What’s a Scags?

It has hit me that most people hear the name Scags and don’t know what or who I mean. So this duo of me and my wife are hitting the road, taking the book with us, Scags at 7, that is, and we are going to see if anyone knows what I mean.

I hadn’t thought I would use my summer vacation to work with folks on this first novel but would rather be using the time to write Scags at 18, which I am doing of course. But now given how easy it is to be somewhere, say as we will be in Seattle, and have a video camera with us, and a laptop and a connection to our trusty tech guru Rob, it is all going to be quite a fun way to explore the question: What’s a Scags?

Most likely, not too many people will be approachable on this topic. In fact, as I am writing about Scags now, in college, many of her new friends are questioning two things about her–her name and where she is from. Not many people had heard of Skokie either.

It annoys her more than she wants to acknowledge. It bothers her because for one thing, she was quite ready to shake Skokie off her shoes. It felt like a bad kind of dust that marked her for being provincial and dumb. That was how she saw the kids she grew up with. And now that she is at this rather posh college, out in Massachusetts, her ideas about what makes life more sophisticated are being put to the test.

As to her name, as anyone who read the first Scags story knows, she made it up. It was the name she gave herself because she, as a very young girl, didn’t like the name her parents gave her. Now at 18, perhaps this name is a bit more of a burden than it was when she was 7 and everyone thought she was cute.

Yet, giving up the name you have given to yourself, no matter how old you are and were is never an easy thing. In fact, identity, as it was experienced in the USA in 1969 was a huge issue. It was the birth time of much that we believe in today about our hyphenated ethnic status, our sexual orientation, our political identity and even how we would view ourselves in relation to our gender.

So much was embedded in names, identities, causes, the war, race and class. Those very long ago times when everything was changing were the seedbed of the changes we are still feeling today.

Taking Scags on the road to see how she travels now seems like a very good idea. Please stay tuned for her experiences in Seattle, in Anaheim and elsewhere. It ought to be quite a keen-o time.