Lost Pine
PAT R. STEINER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jacob A. Boyd grew up in a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of a small farm town in the middle of Illinois. From the deck of his childhood home, he watched dark, thunderous wall clouds approach across miles of cornfield. As they passed overhead, he gaped at the nascent funnel clouds they concealed. Praying mantises, black and yellow garden spiders and mud daubers teemed in his yard and amongst the fruit trees while he helped his parents burn bag worms from high walnut branches with kerosene-soaked torches on the ends of long poles. He had a BB gun. He had a teacher who looked like a witch, mole on her nose, scowl and all. Another teacher had a wooden hand. Once, he crested the hill of his cul-de-sac and came face to face with a wolf. He got away. Few neighbors had fences; bushes and trees demarcated property lines. A clutch of towering weeping willows provided rope swings and climbing apparatus and a “fort.” When it snowed, the town’s plow provided enough of a snow bank to dig a tunnel city. Every so often, Jacob’s dog, a Keeshond named Sparky, disappeared from the cul-de-sac, only to reappear after days of tearful family searching and growing resignation, a little skinnier, his fur matted and coated with burrs. It was another world. With a go-kart and good weather, Jacob explored it as though driving a lunar rover. One time, Jacob’s dad showed him his cracked and calloused laborer’s hands and said Don’t let yours look like this. His parents insisted he read. They pushed him into advanced classes. Though they had little money, they were forward-thinking enough to buy him and his brother a personal computer, and with it an invitation into a new, more expansive, interconnected world. He is still exploring it.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
As a child, Pat R. Steiner once found himself hanging from a nail pounded into a tree. Left there by his older siblings, he happily communed with the tree until his mother dragged the whereabouts of the missing youngster from the guilt-ridden children. This experience, which could have ended the artist’s career before he ever thought to pick up a drawing pencil, in actuality, provided him his first unique perspective (both literally and metaphorically) on the caprices of life. Since then he has had a fascination with nature (including the human variety) along with its many mysteries. His art is his attempt to explain these BIG QUESTIONS as well as those more mundane. A self-taught doodler, Pat has never been what one would call a productive illustrator. Years have passed without him completing anything new. Yet even during those periods when his sketchpad lay fallow, the artist’s mind was at work, seeing the world around him with the very same eyes as that long-ago child upon his tree, eyes that now have the beginnings of crow’s feet around their edges. These laugh lines were formed by four decades of experienced whimsy. The Illustrators of the Future Contest has been another tree for Pat. This time he’s climbed up on his own. And he doesn’t plan to come down anytime soon. He really likes the view. Pat lives in Wisconsin with his wife and two children. (No, he doesn’t live in a tree, but there is a tree house in the backyard.)