The Dog Ate Steinbeck's Masterpiece

In this case, the first manuscript for Of Mice And Men. But he re-wrote it. I learned that and much more today from Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac because my son-in-law left the radio tuned to the public radio station I never listen to.
I usually listed to the jazz station that does not carry Keillor.
But when I switch back, I will still have Keillor because you can subscribe to the podcast and get a daily email reminding you of it.
He read the poem Uncle Jim today, and I also now have a new poet to remember to read.

Uncle Jim

by Peter Meinke

What the children remember about Uncle Jim
is that on the train to Reno to get divorced
so he could marry again
he met another woman and woke up in California.
It took him seven years to untangle that dream
but a man who could sing like Uncle Jim
was bound to get in scrapes now and then:
he expected it and we expected it.

Mother said, It's because he was the middle child,
and Father said, Yeah, where there's trouble
Jim's in the middle.

When he lost his voice he lost all of it
to the surgeon's knife and refused the voice box
they wanted to insert. In fact he refused
almost everything. Look, they said,
it's up to you. How many years
do you want to live? and Uncle Jim
held up one finger.
The middle one.

"Uncle Jim" by Peter Meinke, from Liquid Paper: New and Selected Poems. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)