"Where I'm Calling From"

The narrator has been through Frank's place before, but it is J.P.'s first time. The story is first and foremost about the difficulty of alcoholism and getting and staying sober. It is also about the difficulty of having a relationship when a person is sober, and how it is almost impossible when a person is drinking.

One of the people in the facility has a seizure, and the narrator is afraid that he might have one, too. J.P. and the narrator have a long conversation on the porch of the facility, or, rather, J.P. tells the narrator a long story about him and his wife and their adventures in chimney-sweeping. The narrator is happy to have his mind occupied listening to J.P. tell his long story.

J.P. tells about meeting his wife-to-be, Roxy. Roxy came in her chimney-sweep uniform, with tophat, to clean the chimney at a friend's house where J.P. was visiting. They begin dating, they get married, and Roxy's father takes J.P. in as a partner in the family chimney-sweeping business. But J.P. start drinking heavily, and soon it is out of control: "He tells me that he was starting off the morning with a couple of drinks. He'd have a belt of the stuff before he brushed his teeth. . . . He'd go to work with a thermos bottle of vodka in his lunch pail" (162).

The narrator has to keep coaxing J.P. to t

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n, she is in a state of peace and understanding of life and death to a degree that she could not possibly put into words. She knows, however, that she is not supposed to be happy, but is supposed to be sad, is supposed to cry, and is supposed to say something. She apparently fakes a "loud childish sob," and apologizes to the dead man for wearing a hat, or for wearing that particular "party" hat. Again, it is impossible to definitely label the change that comes over Laura, except to say that she will never forget that moment as long as she lives. It will change the way she thinks about both life and death. At the moment, however, she herself cannot even begin to put into words what she has felt or how she has changed. It is important to notice that she started to say something about her wonder about life rather than about death. D.H. Lawrence, in his short story "The Rocking-Horse Winner," tells the tale of a young boy, Paul, who finds that he can predict the winners of horse races if he can get going fast enough on his rocking-horse. We do not know if Lawrence is saying that the boy is psychic somehow or not. We do not know if he is saying that the boy is insane or not. But the way he presents the story makes it clear that it i
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Rocking-Horse Winner, Obviously Mansfield, Derby Oscar, World War, Hergesell Cornelius, Jack London, Laurie Laura, It's Malabar, Hergesell Hergesell, Ellie Cornelius, girl friend, wife girl friend, wife girl, poor people, little ellie, jack london, recovering alcoholic, i'm calling, frank martin's, little girl, tell story, emotionally psychologically spiritually, jack london story, jp tell story, favorably own son,
Approximate Word count = 9714
Approximate Pages = 39 (250 words per page)