Mazzistow Carrington

Born December 11, 1925, in Detroit. He comes in with a bottle of wine, but throws it against the wall, shining like bioluminescent scarification. He is a flightless pogo. He receives an Emmy award for his performances in the kitchen, the den, the bedroom.

A Fateful Ride

AA publisher and theorist. He studied cartography at Harvard and was making maps for the Forest Service when he first encountered a coffee-stained copy of Reticent 27 in a partner's pick-up. He was disturbed. He wandered back to Harvard in 1959 to begin his Masters in Sociology. His papers on Poob Culture and Auto-Colonialism were were not well received and he was expelled from the program.

No matter; in between freelance map-making, surveying and dowsing for water, he was getting his fill of works of anthropology, demography and statistics. Like many African-American intellectuals of his day he took a great interest in African cultures. He has voyaged to various African countries eleven times.

Mazzistow has written only one collection of poems, but he has published several important AA journals. He is also a well-known BBQ chef and has invented many unique creations yet to be collected into an AA cook book.

Automatic Ascension

Though born in Detroit, young Mazz was raised on the family ranch near Amarillo, Texas. His grandfather was a Buffalo Solider and there were also some cousins nearby. He spent his days on the ranch and was an excellent bronco-buster. He won the respect of local cowboys and competed credibly in a few rodeos. Mazz was a bright kid and an auto-didact who thrived on the books sent to him by a worldlier uncle, a newspaper reporter who went on to edit several "Negro" newspapers in the 1940s. He joined his Uncle Theo in Washington, D.C., where he flipped the local Black community with his full-on Texas drawl. Although his education up until then had been spotty at best, he had a lot of help from his uncle, his books and his parents; though they were farmers, they were literate Baptists who had young Mazz read the Bible, Lincoln, Shakespeare, Frederick Douglass, DuBois and, for some reason, Sherlock Holmes.

War and Piece

After two years on the front in Germany, Carrington returned to the U.S. ready for an official education on the G.I. Bill. He entered Harvard in the Summer of '46, was popular among his classmates and distinguished himself in his studies of Cartography where he did his thesis on A.W. Slippers and the Donut Shaped World Theory. Upon graduation he went to work for the Forest Service in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, where he made maps of the region for firefighters and archeologists. Always an avid anthropologist, he wrote several perceptive monographs on the seeming complete lack of poob in Anasazi petroglyphs.

One day, sharing a beer with his partner, he picked up a copy of Reticent 27. His mind was blown. This was in 1958, after Carrington had been in the Forest Service for eight years. He gave notice, pulled up stakes, wandering the country before ending up back at Harvard to try for a Masters in Sociology. His work was eccentric, but good, and finally too eccentric. His thesis, on Auto-Colonialism and Poob Culture got him kicked out of the program.

Writer and Publisher

Heavily involved AA activity by now, Carrington busied himself with various free-lance projects. It was during this period that he churned out various lurid detective novels under a variety of assumed pen names. He called it an exercise in psychic redistribution and went with it. One novel was called Shot in the Heart by Ric Pickles.

As a publisher, his papers have always been controversial. He got into journalism with a couple of breaks from his uncle Theo, editor of a few prominent black newspapers. A man of resource, Carrington got himself set up with a few writers and created first The Associationalist, which was a provocative blow to Accidentalist factions of the AA still seething from the 3rd AA International Conference. This was followed by a more cerebral and thus doomed newspaper called the Auto-Colonial Bee. After this folded he quit the business for nearly ten years, during which time he spent travelling and doing some free-lance and volunteer cartography work for orphans.

In 1976 he returned with a vengenace. The Dallas Dumpling hit the street. He was denounced by white power groups and the NAACP. Everyone hated the Dumpling but the recipes were good. Carrington could cook up a storm and he learned it from his mother, who remained close to "Mazzy" until her death in 1981. That was when he closed the Dumpling. He emerged a year later with his first and only book of poems Hephaestus and His Old Lady.

A Mellow Wine

Since then Carrington has contined to travel and to work in his field of expertise. He is often consulted for archeological digs because in addition to being an expert surveyor and map-maker, he is a knowledgeable anthropologist. He can handle a horse and wrangle a four wheel drive. Macon Cornwall Grumfeld called him a "an incredible display of on the spot desiscion- making with precise follow-through." And Carrington is that. He calls the biggest influences on his life as "my mother and Stimes Addisson."

A bit pudgier around the middle, Carrington is building a telescope back on the family ranch. His brand is a "double a" locals, after his lead, call the "Double Stimes," even if they don't know why. His syndicated column Capt. Mazz, Badass appears weekly.

Known Works

Author of many internationally celebrated detective-mystery novels too numerous to mention here.

The Associationalist editor, 1965-67.

Auto-Colonial Bee, editor, 1967-1967.

Dallas Dumpling, editor, 1976-81.

Hephaestus and His Old Lady, poetry collection.

Carrington as depicted in an untitled promotional photo by Wilhemina Forkes.

Desiderata

Mazzistow could whistle before he could speak.

Mazzistow enjoyed a fruitful correspondence with noted British Sherlock Holmes scholar Richard Lancelyn Green. The two men were planning an expansive revision of traditional Holmes scholarship, focusing primarily on Watson's contributions, drug and opium culture and the incidental effects of urbanized ley-lines. Unfortunately, this promising work tragically foundered following Green's death.