Where I’m Writing From: Jazz Beach eli.cranor@gmail.com February 26, 2023 Eli Cranor is an Arkansas novelist whose debut novel, Don’t Know Tough, is available wherever books are sold. Don’t Know Tough made @USATODAYBooks’s “Best of 2022” list and the @nytimes “Best Crime Fiction” for 2022 Cranor can be reached using the “Contact” page at elicranor.com and found on Twitter @elicranor

I’m writing from “Jazz Beach.”

That’s what my kids call the fifty-foot-wide stretch of brown sand and rock that sits in Jazz’s backyard. Jazz is my neighbor’s name. The kids call him “Uncle Jazz.” If you’re a regular reader of this column, you probably remember him. Jazz is hard to forget.

His beach is nice too.

I wish I knew its history. I’m guessing somebody, somewhere, pulled all the big rocks from that bank and brought the sand in. It’s not natural. It’s so unnatural, in fact, that it’s constantly getting washed away.

The lake swells after big rains. All kinds of limbs and logs litter the beach. The neighbors usually pitch in and help Jazz clear it all out. It’s kind of fun. Last year he piled the wood up and made a huge bonfire.

Actual trash gets washed up after storms too.

We took the kids out in our red canoe this weekend. My son declared himself “Captain” and claimed the front seat. He’s three. My daughter, age six, sat in the middle with her mother.

I watched them all from the stern. I guess I was the engine, paddling our small vessel around sunken logs every time my son hollered out “Trash!”

By the time we got back to the beach, there were two black bags full of plastic bottles, tattered T-shirts, and a varying array of other discarded items.

My kids loved the whole deal. I couldn’t believe it. These are the kids who can’t watch ten minutes of the same show without begging me to change the channel. But there’s magic in the water. And this warmer weather has me feeling it again.

Now, I’ve lived in Arkansas long enough to know that spring hasn’t arrived. What’s the old joke? “Don’t like the weather? Stick around a few days.” Something like that.

We’ve lived on the lake for a little over a year now, enough time for me to fall head-over-heels in love with*- our humble abode.

We were playing music a while back over at the TypsyGypsy’s house. The wind was whipping outside. Waves crashed on Jazz Beach loud enough we could hear them between songs. Our drummer, a bearded dude named Troy, looked up from his kit and said, “I love this place, man. Reminds me of a neighborhood in the Keys or something.”

I made it down to Key Largo one time in college. I went with a tight end named Ed. We stayed with his aunt. I slept in what she called her “trophy room.” Even if I told you what sort of trophies Ed’s aunt had hanging in that room, you wouldn’t believe it. So, let me just say she’d memorialized her lovers from years gone past, and leave it at that.

Anyway, I think Ed’s aunt would really dig our lakeside commune. I know I do.

Tomorrow, if the weather’s right and the beach is clear, I think I’ll take the kids down to the water and build castles, complete with bridges, moats, mussel-shell walls, and our daily dose of magic.