Our dear friend and Kunati Author Red Evans passed away. We will miss him. His humor and words live on in his wonderful novel ON ICE.

Thank you to everyone who wrote kind words to Red and his family during his illness.
The crowning of his long and productive life in radio, television, and public relations was becoming a published author. With a shout of "Ah Scooby Do," his lead in as the DJ “Rockin’ Redhead,” he entered the Pearly Gates conjuring up thoughts for his first heavenly novel.

Red saw humor and sparkling life in everything, evident in his writing. He never lost his humor. He joked, "now my cancer has cancer."

A now-famous scene in On Ice portrays, the Not-Forgotten Funeral Home. We will certainly NOT forget:

Excerpt from On Ice —

The Not Forgotten Funeral Home employee stood spellbound by the huge man with eagle feathers flickering in the afternoon breeze. Felton followed him up the stairs with his pork pie hat over his heart. At the top, he called across to me in the lawn area, “After Whistler gets his run, Eldy, you come on in. We’ll be with Mr. Tweedleman. You can’t miss him. He’s been dead since he was born.”

Felton waved the hat at the employee who was still standing by the Studebaker, mouth wide open, not knowing whether to crap or go blind. “Well come on, man. What are you standing there for? Ichthius Tweedleman’s got a lot to do to make old Tyrane here acceptable to the Gatekeeper. Close your mouth so the flies don’t get in, and come on!”

We had bought a leash for Whistler at a K-Mart, since it didn’t seem like a good idea to go to another Wal-Mart. They might have an all-store-bulletin out for a man and a greased boy who was attacked by mad pedalfiles. The leash was in a plastic case, and you pulled it out like a metal tape rule. It was real long and gave old Whistler a lot of room to roam. I tied it off on the branch of a bush and walked back to the plantation house.

The funeral home wasn’t anything like Harold’s Funeral Chapel, Vinyl Siding and Windows Company in Jupiter Bluff. Apparently, all the Not Forgotten Funeral Home did was bury folks. They didn’t display stuff like Harold’s does. At Harold’s, there were miniature model windows on stands outside of the chapel with prices on ‘em written neat and kind of solemn, so no one would be offended. People could slide the different windows up and down to see how smooth they worked. The day before the services, when folks visited the casket, quiet conversations were often drowned out by the scrape of windows going up and down. That probably took people’s minds off the death of a dear one, ya know.

Harold’s also covered the walls in the chapel with various types of siding, so between bereavements, one could think about redoing the house with the insurance money.

The Not Forgotten Funeral Home was like a tomb, not like at Harold’s where there was a pegboard wall of window accessories, such as locks, sashes, and frame selections. Men gathered around the display to talk about their own windows, comparing locks, panes, and window frames. It was all kind of homey.

The inside of this funeral home was graveyard silent except for an antique grandfather clock I passed in the hall that bonged at my ear, making me almost wet my pants. The place had a funny smell that I couldn’t pin down. It was like sour peaches and popcorn is the best I could think of. The carpet felt like thick mowed grass, and on the walls were huge pictures of fields and forests.

I came to a glass-fronted door that read: “Ichthius Tweedleman, III” behind which I could hear voices, including Felton’s distinctive scratchy one that arrested everybody in our living room. I could also hear that rumble from the Indian’s big chest. When I opened the door and walked in, I knew right away that we had stepped in chicken poop that I could almost feel ooze between my toes.

Red will be missed. His words and humor touched everyone. They will live forever in our memories and his writings. 

Order On Ice

That is when I understood I was in a hospital. The IV tube gave it away. What happened started coming back a little at a time. First, there were muffled voices, a concerned look on my wife’s face, men in white jackets doing things to me, suspension in a prone position like a magician’s assistant. Laughter, sudden, uncontrollable laughter...Yes, I remember now But, how is that I’m in the hospital?

“How’re you feeling?” A man’s voice inquired concernedly.

I looked to my left; an empty bed and plastic flowers on a metal stand; they needed water.

I looked right. There was a man in a metallic grey business suit standing beside my bed. His expression was stern but emanated apprehensive concern.

Spiffy, That’s what I thought, he was “spiffy”. The suit was supposed to look expensive, but I think it came from Mrs. Murphy’s Aluminum Siding and Haberdashery Boutique – designed by Alcoa. The knot in his cheap necktie was dark from sweaty fingers. He had a yellow legal pad in his hand and his other hand was poised over it with a Bic pen.

