Christmas Under The Press With Ramar Of The Jungle A Protonic Journey as a personal memoir Scot Walker   © Copyright 2026 by Scot Walker

Photo courtesy of the author.

As I near my 82nd birthday, I feel the protons of my body stretching out across this universe existing in time that always was, always will be, that shall never end, remembering, almost Marcel Proust-like, things of my past as they will become memories of my future—mergedmeshedmeltedintoonewhole.

Let me back track for just a moment, I’m a retired middle school teacher, a former door-to-door cemetery salesman, “hi, would you like to buy a hole in the ground?” SLAM goes a door—again. . .. but I also became a world traveler, and a man who has bought and sold properties, managed them, refurbished them and sold them for four to five times what I paid for them. . . yet I’m still nothing more than an adolescent ten or twelve-years old in my heart, in my mind and in my soul.

So, as this facet of the journey of my protons bouncing back and forth through this memory, without a beginning, but hopefully with an enchanting middle and a foreseeable never-ending end, I’ll try to explain who I am, how I became a well-published author, and a lifetime member of the Dramatist Guild and how my travels inspired me to write about them in my 7 volumes of Photographic Journals, but mostly I’d like to tell you about inspiration—and how it came about and why writing is part of my intrinsic nature, and every cell in my body

SPLIT, crash, dash, bam! Can you hear your protons bouncing helter-skelter from your rib cage to your toes to your armpits to your lips? I feel mine—I hear them as they cry out to me and I visualize them dancing merrily from one universe into another and another and another before racing back again before my right eye finishes the tiniest scintilla of a blink.

With a flash, I’m ten years old again—in my brand-new room—created on the top floor of my parents’ Cape Cod house in Wheaton, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC, a place with hardwood floors and chartreuse painted walls. My dad was an asbestos worker and often came home with “left-overs from the job”, I never questioned the means by which he accumulated these treasures that came in such a myriad mishmash of colors and textures, however each time he brought some new, old, used or broken thing home, he broadened my horizons that left me with a sense of ebullient joy as I watched him use his gigantic man hands to create something out of nothing—literally he created something out of junk or trash or scrap into a magical world of joy! Such brains! Such talent is usually the outcome of education and diplomas and degrees, but it was not so with my dad—he was an 8^th grade dropout and I was an adult before I realized my dad couldn’t read—the Great Depression was in full swing and since he was the oldest of five in an French/Irish heritage family that believed procreation was a duty of every Catholic woman on earth, he ended up going to work as an asbestos worker when he was fifteen—yes, asbestos, something that ultimately killed him—but such was life back then—with no controls over the environment an health care, but he and his generation, made due because he had the ability to see physical things in the eyes of a master craftsman and with those skills and his charming boyish personality, he became the most respected man in his trade. So how did he master all those skills without the ability to read? Isn’t that a requirement? No, not at all, my Dad winged it—pretending to do things that he could not—while using pictures and diagrams in Popular Mechanics or Popular Science to find plans and ideas for his multiple projects. So, before he tackled the project that was to become my room when there was nothing upstairs but a few windows, attic rafters stuffed with asbestos insulation with no floorboards, no interior walls and no “life”—he might have thought as our Huguenot ancestors thought: “Rien ne se perd, rien ne se cree, tout se transforme.”—“Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.” Of course, this very thought makes me wonder if that is not, in fact, the nature of the universe (or the universes, themselves because that’s the sci fi I’m writing juxtaposed with this—dancing from this project to that). Anyway. . . my dad did it up grand! He built me a huge walk-in closet, a built in desk with a metal lamp that was so hot it burned my fingers, a long low lying row of enclosed shelves for my books and records, and a heat vent in the floor—in short everything a boy like me needed for safety, security and comfort and I spent most of my life in that room for the next seven years.

I had no phone and our one bathroom was downstairs. All I had was a bed, a bureau, and an old shoulder-high record player-radio combo from the 1930’s that played 78s but it also picked up both local and shortwave radio programs—and brother did it expose me to languages I’ve never heard, but it, like everything else in a boy’s life back then, exposed me to the world—the glorious world just a radio sound away! Today I can get around in several as I can almost hear those old songs and words I grew up with back then Besides, I was ten and to me life was a joy, I was alone a lot by choice but as my grandmother would have said, “I was my own best friend,” which may have been the best philosophy anyone ever taught me and I guess ten year olds got excited about things adults would have considered mundane—but to me each day, each minute was just one more chance to explore—to be—to feel alive and especially to be silly and happy and creative. You may already have guessed that my favorite book was The Swiss Family Robinson—a few years later I added all of Richard Halliburton’s travel stories to my collection—and lived vicariously in his tales of his travels around the world. . . even replicating dozens of them when I matured.

