after going to very costume shop there, they began to think that they may never find the perfect coat, and in fact, it may not even exist.  

But as they walked back to catch the last train out of Chicago going back to Los Angeles, they happened on a “used” clothing store, what we call a “thrift" shop today.  Why they stopped there, no one knows, but they did.  And as soon as they walked there it was hanging on a rack at the back of the store.  A used Edwardian coat.  A perfect Edwardian coat.  A coat truly fit for a Wizard.  They bought it immediately and brought it back to Los Angeles to begin shooting.

To everyones amazement the coat fit Frank Morgan perfectly.  Frank Morgan was the actor who played Professor Marvel, the kings guard, and of course-- the Wizard of Oz himself.  And they did not have to make a single alteration.  The coat fit him as if it had been made for him.  

Now in the late 1930s filming in California and Hollywood were excellent places to make movies because the weather is mild and fairly consistent year around.  But it also made the sets and sound stages extremely hot when all the big lights were on, and it was only possible to film fifteen or twenty minutes at a time before they would have to shut everything down to let the set cool.  

Now add to that, Frank Morgan had a terrible problem with perspiration and at the end of fifteen or twenty minutes of filming would be totally soaked in sweat.  So much so that between takes he would turn his pockets inside out to get them to dry.

One day between takes, as Frank stood with his pockets turned inside out, one of the stage hands noticed that a name tag had been sewn into one of the pockets.  People gathered around as he turned it up to see the name of the original owner and when he did, the entire cast and crew went silent—almost spell bound.  

You see, there was a reason why the coat was the perfect wizard’s coat.  The name of the original owner, sewn into the pocket, was none other than the "real" Wizard of OZ himself…L. Frank Baum.  The man who wrote…The Wizard of Oz.   

Six Words of Courage--The Horatio Spafford Story

Six Words of Courage-

The Horatio Spafford Story

By Kim Michael  Copyright February 2015



If you have read much of my work you know that a lot of what I write has a spiritual quality to it.  I know many of the people who read my work are religious, and I also know that many are not.  And it really doesn’t matter. Nothing I write has a religious agenda to it.  I do however, believe, that to become greater than one’s self it is important to aspire to something greater than yourself, and there- in is how faith can play an important part in life.

Even so, the topics I write about aren’t really even about faith so much as they are about human strength, and courage, and most of all hope; of which “faith” is often a major part.    

A case in point; there is a touching story that I heard many years ago about one of the most beloved hymns ever written.  

It begins with a man, Horatio Gates Spafford; a senior partner in a prominent law firm in Chicago and real estate developer. He and his wife Anna Larson Spafford and their four daughters were well known in the social circles in Chicago in the mid 1800s.  Then in 1871 disaster struck.  The Great Chicago Fire destroyed much of the Spafford Family’s financial fortune and then the economy downturn of 1873 following the great fire essentially took the rest.  

With only a little money left the Spafford family decided to take a holiday in England to spend time with friends and recover from their losses, but disaster was yet to strike again.

At the last minute Horatio had to stay behind to finish legal issues caused by the fire, sending Anna his wife and his four daughters on a ship a head of him.  While crossing the Atlantic in the dead of night the SS Ville du Havre struck another ship and sank.  Two hundred twenty six people were lost.    

Horatio’s wife survived, and the telegram she sent to her husband was only two words.  

“Saved…alone.” 

All four of Horatio's daughters: eleven-year-old Tanetta, nine-year-old  Elizabeth "Bessie", five-year-old Margret Lee, and two-year-old Anna were lost.   

Shortly after Spafford boarded another ship that would take him to his  grieving wife in England.  Half way through the journey the Captain came to Horatio’s door.  “Sir we are at the place where the Havre went down, I thought you would like to know.”

Horatio Spafford donned his heavy coat and hat and walked out into a raging storm to stand on deck and look at the resting place where all four of his little girls were lost, and as he stood there, wind and rain beating down on him, he slipped a pen and a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote the gentle words—“It is Well with My Soul.”  

Eventually he would finish those words and Philip Bliss would write the music.  

Even now when I hear that hymn, I see Horatio Spafford standing on the deck of that ship in a raging storm, broken hearted, yet writing his six words of strength and hope.  And I am touched by how often in the midst of our greatest tragedies; something beautiful and meaningful can come.  And how something as intangible as faith-- can be the difference.