“How’re you feeling,” he repeated.

“Everything hurts.” I said and started to touch my forehead but the IV tube restricted my movement. My other hand told me that I had a bandage around my head. I suddenly realized that the apparition below me was my left leg suspended in traction. Then, I realized something else hurt too ... real bad. I reached under the sheet, groped, groped some more, a bandage? I didn’t ask about that, instead I said, “Is my leg broken?”

“Simple fracture, the doctor told me.” He replied. “You’ll be out of here in a few days, I’m sure.”

“Who are you? What do you want? You’re not a doctor. They wear better suits and have one of those thingies around their necks. You know a spthoscop...uh, spetho...”

“Stethoscope. I’m from the insurance company. I have a few questions.”

“Like what?”

“Whose cat was it?”

“My wife’s and when I get home I’m going to drown it in the toilet. What happened after the little shit ...”

“It was an accident, okay. Purely accidental, I can assure you it was unavoidable.”

“alright already, I hear you.” I demanded, “Just tell me what happened. All I remember is that I was taking a shower when my wife yelled that the kitchen sink was clogged up. I put a towel around me and went in the kitchen. Damn woman was almost in hysterics. I got down and stuck my head under the sink and my towel came loose.” It was coming back to me now. That damn cat loves to play with dangling things.

Sudden, awful pain, like a red hot poker to my privates. No, it was worse. It was as awful as when - when Dale Earnhardt missed the NASCAR Nextel cup chase.

After what happened crystallized in my mind, I went on, “The little furry bastard decided he would claw any dadgum swinging thing he sees and went for the nearest with them sharp claws and I hit my head on the under side of the sink.”

The aluminum suit said nothing, waited for me to continue. He acted apprehensive, like he was in deep doodoo when, in fact, it was me that was in the doodoo. “I don’t know what happened after that, do you know?”

His face colored and he hemmed and hawed, finally blurting out that he represented the private ambulance service.

He said with all the sincerity he could muster, “We accept full responsibility, sir. I assure you it was an accident. I’m ready to offer you a most liberal settlement, sir. Your wife explained what happened as they were taking you down the steps and the attendants got so overcome with laughter that they dropped you and broke your leg. The doctors say you’ll be good as new, walking just fine. They didn’t have anything to with what happened to your balls, I mean your testicles.” He hid a snicker behind his fist. “You can, well, you know, you can, uh function normally in, you know ...uh when you’re aroused. As soon as they take out the stitches, I mean.”

“Are you an animal lover?” I asked him.

“Well, my wife and I do have a pet. Why do you ask?”

“Your settlement will have to be pretty damn high to save that damn cat’s life!”

Red Evans author On Ice (Order Amazon) 

I thought about this while working on a follow up story to ON ICE which if you like it, I'm dead letter certain that you'll enjoy On Ice (click here to order)

_____

One of the things I miss from my youth in my home town of North Charleston, South Carolina is going to the movies on Saturday afternoon. It was something I looked forward to every week unless my mother was going take me to downtown Charleston which was even better, because I knew that before we got home, she would let me go the S.H. Kress five and dime store on King Street.

Now, Kress’ had a killer toy department where I would spend most of my time ... time, not money. I spent a dime of the fifty cents my mother gave me for these excursions but not in the toy department. Oh no, I headed for the candy counter to buy my second favorite candy, little chocolate discs sprinkled with tiny white sugar dots. I don’t remember what they were called.

Occasionally, if I had done some extra chore, I had a few cents more which I did spend in the toy department, usually for lead soldiers or a tin car.

My first favorite candy was what we, my brother, and I got at the Port Theater at the afternoon movie matinee: Milk Duds. By the time I left the adolescent phase of my life, I had consumed in the neighborhood of 80 million Milk Duds, Quite a neighborhood.

I thought Milk Duds were organic, grown somewhere around the theater, because they always had milk duds. They were out of some things at one time or another, but never out of milk duds. I thought there was a Milk Dud tree or bush hidden by the fence behind the theater’s Quonset style building.

I even snuck back there one time thinking that if I could find the milk dud tree, I could have all the milk duds I ever wanted. Since the theater was only five blocks from home, I could go by there after school and pick me some milk duds and wouldn’t have to wait for Saturday. I’d bring in my best buddy, Snicky, to go with me.

One afternoon, me and snicky slipped around back of the theater to look for the Milk Dud tree. We found an old milk crate and used it to help climb the fence. We sat astraddle the top and surveyed the trash-strewn area behind the theater service entrance.