However, as I was opening all those imaginary doors into life and joy and happiness and beauty and creatively, it rankled me that my dad never gave me a real door—I have no idea why—perhaps he didn’t find one “left over at the job,” or it may have skipped his mind or more than likely, it didn’t matter to him since my bedroom was at the top of the stairs and the to the right giving me total privacy as long as no one entered my space and I guess that was good enough for him—but in many ways it may be feel incomplete, vulnerable, and exposed—picture a ten-year old without a head or without arms or legs—I know it wasn’t that extreme to you—but to a ten-year old boy, it became a fester gnawing at my soul, wondering why, why, why I was left so exposed? However, in retrospect perhaps that room and that situation at that time in a boy’s life is the reason I still wonder in awe and excitement at ever new line I read and every piece of music I hear and at every scene. Perhaps, that open door opened my soul, my spirt and my life to adventure itself, and gosh, have I explored—I read a hundred or so books a year—often jumping from one to the other comparing and contrasting the voyage of Aeneas with the fall of Troy in the Iliad as I wander through Remembrances of Things Past by Marcel Post and juxtapose that with Plato’s Republic and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy with both William Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico and the Conquest of Peru with my daily readings of a poem or two by my idol, Walt Whitman, so that their amalgamated world—meshed into the fabric of their creativity, their experiences, their modus operandi. And my room, back there in Wheaton, may just have opened that already opened door into my world travels when I visited the Potala Palace in Lhasa Tibet and took the cable car to the top of Masada in Israel and rode an elephant in Ankor Wat, and wandered alone, unescorted through the US Capitol near my home.

But I digress, an octogenarian as a right to do, so let me gather my few remaining brain cells together in a tiny little bundle and scurry back to description of my room—the room in which I knew my future would be as an author-or a new reporter—or a poet—but whichever route it veered into or out of my boy brain knew it would end up as wild and creative and silly and marvelous as the journey that it had already become

My room had two windows, one on the side facing Jack Dempsey’s house (he was the boy my age who lived next door but attended a private school until his folks ran out of money before he ultimately joined me and my class at Wheaton High School. Jack played, of all things, the xylophone—an instrument that still excites me and makes the happy Irish fairies and leprechauns in my head leap for joy when they hear it—or any percussion instrument for that matter (I once attended a concert at the Kennedy Center here in DC where a musician played the “hammer” by climbing with it in his arms and banging it against a metal board and what a thunderous sound it made. I nearly jumped out of my seat and after our break, the conductor told us that during rehearsal, the hammer knocked out the entire electrical system of the Concert Hall during practice—hence, the conductor said, that’s why we have a rehearsal. And that was just one of the glorious concerts or theatre productions I’ve seen (or written) in the 100 countries I’ve visited, rampant with venues of clinking clanking cajoling sounds. . . but back to the script—back then listening to Jack Dempsey banging and clanging those rosewood keys filled my soul to overflowing. Jack, like me, was a quiet boy and stayed to himself most of the time—he was an only child-whereas I had a sister and five cousins living next door.

My mind, though stable, can wander in a scintilla of a heartbeat and now is quivering around my latest sci fi short story, the one I keep putting off and shoving to the bottom of the pile. It’s called The Universe Within Without, and it’s my attempt to juxtapose all the various universes existing in my concept of a protonic universe with the so-called “reality” of our own. How glorious it will be when I die and find out the truth—assuming there is no heaven or hell or any of that—just my protons existing in every time sphere in every universe simultaneously! What a wonderful thought. Picture their inter-relationship through time and endless space as I or whatever is left of me (scientists seem to say our atoms will exist forever. Wrap your head around that—it will give me an eternal chance to explore and compose more poetry and short stories, but today, my challenge from Richard Loller propels me back to earth and I must try to share Scot Walker’s story of why, when and how I became an author. This is not the first time, I’ve been asked this question, and for many years my answer was that I came out of the womb with a pen and paper—even though back then that pen would have been a fountain pen and that’s a picture I don’t want to think about—now or anytime in my protonic lifespan.

My writing career began in December 1954. Back then our basement for some illogical reason was off limits from Thanksgiving to the New Year—yet I heard muffled voices coming up the heat duct from the furnace two stories below my room, and my boy brain assumed they were elves because my parents had just driven out to the store and told my sister and I to stay in our rooms until they returned—so the house must have been empty and I guessed there really were elves—and the more I believed that the more I was convinced I heard them making toys for me and my sister and stashing them downstairs until Santa arrived—and was there really a Santa after all? Because were the mingled muffled mumbling voices of real elves, I was convinced of that. However, when I was six, I figured out there was no Santa when I reminded my mother we had no chimney for him to climb down and she said he’d come in the front door, and I reminded her we always locked that door. Had she only told me Santa was magic and could be everywhere I would have been okay but my mother was the truth teller and warned me not to tell my sister—as I merrily killed off the Easter Bunny and even the Tooth Fairy even though my mother, cried in her River of Tears (check out my story) at that moment however, I knew my parents had driven away so it must be. . . o yes, it had to be, yep, it damned sure was; ELVES!