Angels in the Front Seat by Kim Michael -Copyright February 2015

Some weeks ago I was in Beverly, MA driving back to Manchester to catch the last flight out for the night.  I had been on four flights, drove to Beverly Massachusetts to meet with a friend and back to Manchester to head home to Nashville--all in a single day.  My flight was at 5:35p.  The meeting with my friend went to 3:15 and as I looked outside to the parking lot I could see the rain had not let up like I hoped it would.  Instead it was coming down even harder--in sheets--wind blowing--visibility only about 20%.

I drove back in a rented Hyundai SUV, a vehicle that I had never driven before and really didn't know how all of the features worked.  All I knew was I was going to miss my flight and I had not made arrangements to stay in New Hampshire for the night.   Sometimes in the heat of desperation we all do stupid things and I was so determined to make that flight--that at times, I was driving as much as 80 miles an hour.  

Even with the rain pounding and the wind blowing the rain sideways, I was amazed…I could see the road fine (which is a feat in itself because I am practically blind in the dark—can’t see a thing).  

Oddly people kept flashing their lights at me all the time I was driving and I kept thinking to myself "These people in Massachusetts sure don’t like to be passed".  When I got within five miles of the airport the rain began to let up and as I pulled into the garage, even with the lights in the garage, it was hard for me to see.  

Then I looked down at the dash and saw the true "miracle".  I had driven the entire way with my lights off-and yet in all that rain and wind and dark—I saw the road perfectly.  

I am convinced that angels are with us.  Sometimes as close as the seat next to us.  Guiding us, even when we don’t know they’re there.  And sometimes they help us to find our way home….even when we can’t see it for ourselves.

GOAT MAN by Kim Michael 2014

GOAT MAN  A Novel By Kim Michael--Copyright Library Of Congress 2014

PREVIEW

A ghost rises out of the mist--an old man stands atop the first of two makeshift wagons, their sides alive with the sound of hub caps banging and bottles clanking. The detritus of a hundred backroads fills the air with their own symphony of sound.  Below his gaze a team of twenty goats pulls the menagerie, tethered together with bits of rope and old leather.   

His clothes are ragged- his silver hair, long and disheveled, feathers in the breeze as he faces motionless against an open highway that begins and ends in thick flames of a haunted mist.  A car crawls by and as it passes a boy in the back seat turns to catch a final glimpse of the ghost before he disappears into the wall of white behind them.  Their eyes meet, and for that one second they connect...and that moment would stay locked in the boy’s memory forever.  

Now it is twenty years later.  E. Alex Fleming, the author of the best selling book “Angels of a Divided Sky”, becomes hugely successful, but then disaster strikes.  Amid a torrent of bad press and allegations of fraud, in a single day he looses everything--his wife, his luxury apartment on Hollywood Boulevard, his career... and his reputation.  

So, too, Kimberly Siecrest, Alex’s young intern agent, looses everything as well.  Now all they have is each other and one hope.  Together they must find the one story that will be their salvation; a ghost Alex once saw when he was a boy, on the backroads of Georgia.    

But as Alex soon discovers, it is not the writer who finds the story, it is the story that finds the writer--and the story that finds Alex and Kimberly is very different from the one they expected.  

Inspired by real events (and the real American legend, Ches McCartney) the story of the Goat Man is a fictional tale of love, and loss, and more importantly, how perfection in life (as in gemstones) is defined not by its purity, but by its flaws--and therein... a twist to the story that is as haunting as it is beautiful.   

I have not yet found a publisher for "Goat Man" and any interested parties can contact me via this blog site.  

km

Author

Release the Kraken

“Release the Kraken"
By Kim Michael

I’m nine years old.  It’s Tuesday night.  "Bible Study Night" at church.  My dad is the teacher.  The White Chapel Bible Study is a small, but faithful group of followers who diligently meet downstairs in the basement every Tuesday night to read the bible—every chapter—every passage-every word-- diligently, if not painfully.   Like I said I’m nine.  I had a hard time sitting still.  I had a harder time even reading when it came to my turn.  There were not a lot of other kids, just me and one other boy, and I really didn’t know him all that well, just the look of misery on his face as he sat across the table from me.

Our church was small; out in the middle of nowhere.  There was an old farm house on one side and a corn field butted up to the back of the property.  There were no bathrooms, just an outhouse behind the church next to the back fence, with a Sears catalogue hanging inside (not for reading).  People joke about it now, but that’s the way it was back then.

