Peter Kyne: Coastside Author (5)
Peter Kyne of Moss Beach returned from the Spanish-American War in the late 1890s and got work in San Francisco as a bookkeeper for a waterfront shipping firm. Maybe he knew it, maybe he didn’t, but Peter Kyne was collecting a trove of stories for books he would write in the near future.
But before he actually picked up pen and paper, he tried to work in the “real world” one last time–selling men’s hats, ties and shoes.
Discovering that he wasn’t a good salesman, Peter Kyne finally decided to do something with the colorful stories that had come his way. He was good at developing simple plots and had a little hit on his hands with the publication of “Cappy Ricks” –a book about the founder of the Blue Star Navigation and Ricks Lumber and Logging Companies. Kyne had a winner in Cappy Ricks, the character, and wrote follow-up books with the colorful CEO doing all kinds of things, including traveling the world, all before the end of WWI.