STEP INTO MY OFFICE

by Rob Lopresti

Several of us have chosen to take you on a walk through our offices. There was Steve’s and John’s and let’s not forget this loony masterpiece by James. I am probably missing a couple. Seems like a good time for me to play, so here goes.

This is the computer desk in my office. The photo on the left you may have seen before. It shows my grandfather John Lopresti’s store in Plainfield New Jersey a long time ago. The screensaver on the computer is a different picture of the same shop, even older if I can judge by my grandfather’s hairline. The photo on the right wall is my great-grandfather Chamberlain’s grocery store, in a different part of Plainfield. That’s great-grandpa James in the wagon, if you can see it.

Last week I told you about the dinner plates which my family used to use for Thanksgiving, and which now belong to my sister Diane Chamberlain.

Diane is also the one who blew up these photos of the grocery stores and had them framed. When she moved to a different house she didn’t have wall space for them so I was the lucky recipient.

Turn around and you get the opposite view. Those are all paperback mysteries and a file cabinet filled with rejection slips (well, it feels like it some times). The illustration on the left wall is a blow-up of the cover of AHMM based on one of my short stories.

And what about the sign hanging from the ceiling? Well, I’m a government information librarian. At the last place I worked they changed the signage and were about to throw that one away. I happily towed it three thousand miles to my current home.

Step into my library

But wait! There’s more. Most of my writing gets done in the office, but I do a lot of editing across the hall in the room we call the library. Here you see the barcalounger which I wrote about years ago. I have spent many an hour there with my muse on my lap (her name is Chloe and she weighs six pounds).

Do you notice the elephants over the fireplace? They are ebony and ivory, heavy as heck, and were made in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The story, as I received it, is that my grandfather Thomas Chamberlain, son of the gentleman who owned the grocery store (see above) was a factory foreman at a newspaper machinery plant. He was in charge of buying a lot of stuff for the company. One year a salesman gave him the large elephant as a Christmas present. The next year it was the small one. If he wanted the rest he had to keep buying from that company.

I don’t know if that story is true but I grew up playing with those beasts in my parents’ living room. When my folks moved into an apartment they asked if there was anything from the house I wanted and I had an immediate answer. “They’ll cost a fortune to ship,” Dad said.

“Don’t care. Send me the bill.” We built the shelf special for them.

Turn around once more and you see why we call the room the library. The shelves above the teddy bears are mysteries. You can see my collected Mark Twain off to the left.”

Family matters

As you probably guessed, one reason I chose this week for the office tour is all the family connections. It is that time of year, isn’t it? So I don’t want to forget to wish a happy Chanukah to those families who start celebrating it tonight.

Now, my muse is calling me back to the barcalounger.