Mom knew Tuesday nights were hard on me.  She would often fix something I liked for supper before we went.  The night of the “incident” she fixed one of my favorites.  “Beans and Weenies”.  Now for this part of the story you need to understand that I have a sensitive digestive system.  Strange things happen when I eat certain foods.  Now that I’m an adult I have come to know these foods over the years and to avoid them, however at nine, I was still very much in the discovery stage.  The food, or culprit in question here—BEANS.

I ate two helpings that night.  Beans and weenies with buttered bread.  There is nothing better.  

At seven o’clock we were at the church, down in the basement.  Just heading into the book of Exodus.  Somewhere between the first and second plague that hit Egypt something started rumbling in my stomach.  When the angel of death showed up in Egypt, I could feel his presence.  Unknown things were happening to me; pressure  building.  I began sweating.  Then I thought about that outhouse in the dark.  By myself.  In the cold.  That scared me even more. I tried to stay calm hoping it would go away, but it didn’t.  I was determined to hang in there --I would do anything not to have to go to that outhouse, but it was not to be.  

The storm of beens and weenies continued to churn, and by the time we got to the part when Moses said, "Let My People Go", it was if a voice on some distant shore of rotten eggs and sulfur cried out, “Release The Kraken”.

It started out as a low rumble.  Everyone looked up and directly at me.  No smiles or laughter.  Their eyes wide, in disbelief.  I tried to clinch, but that only made the pitch go higher.  I covered almost three octaves that ended in some kind of whistle that was still going.  I could do nothing to stop it.   

When it was finally over everyone just stared at me.  I was terrified.  My dad turned to me red-faced and embarrassed; looked me in the eye and said, “What do you say?"

My face went blank.  I had no idea.  What do you say after you’ve bombed the Tuesdays Night Bible Study group with deadly beans and weenie gas?  I was petrified.  All I could think to say was... “Thank you?"

My dad just stared at me.  Finally, his face eased up.  He looked to the others, “Give me a minute, I’ll take him out to the outhouse."  

We walked to the back door and out into the dark.  He had his flashlight.  By the time we’d gotten there I no longer had to go.  I tried, but I couldn’t.  Dad said nothing.  As we walked back toward the door, I began to cry.  I didn't want to go back inside.  I didn’t want to face all those people again.  Dad knelt down and hugged me.  

“It’s OK,” he said finally.  “Go on to the car, turn the heater on and you can listen to the radio until we come out.  Those days we had a couple of riders we took home.    

It was probably not the best decision on my dad’s part.  The beans and weenies would strike again before they all came out and piled in the car.  We had to drive home in twenty degree weather, with the windows down...my dad glancing up at me in the mirror in disbelief.  

Sometimes there are just not enough “Thank Yous” to say.   

Rejection Letters to God? by Kim Michael

             Rejection Letters

      ...to God?

              By Kim Michael

      A number of years ago, shortly after I finished my first novel, a curious thing happened. At a family reunion I mentioned to a favorite relative of mine that I had finally finished the novel that took more than ten years to complete. Actually, he’s my wife’s mother’s sister’s son so I have no idea what that makes him as far as being a relative, but he is also a good friend.

     He’s a professor at a prominent university out east as well as being a writer himself, having published several books, the kind of books that only a handful of people in the world can read and understand. For years the government flew him around the country to help set up “think” tanks, or at least that’s what I think he did, I’m still not sure.
     So, at this family reunion, I mentioned to him that I had finished my first novel and of course his first question was, “What’s it about?” The one question, if you’re smart, you never ask another writer, particularly a new author.  Like baby rattlesnakes we tend to be the most dangerous because we don’t know how to control the poison. And for the next three hours he sat patiently listening. A few days later, I get a book from him in the mail entitled, “Rotten Reviews and Rejections” by Bill Henderson and Andre Bernard.
     If you’ve never seen the book, it is a compilation of rejections and bad reviews of some of the most famous authors and famous books in history, and yes, even the greatest authors have had their work rejected. Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, Fitzgerald, the list is endless. It is said that Fitzgerald got so many rejection letters that he wallpapered an entire room in his house with them.
    And so, my well-intentioned friend--my wife’s mother’s sister’s son, was not being malicious or negative about my first foray into the world of authorship, which I suppose I could have read into his sending me that book. No... I believe, in his own way, he was preparing me for what he knew would be the “inevitable”, and yes, my first attempt at getting my book published ended with a very tall stack of rejection letters. But I have to say, that experience was as much an education on the world of publishing as writing the book itself.

