'Unless You Get Their Attention...'

Last year, when I was driving back from a banjo class at the John C. Campbell Folk School, I composed a little song, melody and lyrics.  I had no idea what key I was in or what the notes were, but I fiddled with it on the piano and wrote it down, and Mary Priestley helped add the proper chords.  It followed pretty much a standard blues chord progression, with a little bridge which has a high note.  So this is where songs come from, I thought.  They emerge in your brain, and you need to pay attention and write them down in the time of it or they get lost, back into the ethers.  It's like catching and caging a dream.  This is what written language has allowed us to do.

"Roadkill Blues" has become a standard for Bazzania Girls Band, and people have asked for copies.  I asked Jim Wood to add the piano arrangement, and we've written it using the software program Sibelius.  I'll publish it like old-fashioned sheet music.

The song is fun, but roadkill isn't.  Roadkill is actually carkill, and carkill is only about a hundred years old.  (The phenomenon of trash buildup is about the same age; see the book Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash.)

I wrote Professor Roger M. Knutson in Michigan and asked him for a quote for the back of the sheet music.  Knutson is the author of Flattened Fauna: A Field Guide to Common Animals of Roads, Streets, and Highways.  It's an excellent book, packed with information about the phenomenon of roadkill, the animals affected, and statistics.  Did you know, for example, that swallows are the birds most frequently killed on highways?

Dr. Knutson wrote me:  "The book was written as an educational volume, and forty years as a teacher had taught me that humor is a good way of getting people's attention.  Unless you get their attention they are unlikely to learn much."  His book got my attention when I saw it.

Here's the quote he provided for the sheet music:  

"America's highways are probably the most forlorn animal habitat in the world.  The inhabitants don't move, don't eat and are barely two-dimensional.  Learning about them can only increase our desire to see fewer of them.  Drive with care."

Years ago, an organization called the Coalition Against Paving took the position that we had enough roads and didn't need any more.  It seemed a reasonable position.  Unfortunately, raccoons and opossums don't vote, and the CAP movement didn't catch on.  Americans don't like to put a cap on anything.

Cut, Sew Back Together; Not that Easy

I made this twin-size quilt in February, in reds and purples with a red border, and it's one of the prettiest quilts I've made.  Andrea Hill of Scottsboro, Alabama, machine-quilted it with red thread in a swirl pattern that united the tile-like blocks.  Andrea is a retired teacher, and has a Gammill long-arm sewing machine for stitching.  She can do custom stitching, or use a pantograph method to stitch repeating patterns.  She does beautiful work.  I asked her how many quilts she has quilted.  Her answer floored me:  1700.  

I sewed on the binding by hand.  It me takes two or three evenings of watching TV to finish a binding.

I do the patchwork, and working on the quilt design is stimulating.  The colored fabrics are like a big bunch of colored pencils, a palette of possibility, and they work together in surprising ways.  I am continuing to learn about color combinations.

  I have hand-quilted only one quilt, a baby quilt, and it took me three years.  It was too small for the baby by then, so I gave it to a different baby.  Hand-quilting is beautiful, but if I had to hand-quilt all my quilts, it would be like falling into a black hole from which I would never emerge.  I've found I can cut out and sew a quilt top together in a week, however, if it's not huge, if I stay with it and if it's not a difficult design that I'm working out as I go.  I machine-quilt baby quilts, lap quilts, and table runners myself, but if they are larger, I can't get them under my sewing machine needle.

Grandma Rachel Shurtz lived next door when I was growing up, and she always had a quilt in progress.   If she wasn't hand-quilting, she was cutting blocks or sewing blocks on the sewing machine.  I grew up playing under the quilts that were stretched out on quilting frames in the living room.  She often sent me to the store for hand-quilting thread, 50 white Mercerized (60 is the gauge for general sewing-machine sewing).  Grandma Shurtz made all kinds of quilts.  I remember fans and stars and nine-patches and Dresden plates, and camp quilts that were made from old woollens and denims and tied rather than quilted.  I recognized some of our old clothes in the fabrics.  She sold her quilts for five dollars each. I wish I knew how many quilts she made during her lifetime.  Aunt Bernice once said that she had twenty-two of them.  I have three that were my mother's, just everyday quilts.  The backing on one of them is made of flour sacks.  Grandma made a special quilt for each of her grandchildren when they got married.  She made two quilts for Joanie, a star and a double wedding ring.  I was her youngest grandchild, and she died in 1957 when I was twelve.  I felt I was her most special grandchild because I lived next door and knew her house as well as my own.