Three trees, one oak, a gum tree and a chinaberry tree, the berries of which, for a minute, I thought were unripe milk duds. Snicky said he had seen a chinaberry tree before and that was what that tree was. There were a few buttonbushes too, but no Milk Dud tree. We finally concluded that Milk Duds were probably farmed on John’s Island, just South of Charleston and were delivered weekly to the Port Theater.

Soon, Snicky and I discovered girls and the origin of Milk Duds plummeted as a priority in our life. I don’t recall how long we believed they were a product of agriculture. I think trying to understand girls became of greater importance to me. However, I never solved that riddle either.

The Not Forgotten Funeral Home employee stood spellbound by the huge man with eagle feathers flickering in the afternoon breeze. Felton followed him up the stairs with his pork pie hat over his heart. At the top, he called across to me in the lawn area, “After Whistler gets his run, Eldy, you come on in. We’ll be with Mr. Tweedleman. You can’t miss him. He’s been dead since he was born.”

Felton waved the hat at the employee who was still standing by the Studebaker, mouth wide open, not knowing whether to crap or go blind. “Well come on, man. What are you standing there for? Ichthius Tweedleman’s got a lot to do to make old Tyrane here acceptable to the Gatekeeper. Close your mouth so the flies don’t get in, and come on!”

We had bought a leash for Whistler at a K-Mart, since it didn’t seem like a good idea to go to another Wal-Mart. They might have an all-store-bulletin out for a man and a greased boy who was attacked by mad pedalfiles. The leash was in a plastic case, and you pulled it out like a metal tape rule. It was real long and gave old Whistler a lot of room to roam. I tied it off on the branch of a bush and walked back to the plantation house.

The funeral home wasn’t anything like Harold’s Funeral Chapel, Vinyl Siding and Windows Company in Jupiter Bluff. Apparently, all the Not Forgotten Funeral Home did was bury folks. They didn’t display stuff like Harold’s does. At Harold’s, there were miniature model windows on stands outside of the chapel with prices on ‘em written neat and kind of solemn, so no one would be offended. People could slide the different windows up and down to see how smooth they worked. The day before the services, when folks visited the casket, quiet conversations were often drowned out by the scrape of windows going up and down. That probably took people’s minds off the death of a dear one, ya know.

Harold’s also covered the walls in the chapel with various types of siding, so between bereavements, one could think about redoing the house with the insurance money.

The Not Forgotten Funeral Home was like a tomb, not like at Harold’s where there was a pegboard wall of window accessories, such as locks, sashes, and frame selections. Men gathered around the display to talk about their own windows, comparing locks, panes, and window frames. It was all kind of homey.

The inside of this funeral home was graveyard silent except for an antique grandfather clock I passed in the hall that bonged at my ear, making me almost wet my pants. The place had a funny smell that I couldn’t pin down. It was like sour peaches and popcorn is the best I could think of. The carpet felt like thick mowed grass, and on the walls were huge pictures of fields and forests.

I came to a glass-fronted door that read: “Ichthius Tweedleman, III” behind which I could hear voices, including Felton’s distinctive scratchy one that arrested everybody in our living room. I could also hear that rumble from the Indian’s big chest. When I opened the door and walked in, I knew right away that we had stepped in chicken poop that I could almost feel ooze between my toes.

On Ice is available at all booksellers or on line. Click here to order On Ice

Here are some endearing examples:

- O -

“What was I gonna do if it did hurt (the hen to lay an egg) kiss it and make it better? I dadgum sure wasn’t going to do that! Besides, there’s this one rooster that would spur hell out of my butt was I to mess with his hens. I think he gets jealous because he thinks I’m a rooster only taller.”

- O -

“‘That last was like a knife in my gut, sharp, deep and painful. I never cried about losing Daddy. I swore I never would, ‘cause I didn’t lose Daddy. He was stolen from me when God wasn’t lookin’.’

I jerked away from her and snapped bitterly, ‘It ain’t the same! Daddy was took from me!’”

- O -

“I guess President Eisenhower was a pretty smart fella when he made ‘em build these big (cold war highways). He knew we wouldn’t have time to find some place to eat, get gas, or spend the night when we was running from Russian hordes, atomic bombs and all, so he made sure everybody put these little signs telling that they was at the next exit. That way, see, we could buy some burgers and fries on our flight to safety.”

