Memoirs

I know I have been neglecting my blog again, and I apologize to my readers. I've been working on my memoirs.

Here are a few excerpts:

Part I - Windy City

I was mesmerized by my co-workers at 43 East Ohio Street, who welcomed me into the fold with open arms. I had grown up in a small town in Kentucky where everyone was white and Southern Baptist, girls taught to keep smiles on their faces, be nice to everyone and keep their personal lives to themselves. Most of the Chicago girls were Catholic, a religion that was unacceptable down home. Or at least in our little community, where backwoods preachers ruled with threats of eternal agony in the lake of fire to those who questioned their doctrine.

The girls knew nothing about keeping their personal lives to themselves; they didn’t care what they said or how someone took what they said. Most of them smoked and drank and were fond of saying, “Oh, my Gawd!” in response to just about everything. They were kind and caring. And they were not hypocrites. I began to rethink my religious upbringing, and, for the first time in my life, question it.

Down on the fourth floor, Carroll was getting a rude awakening. Marie, his boss (whom I nicknamed "Helmet Head"), was a wild-eyed, fifty-something spinster who wore her bleached hair in a heavily sprayed pageboy. She ruled the accounting department with an iron hand, and nothing anyone did pleased her. She yelled, stomped and threw fits when everything wasn’t going to her satisfaction. Some days she went into frenzies and yelled so loud that she could be heard from one end of the fourth floor to the other.

Each day, on our way home, Carroll had another story to tell about Helmet Head. She had jumped all over him or a co-worker, yelled at someone for a mistake, or made a mistake and blamed someone else. One day she ran out of her office, glaring at Carroll and others in the department. They hadn’t done anything wrong, so she reared back and kicked the file cabinet. She blamed them all when she broke her big toe.

* * *

Since Carroll and I had no money, we were short in the clothing department. I had three outfits, a blue shirtwaist dress and a two-piece floral green dress with a peplum and straight skirt. They were seconds; I bought them at a factory in Southern Illinois for three dollars each. The third was a beige sheath wool dress with a short matching jacket, the neckline trimmed in fur, which I splurged on when we went to a company banquet at the Edgewater Beach Hotel. I rotated the outfits that whole winter.

Carroll owned two used suits, a black one, the trousers of which were long enough for a six-foot man (he was five feet, four inches tall). When they were altered for him they just cut off the legs, and if he raised his leg you could see his Fruit of the Looms. He called them his “Knee Straddlers.”

“Looks like it’s the Knee-Straddlers today," he'd say, pulling on the wide-legged trousers, or “Can’t decide what to wear today; oh, I think I’ll wear my ‘Panama Suit!’”

The Panama Suit was a very light gray flannel, almost white, which reminded me of Humphrey Bogart's attire in “Casablanca.” His wool topcoat, given to him by a tall friend in Southern Illinois, sported tiny blue checks on a cream background, and it fell to his ankles.

“We should have it shortened,” I said.

“Keeps my legs warm," said Carroll.

* * *

One Sunday night in June there was a knock at our door and in walked a childhood friend of Carroll's with his bride. They had gotten married that afternoon, and immediately after the reception they had jumped in their car and driven three hundred miles to our little two-room attic apartment in Brookfield.

“Is it okay if we stay with you’ens until you get us a job where you work and we find a place?” he said, an expectant smile on his face.

We gave them the pinstripe couch, and Carroll and I slept on the kitchen floor. Our apartment was small, and although they were in the next room, they slept less than eight feet from us.

“Why on earth would they want to spend their wedding night, with us right here?” I whispered to Carroll, trying to block out the squeak, squeak, squeak of the old pinstripe couch.

“Hell if I know,” he said, bumping his head against the leg of the dining table, “But if that fu*king couch collapses, the landlord will make us pay for it.”

Happy Birthday, Bill!

Some things just get better with age.

Like my hubby (the former hippie),

And our song.

Theo's Story

Books about politics and corruption are not my favorites, I must admit. But when I began Ron Rhody's novel, Theo's Story, I could hardly put it down.

It all begins on a snowy night in 1941, when the coatless body of prominent newspaperman Benjamin Dannan is found beside a lonely road in eastern Kentucky one hundred miles from home. No one knows why he was there, how he got there, or whether his death is an accident or a murder.

Thirty years later, Dannan's son, Michael, CEO of a large corporation in San Francisco, moves back to Kentucky to run for governor, drafting his boyhood friend, Theo, to help him make it happen.

