Photo inspires dozens of imaginative stories.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

Local writers have fertile imaginations when it comes to the backside of a baseball. The ball was among a collection of vintage toys Paul Carter photographed - along with a curious cat - as the story-starter for The Register-Guard's fourth annual Holiday Fiction Contest.

Winner Deb Mohr was one of more than a dozen entrants who posited a famous autograph on the unseen side of the seemingly blank ball. Among the names from reader's stories: Ted Williams, Bob Gibson, Yogi Berra, Bird Stewart, Cuddles Marshall, Phil Rizzuto, Joe DiMaggio and Sammy Sosa.

This year's contest drew 196 stories, including 35 from children. Even with a cupboard full of toys as the impetus, most entries featured a theme of loneliness and loss.

Perhaps it was the toy Spitfire in the photo, perhaps the ongoing casualties in Iraq, but nearly a dozen stories included the arrival of a "regret to inform" telegram. Many more centered on the packing or giving away of childhood treasures due to aging, Alzheimer's or death.

Mohr's tender story of a woman re-creating a childhood Christmas tradition for her dying brother won first place. The retired Eugene legal secretary will receive $100 and a framed copy of today's Oregon Life cover.

Three other stories - by Christopher Blair, Robin Clevenger and Bonnie Cochrane Kirsch - tied for runner-up status, and appear on this page.

Mohr's tale was closely tailored to Carter's photograph, first published Nov. 23 as a story-starter for the writing contest.

"The expression on the cat's face just intrigued me," said Mohr, who declined to publicly divulge her age. She has worked as a fiction writer since her retirement in 1991.

A romance novel, "Winds of Sorrow," was published that year by Kensington. A short story later won a William Faulkner Pirate's Alley writing award. And a New York book agent recently accepted her first literary novel, "Leaving Dark Rooms," set against the backdrop of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

Mohr grew up in Eastern Oregon before arriving here in 1949 to attend the University of Oregon, where she studied journalism and Russian.

Runner-up Bonnie Cochrane Hirsch, 58, also was fascinated by the cat in Carter's photograph. The story is written from the perspective of the pet.

"I like to write sometimes from a different perspective," said Hirsch, a librarian at the Eugene Public Library. "We don't all have the same vocabulary or the same way of looking at things."

Hirsch moved to Eugene 14 years ago from Idaho, where she used to publish poetry.

Runner-up Christopher Blair created an even more unlikely narrator: a felon in the middle of a burglary. His story was inspired by another element in Carter's photograph: a wooden artist's manikin, its head seemingly bent by the weight of a toy-laden shelf above it.

"That little wooden guy looked like he'd been forced into a box," said Blair, 34, a 1992 UO journalism graduate who worked at several newspapers before becoming a teacher. "So I thought, let's force something unusual into this story."

The photo's vintage plane first caught the eye of runner-up Robin Clevenger.

"Planes always seem to pop up in my stories," said the 37-year-old UO art graduate, a pilot whose father flew air ambulances and whose husband has an aircraft maintenance business. She is also a sky-diver and home-schooling mother of two. This is her first published work, though she recently completed a novel.

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Paul Carter / The Register-Guard H o l i d a y F i c t i o n C o n t e s t