- O -

“…Among the little places was a pizza joint called Alfredo’s, a shoe store that claimed the lowest prices in Crossover, and an eyeglass place with a pair of eyes staring out at the parking lot. Some kids had done a fine job of painting them to look cross-eyed. I admired it and gave some hard thought to where Peepee and me could find us a sign like that.”

- O -

“Here was a real judge who was more important than anybody I ever been this close to. He even talked like he had read all the legal books ever writ in the world. LeSeur was about to mess his pants and now here was a woman lawyer who seemed more powerful than Mother Nature!

And, Holy pumpkin pie, I was a witness!”

- O -

Over the few days of travel and final hours of the story, one can see and feel Eldy maturing and developing an understanding of human emotions, his own and those of the people around him. I think that's what makes him a special character.

Enjoy! Order ON ICE

Actually, some other make might have been more useful, some make still going today, perhaps, Ford, or Chevrolet. It seemed to me though that the style of the old trucks with their bulbous fenders, and utilitarian look was more visually stimulating, and old Chevys, Fords and Dodge rams didn't conjour up the image I wanted.

Being one who appreciates antiquities, I couldn't resist the scene in which an old man admires the old truck. I'm sure the owner of such a vehicle would frequently be asked about it's age, condition and so forth. It made Felton Haliday more likeable that he had cared for his old truck for so long. If you wish to know more about Studebaker cars and trucks, go to www.studebakermuseum.org.

Enjoy! Order On Ice

Nicole Seitz, author of The Spirit of Sweetgrass, 08/21/2007

Just once in a blue moon does an author come along who has the ability to make you care deeply. Not only does Red Evans take you along for a hilarious and heartwarming ride down to Louisiana to bury a loved one in ON ICE, he does it in a way that will leave you forever changed -- better for it somehow. Evans' main character, the young Eldridge Brewer, had me in the palm of his hand from the first time he watched a chicken lay an egg. His motives and sense of wonder are pure. In ON ICE, all is innocent again. Everything matters.

I suspect the world may rarely have another author like Red Evans who can grab right through your chest and touch whatever matters to you most. I highly recommend ON ICE if you want to feel alive again and remember the faith you had as a little child. Red Evans' ON ICE makes the beauty of this world a tangible thing.

Over thirty years in broadcasting, first as The Rockin’ Redhead and then as a serious television journalist, prepared me for writing fiction. During my formative years in TV, I was a great admirer of the late Charles Kuralt and his “On the Road” segments on CBS.

Although television is a visual medium, Kuralt knew that painting with words was not of less importance, but of more importance when coupled with film. Kuralt was so effective in sparking the imagination of viewers that many thought they had seen things in the film clips he narrated that were not there at all.

Kuralt’s writing for television was virtually an art form that you don’t see in contemporary news writing which appears to be written on an almost juvenile level. It was in that era that I learned to write, to use words judiciously, sparingly, and to listen to what I wrote as well as read it.

I Hope you can hear the story of ON ICE as you read it.

I’m a three-career guy, maybe even four. A radio personality when I was young, spinning Elvis, Fats, and the drifters in places like Tallahassee Florida, Spartanburg, and in my home town of Charleston, South Carolina. I was the Rockin’ Redhead, a wisecracking adlibbing deejay with voice mimics and catch phrases such as aaaawscoooobeeeedoooo! IT WAS A BLAST!

Alas, I outgrew all that and got serious, turning to news which occupied my focus for the next twenty years and eventually led to lobbying Congress in Washington, DC and public speaking. Fifteen years later, after I retired I began my fourth career, writing fiction.

One day, my daughter overheard a conversation between some good old boys talking about the passing of an aunt or uncle. They decided that the best thing to do was take the deceased to the funeral home in the back of their pickup truck. 

When I heard about it, my imagination took off and On Ice was born. The story almost wrote itself, material flowed almost faster than I could write it.

It is my belief that to be a successful writer you must enjoy the exercise. If that’s true, On Ice will be a best seller because it was an absolute joy to write. I laughed and I cried at my own stuff. I hope you derive as much pleasure reading On Ice as I had bringing to life Eldy, Felton and Whistler.

I'm a married man with four children, nine grandchildren and recently a few greats. I was raised and educated  in Charleston including the College of Charleston, and my ancestral roots go deep here. My great grandfather served as mayor of Charleston  as the first non-carpetbagger to be elected after the great war of northern aggresion.