My grandmother's tools were flimsy patterns cut from paper sacks or pieces of cardboard, a pair of dull scissors, and a sad iron that she heated in the Heaterola.  She had thimbles, but she tended to wear holes through the little indentations, and she sent me to the store for adhesive tape to put on her fingers.  She worked on the kitchen table, and had to clean off her quilting projects when she rolled out homemade noodles or made bread.  I have sharp rotary cutters, and mats with all kinds of grids, templates of every ilk, and two Rowenta steam irons.  I have a table that I use only for cutting and laying out blocks.  I have a brass thimble that is adjustable to fit my finger and has a little protective lip.  

With these tools, I can make quilts that look perfect, but I don't like quilts to look too perfect and flat, like they were made by a machinist.  The blocks need to wiggle a little, and an odd piece or odd fabric adds interest.   I like the scrappy look, probably because my grandmother's quilts were scrap quilts, and it's more interesting working with many different fabrics.  I like most of the quilts in Surprisingly Simple Quilts.  I share the Australians' taste, which is a little old-fashioned.  I usually work out my own design, but I've made another nice quilt from a pattern in this book.  Contrary to the title, it's not always that simple.  I've been amazed at how many wrong ways it's possible to sew two pieces of fabric together.  I try not to make the same mistake twice, and the big design board that Ronn made for me from foam core makes it easier to plan ahead.

I saw an intriguing quilt in a book by designer Kaffe Fassett.  The blocks are made of cotton shirting, and I've been collecting striped shirts from thrift stores, and cutting them into flat pieces, in preparation for making blocks.  My grandmother would have liked this quilt.

Moving Cargo: Making Room for Potscrubber Lullabies

When I closed out my bookstore a few years ago, it was like shutting down an orphanage. The children, my used books, still presented a problem.  Although my husband is a shelf-building fool, we could absorb only so many books at our house.  During the book dispersal, I discovered something interesting and at the same time disturbing about myself:  my decision-making capability is a depletable resource.  When I began to dither in confusion I realized I had to stop, for days or more often weeks, and let the well of decision-making capability fill up again.  Some books were easier to part with than others.  

I required time to reflect on the provenance of some books.  Tobias Wolff had signed my copy of The Barracks Thief in 1986.  Tony Hillerman's signed pocket paperbacks could go easily, but Wolff's was a trade paperback, which somehow complicated the decision, even though the pages were yellow and brittle.  Should I keep the book club copy of Davita's Harp that Chaim Potok had signed? Was the memory of meeting him at Utah State University enough?  

Some books I had to read or at least skim to the end, or look at the pictures.  Some I could part with, but for some reason had to make a photocopy of a drawing, or the cover (go figure).

I played little split personality games with myself, employing my left brain to talk to the right:  You may keep only one of these two, m'dear; which will it be?  You may only keep three linear feet, or whatever will fit on a shelf, from these six boxes.  Not one more.  No, no.  No books on top of the row of books; and no shelving double-deep.  You may not covert the house to hamster trails.  No, no, no.  None in the knee walls where they will only tempt the carpenter ants.  You do not need most fiction.  Reference books are more important.  The runs of ISLE and Creative Nonfiction can go to the library, where they will be perfectly safe.

My mantra became:  You can go to the library.  You don't have to own every book.   This sounds like a solution, but it was not a solution really, because I owned some good books that had been discarded by the local library.  And if they discarded them, I reasoned, chances are every other library has discarded them as well.  Old science classics, by my old and mostly late professors, would surely be needed at some point to document the change in science teaching over the years.  They were of historical significance.  What if someone (me?) was to need to write an article on Allen Stokes, for instance, and was desperate for his dogeared laboratory manual on animal behavior?  The most effective left-brain phrase for my emotional self was:  You have come to a halt, Gretchen (my mother sometimes called me that).  Frozen solid.  These old books are preventing you from moving forward to new books, thus new experiences.  

   Various Friends of the Library groups took away lots of books.  Artists took art books (difficult to shelve, anyway).  Science fiction, women's studies, and true crime (not my favorites) sold cheaply, by the pound, on Ebay.  Nate Carpenter of PaleoPublications in Idaho took boxes and boxes of old anthropology, geology, science and medical books.  When I started asking Nate to return certain books, that was a signal to both of us that I should stop shipping.   Signed first edition novels essentially had no takers, although I tried.  Pristine-looking, dust jackets in mylar, they went to a couple of library collections and as a gift to a young bibliophile I took a shine to. I also gave him my extra copy of A Gentle Madness.  His wife seemed okay with it.  The German chemistry reference set was claimed by a small college in California when I advertised on the American Chemical Society website (someone had suggested I make lamp bases from them--horrors!), and I sent my children's books to my old elementary school.

