THROUGH DANGEROUS DOORS
In a life defined by risk, Robert Charles Lee experiences a poor and free-ranging childhood in the racist South of the 1960s. After his father dies, the family grows dysfunctional. As a result, teen-age Robert seeks sanity and solace by rock climbing solo and driving cars fast. He wins a scholarship and graduates from university, but still seeks to escape the South.
Moving to Alaska and the Western US, Robert works in a series of dangerous and brutal jobs. He meets and marries Linda, who enjoys climbing and skiing difficult mountains as much as he does. Simultaneously, Robert trains in the science of risk to become a respected professional risk scientist.
Robert shares his remarkable story as he guides the reader through a series of dangerous but rewarding doors, culminating in a vivid journey of adventure and risk.
The horse gallops across our range of a few acres. I’m exhilarated and barely hanging on, but my father, Charles, is watching. I go hunting with him, and he guffaws when I’m almost knocked flat by the recoil of my first deafening discharge of a twelve-gauge. I explore the copperhead-snake, wasp, hornet, tick, chigger, and poison ivy infested hardwood forest on our property. My feet and legs are bare much of the year. However, I tread carefully. The door to the outdoors opens. I’m six or seven years old, but I eagerly enter.
***
I was serious about managing risk, even as a kid. Life began as a late
Boomer and a Fallout Boy. A B-52 bomber broke up over my home state in 1961,
releasing two nuclear bombs. Above-ground nuclear weapons tests were conducted
in the United States West, creating radioactive dust clouds. These events perhaps
foretold a career steeped in radiation.
My family is of working-class, British and Scots-Irish ancestry; the
original hillbillies in the Appalachians and Piedmont. My birthplace and time
were subject to systemic White racism, resulting in the designation “Klansville,
USA.” We lived near Salisbury in rural Granite Quarry, North Carolina, about a
mile from the gated compound of Bob Jones, a powerful Ku Klux Klan Grand
Dragon. Jones was kicked out of the Navy for refusing to salute a Black
officer, proclaiming, “I won’t salute no nigger.” Jones helped expand the North
Carolina KKK to over ten-thousand members. A friend and I once snuck over to
watch a cross-burning near his property.
If the neighborhood White men weren’t pickin’ and grinnin’, drinking and
playing guitars and banjos on their porches on a Saturday night, they were
hanging out with their bros in the local men’s Klub. I don’t recall any
lynchings, but harassment and violence were common. The county sheriff was a
Klan member, and wore a Western cowboy hat on his bald head and a patch over
one dead eye. Chain-gangs broke rocks in the steaming South- ern heat under the
squinty eyes of shotgun-toting overseers on horseback. Most of the Black people
in the area lived in segregation in the equivalent of a shanty town. Schools,
churches, and most activities were segregated.
My family is purported to be related to the slaveowner and traitor General
Robert E. Lee, but I’ve not been able to verify this. If true, I’m appalled in
a moral sense, but there’s nothing I can do about it aside from trying to be an
anti-racist and a good citizen. At least I don’t have the same middle name. I
do indeed have a red neck, but solely due to years of outdoor activity.
Welcome! The first page is perhaps one of the most
important pages in the whole book. It’s what draws the reader into the story.
Why did you choose to begin your book this way?
The book is about my risky life, so I thought I’d start from the
beginning. My father was no stranger to risk, and he was an influence in this
respect. I grew up in a rural US environment in the 1950s and 60s, which was
inherently risky and quite different than most American kids experience these
days. I was also immersed in a virulently racist Southern culture, but I was
lucky that my parents weren’t racist.
The first page sets the stage for the rest of the book, which tells
stories about a variety of both voluntary and involuntary risks I’ve
experienced throughout my life. The
first paragraph is in present tense. I begin each chapter with a similar
present-tense account to set the stage for each “dangerous door” I chose to
enter. I thought this was an interesting device, and the content editor agreed.
In the course of writing your book, how many times would you say
that first page changed and for what reasons?
I don’t think it changed substantially. As I had little physical
record of the early years, I gave my siblings a copy of the first chapter early
in the process to ensure my memory was accurate. They all confirmed my
memories. Of course, once it was accepted for publication and the editors got
ahold of it there were changes, but the spirit of the text was retained.
Having said that, there’s also a one-page preface. The original manuscript had a long preface, but the content editor suggested that it’s better to just “launch into the story”. I agreed, but considered a short preface necessary because it might not be clear otherwise that the book is about my risky life, not my life in general. I also included a disclaimer and a warning that many of the activities described in the book can be life-threatening. One advance-copy reviewer thought this was interesting, and wrote: “This is a memoir like few others, in that the author is intent on beseeching his readers not to follow the example of his own life. The story he tells shows that this is very good advice indeed, but nevertheless his tale of improbable escapes from one looming disaster after another is both instructive and entertaining”.
Was there ever a time after the book was published that you wished
you had changed something on the first page?
No. By the time it was published, the words were, in my opinion, as
good as I could get them.
What advice can you give to aspiring authors to stress how important
the first page is?
As you say, the first page is “what draws the reader
into the story”. I’d say the same of the cover. I’ve read plenty of good books
without good first pages or covers, but I might be more patient than some
readers. There’s no downside to crafting a good first page, and designing a
good cover. Having said that, I find it highly irritating to read a book with a
promising beginning and great chapters, but a lame ending!
Robert Charles Lee is a retired risk scientist with over twenty-five years of academic and applied risk analysis, decision analysis, and risk management experience in a wide variety of contexts. He has authored over one hundred peer-reviewed scientific works, as well as over one hundred technical reports for industry and government agencies. Prior to the professional risk work he worked in laboratories a bit, but otherwise was a manual laborer until he reckoned that he could use his brain for a living.
Robert has a BS in Botany, a BS in Science Education, an MS in Environmental Health, and a Certificate in Integrated Business Administration. He is ABD (all but dissertation) in a Toxicology PhD program. He is an ordained Minister and has an honorary Doctorate of Metaphysics from the Universal Life Church and is a Member of the Nova Scotia L’Ordre du Bon Temps, or Order of the Good Time.
He was born in North Carolina and lived there for over twenty years, but has since lived in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, and Alberta. He was also homeless for a time while a laborer in the Western United States. He currently resides in Colorado.
Robert and his wife Linda have climbed hundreds of technical and non-technical mountain, rock, ice, and canyon routes, hiked thousands of miles in several countries, and skied many miles of vertical feet at resorts and in the backcountry.
Robert is an avid amateur photographer, largely of outdoor subjects. He is a musician who plays hand, stick, and mallet percussion, and who can sing, but rarely does for unclear reasons. He is an amateur sound engineer and producer and has recorded more than a thousand written and improvisational instrumental pieces with other musicians to date. He was trying to learn to relax in retirement, but then he discovered non-technical writing. He has written a memoir and a poetry collection and is working on short stories.
Through Dangerous Doors is his latest book.
Visit his website at https://robertcharleslee.com or follow him on Goodreads.
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