Dean O. Smith – författare

Ellis Worth wrote this selection of stories between 1955 and 1972. Accordingly, they refer to people, events, and objects in the vernacular of that era: President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khrushchev, costly operator-assisted long-distance telephone calls, Hudson automobiles, and so forth. In that regard, they provide a sometimes nostalgic glimpse of the history of those times. During this period, Worth lived in Colorado, first Denver and then Colorado Springs. Many of the stories refer one way or another to Sonora Springs, a mythical city that presumably was his hometown in Colorado: hence the title of this anthology. They express a sense of place, his fondness of the Rocky-Mountain geography and culture. Characteristically, most of his stories are quite short. Indeed, they belong to the "short-short-story" genre. In his diary, Worth commented on their brevity. "Thinking about my stories, I realized two distinguishing characteristics. From the beginning, I have known they were extraordinarily brief, compact, condensed. Am I writing sketches instead of stories? It may be so. However, I often feel that many authors of longer stories have put so little into their soup that the soup though copious is tasteless and weak. I try to give a concentrated, nourishing, meaty story." Also, most stories are rife with symbolism, inviting readers to stretch their imagination answering questions such as: What was the meaning of that? What comes next? Thus, the Worth stories often linger consciously or subconsciously beyond their brevity as readers process their meaning, often with a smile. All of this is not to say that the stories are abstruse or heavy reading. To the contrary, many of them are satirical, light-hearted fables sometimes featuring squirrels or crows while others are amusing narratives about boss and employee, man and woman, love and sex-maybe. Altogether, these stories lend themselves to reading during a brief pause in the day or before bedtime at night.

In this amusing collection of tales, Ellis Worth reminisces about not only his childhood on a Minnesota farm but also many other episodes in his life. These are not sentimental recollections; nor is this an anthology of first-person memoirs. The reminiscences are embedded within enjoyable stories about fictitious characters in equally fictitious settings. But, in accordance with Mark Twain''s assertion "Write what you know," Ellis Worth wrote what he knew. In this fictitious context, he relates his own experiences, personal discoveries, and outlook on social mores of the time, the mid-twentieth century.

Ellis Worth tales are unique. They are usually quite short and compact, offering an amusing and occasionally ribald narrative of some incident in its characters'' lives-that is, presumably in his life. Worth seeks to entertain through his use of colloquial, everyday vernacular, bringing his principal characters'' personality traits humorously to the forefront. He also seeks to provoke thought, sometimes leaving it up to the reader to join him in imagining the end of the story or to ascertain the symbolic meaning of some passage. In that way, these stories deliver subtle alternatives to prevailing wisdom.

As a lawyer, Worth featured the legal profession in one way or another in many of his stories: a practicing lawyer, a judge, a courtroom trial. Usually satirical, they narrate Worth''s disenchantment with the law and his failed private practice. After closing his law office, he was unemployed for two years. During that time, Worth often wrote about characters he met, recounting their tales, while sitting on a park bench enjoying the sun or in a tavern. Out of financial necessity, he returned to the law but from a different angle, taking a routine editorial job at a company that produced law reference books. That menial workplace became the setting for several other amusing stories, rife with satire.   

Throughout, Worth extols his sense of place, the Minnesota farmland of his youth and the Colorado Rocky Mountains of his middle-aged adult life when he wrote most of these stories. Indeed, the Midwestern fields of grain, the lakes, the mountains, the sunsets, the cool high-altitude breezes are as much protagonists as the characters themselves. Equally noticeable is the historical time frame of these stories. Worth wrote them in the mid-twentieth century. Accordingly, they refer to people and events of that era. In that regard, these stories chronicle interesting tidbits of the history of that time period. Likewise, Worth used terminology of that era, leaving it as part of the historical record.  

The Man I Didn''t Know narrates my discovery of a father unknown to me. To be sure,I thought that I knew my father. Although my parents were divorced and I lived with my mother, I spent all day Saturdays with him for 11 formative years, from ages 8 to 18. And I continued to communicate with him by weekly letters and occasional visits for another ten years until his death. He was a good father: attentive and loving. But, then, 32 years after his death, I discovered his diary and myriad short stories that he had written. As I began to read the volumes in this trove, I quickly came to a startling revelation: the author of the diary and the stories was unrecognizable: a stranger, a father I didn''t know. This stranger was beset by the insidious demons of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), demons that were foreign to the father I knew, respected, loved. Distraught, I was compelled to read further, hoping to resolve this disconnect between the fathers I knew and didn''t know.

This became a study of a man''s recovery from acute mental illness. The study derives from personal memories of my father and two interlacing narratives: my father''s diary and his short stories written under a pseudonym, Ellis Worth. Over time-12.6 years to be exact-they follow the contours of my father''s mind. They tell about his nervous breakdown, his hospitalization, his bouts of insulin- and electro-shock therapy. They tell about his conscious thoughts as he interacts with psychiatrists, colleagues, family, and lover. And they tell about his dreams: unconscious nighttime dreams and conscious daytime dreams, dreams of becoming a successful writer, dreams of marrying the woman he loves. narration tells of his gradual recovery from this insidious illness to become the father I knew, respected, and loved.