     I learned a number of valuable lessons from that almost overwhelming experience of total rejection. Some of the letters made me a better writer, some made me mad enough to want to prove them wrong, and some led me to understand one of the most important things you can know as a writer... and that is--when dealing with agents and critics and publishers--they’re not always right. In fact, every great book that has ever been written has, in some way, been rejected, and many far more than you would imagine.
    And so I wondered, turn back the hands of time, what if publishers and agents of today were to get inquiry letters for what has become the greatest selling book of all time—the Bible?
     And so I present for your consideration Rejection Letters To…God?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Almighty,
Thank you for your recent submission. Although we feel that it shows promise we also think it’s too long, jumps around too much and will be hard for readers to follow. Try to get it under 300 pages.

Dear G,
Please resubmit using standard manuscript format. We do not accept scroll submissions.

Dear Mr. Jehovah.
Maybe if you worked from an outline it would work better.  Also some of the names sound made-up.

Dear G,

After reviewing your “Old Testament” submission, we would suggest if you decide to write a “New Testament” that you use more American sounding names like--Mathew, Mark, Luke, or John –it will read better.

Dear G,
Is this fiction or non-fiction?

Dear G in Heaven,
We asked you to send a synopsis and you sent over the Ten Commandments. The guy you had deliver them, Mosses--I think his name was, dropped them on the way over. We just wanted you to know they are now in pieces and totally unreadable. Please resubmit and this time use something other than stone tablets.

Mr. G-
Well I don’t see people putting it in every hotel room in the country, but thanks anyway.  

Dear G,
If you hope to sell the movie rights on this a chase scene that lasts forty years in the desert is not going to work.

Mr. G,

Not interested. In the future check the websites before you send your submissions. We only consider religious or inspirational books.

G, 

Well it’s certainly not the greatest story ever told, but if you work on it more, it may be worth considering on some level.

Hey God…...

Thank you for your submission.  I read your book ...loved it. I suspect like all authors you are probably getting a lot of push back right now particularly from people who haven’t really read it, or taken time to understand it.

Don’t be discouraged. There is a message here, an important message for everyone, and one day I believe the world will see it for what it is. 

Joseph and the Gentle Giant

 

Joseph and the Gentle Giant

 By Kim Michael                                                                                           

He was late.  Jim had been in meetings all morning and his last meeting at the main campus of the hospital ran over, putting him on a dead run back to his office six blocks away.      

 

Now I have to preface this story by telling you that the Jim in this story is a friend of mine, a gentle giant. Maybe six five.  When I first met him, he probably weighed close to three hundred pounds and not an “obese” three hundred pounds, but a “big” three hundred pounds--like a line-backer.  Add to that that he’d once been a state trooper in Maine until he got the highest grade on a civil service exam in Massachusetts which landed him a job in hospital administration, which he freely admits he had absolutely no background in.  And yet, in a few short years, he had become one of the most highly respected patient accounts directors in the state-- and now he is terribly late for his next meeting--an important meeting that he can’t miss.

 

It was almost noon when he finally parked his car in the parking deck, rushed down the stairs to the sidewalk below, and then across the street to the ten story office complex where his office was located.    

 

That’s when Jim sees the homeless man sitting on the curb.  He glances at him for only a second as he passes, but before he pushes through the office building door, he pauses to see his own reflection in the glass...and then the reflection of the homeless man sitting on the curb in the distance.  

 

Then he looks down at his watch.  He’s terribly late, but instead of going in, he slowly turns back to the sidewalk, walks across the street to a restaurant and buys two sandwiches.  And then on a warm summer afternoon, in his suite and tie, Jim comes back to where the homeless man is sitting, sits down on the curb beside him, and hands him one of the sandwiches.      

 

The homeless man’s name was Joseph.  Jim never told me his last name, and I suspect he didn’t know it himself.  He didn’t have to.  He knew everything he needed to know.  They sat there on the curb and watched the cars pass by, people streaming around them as they went to lunch and came back from lunch. 

 

And I suspect in all the time they sat there, Joseph never knew that the man who had bought him a sandwich, was also a Catholic Priest.   It was’t important for Jim to tell him and it wasn’t important for Joseph to know.  Sometimes the only thing that is really important is just sitting on a curb and eating a sandwich with someone...even when you’re late.