And thus begins a fascinating tale that takes you through the hills and hollows of Kentucky, climaxing in a struggle for the governorship between a self-made Appalachian power broker and a rich and gifted young man who has everything going for him.

Rhody weaves such an intricate tapestry of Kentucky's diverse geography, cultures, and rich history that I felt I was riding along with Michael and Theo as they drove from one end of Kentucky to the other, gaining the support of powerful politicians throughout the Commonwealth; I was with them as they entered the mystical world of the Melungeons. (I've always been intrigued by the Melungeons!). It held my attention every step of the way. And that is no small feat!

The mystery, suspense, and clearly drawn characters make this book a real page-turner. There is love and romance, ambition and murder, and it's all bundled into a mystery that doesn't play out until the very end. And what an ending it is!

Ron Rhody is a former newspaperman and broadcast journalist who grew up in Kentucky where he learned his craft. He now lives with his wife in Pinehurst, North Carolina. He is the author of several books, but Theo's Story is his first piece of fiction.

I hope it is not his last.

The Fountain

At Noble Park

Silas House: A Man With Soulful Eyes

I had a great weekend, the highlight of which was the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville. Pitty Pat and I hopped into Suzanne's little Subaru early Saturday morning, and we sped down I-24 talking a mile a minute about all the books we would buy, the writers we would meet.

I was hoping to meet Rick Bragg, but he had already departed. I was also hoping to meet Elizabeth Berg, however, her presentation coincided with William Gay's movie (which was great!).

But we did meet Silas House.

Silas House is a young writer from Appalachia whom I came upon a couple of years ago when I was surfing the Internet looking for books by Southern writers. He wrote Clay's Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, The Coal Tatoo. I have read them all and they are wonderful stories of family, love and loyalty, and very strong female characters.

A kind, gracious young man with soulful eyes, Silas shook our hands and smiled, more interested in talking about us than himself.

"Where y'all from?" he said.

"Paducah," we chimed.

"I've been to Paducah," he said, "And I love it, especially those beautiful murals down by the river."

I was proud to be standing alongside Silas House as Suzanne snapped our picture. He is not only a wonderful writer but a kind and compassionate human being.

I could see it all in his soulful eyes.

Froggy Went A-Courtin'

I KNOW it's your lawn chair, lady, but can't a guy get some sun?

Back off with that camera. Who do you think I am, Brad Pitt?

Whew...that was quite a leap!

Kiss my butt. I'm gonna go courtin'!

The Snippet List

I love to write. I get up each morning obsessed with what I'm working on, where my characters will take me, the next story I plan to write. And each time I leave the house I come back with new ideas, notes I've scribbled down, and snippets of conversations heard here and there.

Some snippets stay in my head for years before I use them. As was the case with a Don St. Arbor quote.

Don St. Arbor was one of Terry's best friends. He lived across the field from us, so they practiced basketball together, hunted and fished together. He was there much of the time, so during the summertime he could often be found at our dinner table.

One day Mother baked two chocolate pies for dessert. Her pies could win a contest, the chocolate filling smooth and velvety, crust tender and flaky, meringue standing in peaks.

Since guests were always served first, we drooled as Mother turned to Don. "Would you like a piece of pie, Don?" she said.

"No, thanks, Mrs. Wilson," he said, "Seems like all the chocolate pies I been eatin' lately have been awful lumpy."

Now, what writer could resist a comment like that? I used it in a story forty years later.

Another snippet stayed with me over fifty years before I pulled it from memory and put it on paper.

When I was three, I went with Maw Maw Wilson to take dinner to an old riverboat pilot in Laketon. I don't know what his real name was, but everyone called him Pilot. He lived at the bottom of Laketon hill in a tiny tarpaper shack, and he had no family that anyone knew of. He was all alone. And he was very sick.

I felt very sorry for the old man, but I was a little afraid. So that is probably why the following incident left such a deep impression on me.

"Do you need anything, Pilot?" Maw Maw says, placing his dinner on his bedside table.

A bushy grey head appears from deep within the covers, eyes dark and sunken. "No, thank you, Miss Muriel," he says, "I don't need nothin' a-tall. But thank you for being here."

My story, Thank You For Being Here, has been accepted by Kentucky Monthly, and will be the featured nonfiction piece in their literary issue. It will be coming out in November.

The snippet list is getting longer each day. So I'd better get busy. If I wrote all day for the next fifty years, I would never be able to use them all.

But I will try.