And then, it was Christmas morning and I dashed downstairs not even stopping to pee and my sister scurried out of her room and there was an 8-foot Christmas tree with balls and electric light and a Lionel train set under it that had a cattle car that contained cows and a dairy car that had milk jugs and a in the train board my dad had set up there was even a mountain through which the train meandered until it went up an entire level surrounding the entire mountain before it made a slow graduate return to the lower track and that was fascinating—but under that tree were boxes and boxes of presents and my sister mostly got dolls and clothes I guess though I really didn’t care or even take a second look because all I cared about were my presents: a box with the entire “cast” of Ramar the Jungle’s, my favorite TV show, lions and plastic cages and for a moment it was like I was part of that surreal jungle scene—living along with my hero (well, 2^nd or 3^rd favorite hero after The Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers), Ramar himself—I dashed to the bathroom to pee—I had almost waited too long and when I returned I tackled my next present—a box filled with metal nuts, screws, bolts and metal beams with holes in them—but after nearly cutting my boyish fingers on one of the metal bars, I opened my last gift—the biggest—so big I began to wonder about those elves I had heard scurrying and clanging and clomping up and down the stairs and in and out of the back door on the night before Christmas as I was just dozing off (I heard that door slam a few times late on Christmas Eve) there was a printing press.

Yes, Santa had built (I guessed or his elves had or someone had because this was magnificent) a kid-sized printing press complete with handle and a rotating drum onto which you could insert metal sleeves filled rubber letters that I could cover with ink before putting paper in the bottom and turning the drum slowly—too slowly for a kid at Christmas I must admit—and voila! I could print a story.

But first I had to write it and that was easy—my grandmother was glued to her TV back then—listening to As the World Turns and my mother was caught up with it as well—but to a lesser degree, and we had a party line. A WHAT? Our hall telephone (with very limited access of 30 cells a month) was somehow connected to other phones in our neighborhood so a neighbor could pick up her phone and if she was quiet, and merely wait for someone sharing that line to pick up her line and start talking—and oh the fun we had knowing everything about everybody but that’s a different sorry and for my first newspaper I merely took those rubber letters and, forming them into words and sentences, placed them in the metal sleeves. Lathered them with ink, inserted a piece of paper down below and slowly turned the handle of the press, my first edition came began with these words: em rof sserp gnitnirp a dna retsis ym rof sllod thguorb atanS samtsirhCsihT

It only took me a moment to think about what I’d done—in order to read the story I had to place all the letters backwards, so the final result should have brought forth this sentence: “This Christmas Santa brought dolls for my sister and a printing press for me.

After fixing it and running excitedly through the neighborhood showing my paper and selling those first issues for a penny apiece, I made ten cents—which for a kid my age was a small fortune—a comic book or two candy bars.

My CV-resume sill cites that as my first professional (I was paid, was I not) publication—72 years an author.

After that, I continued my non-fiction writing as a reporter for The Lighthouse, my Sunday School monthly newsletter, and then I wrote my first poems in high school-the second of which was a villanelle in honor of my dog, Lassie. My teacher of English, Mr. Van Norman told me there had only been three villanelles published and encouraged me to write one for my dog—my life was in shambles: my dad left us, we lost our house, I had a part time job at a local restaurant and continued to wash dishes at school for a “free” lunch but we could not take Lassie to our apartment, so on March 26, 1962 at age seventeen, I took Lassie in the car to the vet and watched him shave her legs as her eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets and I held her when he injected her and she died in my arms. So I wrote this poem for her”

WHEN THE TRUMPET SOUNDS

A Villanelle for my dog, Lassie, forever my friend

When the trumpet sounds, you also will arise

To break that ageless barrier—death—once proud.

Wake up and gain life, the eternal prize.

God Omnipotent in heaven resides,

Ready to uncover your green-turfed shroud.

When the trumpet sounds, you also will arise.

As He beckons, all men, small and wise

Will weep when even death to you has bowed.

Wake up and gain life, the eternal prize.

Lassie, only you can joy and peace comprise,

For men, now weak, will chant you honors loud,

When the trumpet sounds, you also will arise.

When the spirit of my dear Lassie to God flies,

She shall no longer alone be enshroud.

Wake up and gain life, the eternal prize.

Oh, Lassie, it's time for peace where glory lies

So stay asleep until the day God has allowed.

When the trumpet sounds, you also will arise,

Wake up and gain life, the eternal prize.

Now, however it is time for me to confess that everything as I share my secret of why I write, what is my inspiration, it’s simple—I don’t write anything. I am a scribe and listen to my characters who are often very chatty as they either write, or edit or talk to me and tell me their stories. Don’t call the men in white jackets just let me give you an example!

Flash forward to the recent present: I had a play scheduled for opening off-off Broadway on 42^nd Street in New York several years ago—the premises dealt with female youth suicide—sadly the third leading cause of death for young women 13-25 here at home is suicide. The producer wrote that he loved my play and wanted to have it performed and that evening as I looked the script, The Golden Goose, in which a group of three obnoxious high school seniors decide to treat their minion as though she is worthless—the girl they murdered came to me and told me her side of the story. In my version which I dashed out too fast, she was the victim but when she spoke to me, she proved she really was the snit, the conniver, the ultimate user. The next morning, I tentatively called the producer and asked him if it was too late to make a major correction to my script and he asked me to submit it and call me back. Well, within a few minutes he called to say he loved it and it opened at the Roebuck Theatre, NY on 42^nd Street, in April 2017, it was published by in “Best Short Plays for Teens, by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, in 2017 and republished by Drama Notebook, in 2018.