It Always Works Sometimes

About the Book

It Always Works Sometimes is an extraordinary story about two brothers born into poverty in Little Rock, Arkansas and growing up during the 1930’s depression years. It is a constant struggle for an attractive mother, Ada, just to keep Laurel Hardy Lubeck – the story teller – and his older brother Magnis from slipping down the hole of nothingness after being abandoned by a worthless Charlie Clyde Lubeck.

The opening chapter finds Laurel, now a very successful doctor, in a cemetery in Arkansas pondering a question. Why had the departed father abandoned them and changed his name just at the time of the story teller’s birth and  how he had survived financially for 47 years with no visible means of support?

The short opening chapter suggests the makeup of Laurel Hardy Lubeck in 1979, as he tells the story,  which fades back in time to 1926. A paradox, an enigma, a mystery and an axiom are to be found entwined around and through a wonderful axiom. Wisdom exudes from Miss Laura and Jimmy Durante

Laurel is naively unaware that not everyone in this world is gifted with a photographic memory as is he.  He is indeed a loveable little character able to figure out adult things in a child’s mind and make do with what he is handed him in life.  He is also able to establish a pragmatic understanding about how a human being can call God to task.  He establishes that God is irresponsible when Alice, the only true friend he has had, suddenly dies when only eight years old.  He surmises that “life is indeed a series of controlled surges of outrage”.

Colorful Aunt Trixie is  married to a benevolent, hardboiled yet loveable wrestling promoter. They become financially successful, send aid to Little Rock and a move, in 1940, to Los Angeles where love and heartbreak greet and beat Ada yet happiness and normalcy meet and propel Laurel and Magnis through almost two years when WW II rains on everybody.

Laurel, age nine, meets Chancey, in 1941.  You guessed it, in 1942, Chancey is whisked out of his life, as suddenly as was Alice, not by The Big Guy, but by thoughtless bureaucrats who believed they were Gods.  This senseless incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent leaves Laurel with great shame toward government leaders.

Ada falls in love and decides to marry in 1946 – only one problem – still married to Charlie Clyde Lubeck. Or is it Clyde C. Dodge ?  The divorce proceeding brings about a first meeting of Charlie with Laurel. Laurel by this time has full understanding of his mental abilities and makes a chance discovery relative to Charlie and his deceit.  Charlie Clyde has acquired wealth but how?  He is a dullard, without honor or shame and yet the financial gods have looked favorably upon him.  Laurel graduates from Stanford and becomes a forensic pathologist.

Final chapter, 1979, continues a few minutes after the first chapter ends when Laurel, Magnis and Chancey go through the grubby house which belonged to Clyde where they find secrets none could have imagined.  

The paradox, the enigma and the mystery are all uncovered and the poorest kids ever to leave Little Rock during the depression are left with the axiom “It Always Works Sometimes” and the wisdom “Them’s the conditions that prevail”.

About the Author

Joel F. Pullen is a University of California, Irvine Medical School graduate. When not practicing medicine he spends time with his family on Summerset Ranch in rural Templeton, San Luis Obispo County, California, growing pineapple guava and working on a new novel.