Writing in the third person

So much of the work we've done in writers workshop has been written in the first person.  We talked about the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald and how Nick was the witness character who told the stories of others.  I asked the group to try writing in the third person a story originally written in the first.

Bay Village and Mary Wright’s summers there…

By Ken J Wright

 

When Mary Wright was 31, a friend of hers, John Maschal, built a village of shops on a boardwalk on Long Beach Island, NJ and he asked Mary to rent the stores for him. She did a great job and got the 8 or 9 stores rented in 2 weeks and so he asked her to come help him run some of the stores and especially the restaurant. 

 

It was just John, 29, and Mary with 168 college kids running a restaurant, a bakery, an Ice Cream Parlor and a Fudge Shop, the shop that made all the money. Several of the shops she rented to friends - a T-shirt Shop and a Book Store, so she had friends around. 

 

And, oh, she had 4 kids ages 3, 5, 7, 9, so she hired two babysitters that she knew from home, Swarthmore, and brought them with her to the shore. Husband Ken was then working for Scott Paper in Philly, so he could get down during the week and on weekends. 

 

The problem was that the job was really too big for just John and Mary, so they worked night and day. Her pay for all of this was that John would rent her family a house at the shore. It worked out. But when Mary asked John for her birthday off and he said, “Just half a day!” she later found out that he and Ken had planned a Birthday Party for her in the restaurant! When the family all came through the door with a big cake and one small candle, she couldn’t stop from crying. 

 

Mary worked at Bay Village for five years, running the restaurant, her own Creative Playthings shop “The Red Balloon,” a stuffed animal shop (Snoopy and Raggedy Ann & Andy) with books to match. Later, John and Ken built a kiosk where Mary sold engraved jewelry with a friend for a few years. Then she and her family moved to Belgium.

When she came back from Belgium she again took over the kiosk and sold different items every year for the next few years. Her family has had reunions at LBI - most recently in 2001 in the house in the picture. She loved my summers there and all the friends she met. How lucky she was…...

 

My Grandmother Had Two Dresses

By Olive Padden

My grandmother had two dresses for summer.  They hung in a ver small closer area off her bedroom when she was not wearing them ( in the daytime at home she wore print cotton house dresses which don't count.). The two I refer to were real dresses. One was light blue and white print, a soft cotton voile with a white ruffle around the neck and I loved it and thought she looked so pretty in it with her white hair and very blue eyes.  The other was a heavy black silk, almost stiff in its feeling.  Grandma had two different lace collars that could be sewn or pinned on to change the look. Those collars were always sparkling white and perfectly ironed. But the dress was always the same, just heavy black, and I didn't like it.  Grandma wore it for funerals and over serious occasions so she never. Had a particularly happy face when wearing it.  She would pin on the collar, put her small black hat on her white hair, and off she would go. The blue dress she wore at home to greet people who were coming to visit.  Grandmas hair was always lovely.  I remember her digging in a small jar to get 25 cents.  She would then walk across the street to where Carries beautiful shop was.  She would come home an hours later with her hair sparkling, it's curl controlled in beautiful waves, and the back in a bun.  She was then set for another week.  She always used face powder.  It came out of a round cardboard container which sat on the dresser in her bathroom.  There was a big, soft puff in it and I would watch as she generously patted powder over her fine white skin.  The only times I saw her with perspiration dripping off her pointy nose or chin was when she had been baking or ironing, and that was quickly rectified.  She was a lady through and through.