 The poetry collection presented a dilemma.  Poetry books are odd things, often difficult to shelve because of their flimsiness, odd sizes, deckled edges, special paper.  The paperbacks tend to warp.  I gave essentially all the poetry books, and poetry commentary, to the University of Arizona Poetry Center.  The UA is my alma mater, and I figured they were obliged to me.  I wrote a note of apology.  I just cannot sort these, I said.  I am sending all.  You will need to look through and determine which ones are useful to you.  They thanked me for being a significant donor to their growing collection, and exhibited some of the books I had sent.

I allowed myself a shelf of poetry.  I kept Dad's Robert Service to remember Dad reciting "The Spell of the Yukon."  I kept the western poets David Lee, May Swenson, Sharlot Hall and William Stafford.  I kept Bill Holm.  I kept the nature poets Mary Oliver and Pattiann Rogers, and science poet Ralph Lewin.  I kept Carole Oles' poems about the astronomer Maria Mitchell. I have met Lee, Swenson, Stafford, Holm, Oliver, Rogers, and Oles, and I've corresponded with Lewin, who has a zany sense of humor.  I kept a few anthologies.  I kept Martin Fierro: The Gaucho, that I bought in Argentina.  I kept a couple of how-to books on writing poetry.

To date, I have not had poetry withdrawal, or lack-of-poetry panic.  I have actually written a bad poem or two.  I put my quilting books upstairs by the sewing machine, and I've made a few nice quilts.  The book diaspora has given me breathing room and allowed movement forward.  I was at the library just today, and every month a package or two comes from Amazon with something particularly intriguing that I must own.  If the book I've ordered is disappointing, I quickly make the decision to pass it on.

The annual Sewanee Writers Conference is a good place to find new poets to love, and this year I discovered many good to excellent poets, but I bought only books by Brad Leithauser and Eric McHenry.  Leithauser, I've discovered in years past, writes poems that speak to me, and if his book is also illustrated by his brother (see the cover above), Mark, I get a double treat.  

I bought McHenry's collection because I loved hearing him read, particularly "The Wheelhouse," the final poem in Potscrubber Lullabies.  It begins:  

The house corrects its course each time I ease

the swan's-neck faucet four or five degrees...

  

and later, 

...there's nothing left to do/except the dishes. I turn on the cold

and hear the cargo shifting in the hold.  

   

Busy Talking to the Dogs

Today I howled, a-woooo, a-wooooooo, and Rocky and Liza dropped the shoe they were chewing on and ran over to me and grinned. I touched noses with them, and looked into their eyes with love.

I am busy talking to our baby dogs.  

Jean Craighead George has shown me how.  Much of it is sign language, but some sounds are important, too.  I met Jean's brother, Frank Craighead in Logan, Utah, in 1985.  John Flannery, a writer and photographer who worked in the same office as I did, brought Frank to my apartment on First East.  Frank and his identical twin brother, John, were well-known and well-respected wildlife biologists who conducted groundbreaking studies of grizzly bears and other animals.  

Jean George's list of books is as long as my arm.  She was raised in a family of naturalists and writes with firsthand knowledge about animals and nature.  In this book, she appears in photographs with the cartoon dogs, to demonstrate her instructions.  She has also written How to Talk to Your Cat.  (I can imagine it now.  You want to go out?  Okay.  You want to come in?  Okay.  You don't like this cat food?  Okay.  How about this one?)

This is a critical period in which to tell the puppies I am the dominant dog.  Especially Rocky, who is growing fast, is exuberant, and is testing me.  He clamps his big mouth onto the hem of my nightgown and travels in the opposite direction.  I'm practicing dominance behavior so we will have mannerly puppies.  They're fairly good and happy puppies so far.  They're not barkers, but they wrestle and tussle all the time and seem to be huge mouths with four legs.  Ronn is working on house-training.  No paper-training for him.  He has developed his own unusual and effective method. 

To tell Rocky no, I am supposed to hold my hand out over his head.  He's supposed to think it is a hawk.  Maybe tomorrow he'll catch on.

We whimper into Rocky and Liza's  fur when when we tell them goodnight. 

Book Love and Teacher Stories

I'm not sure how I started down the slippery slope into book dealing.  I have always loved typefaces, and dust jacket art, books and bookstores, and I have always been interested in stories of authors' lives and where books come from.  At about the same time that I read Nicholas Basbanes' A Gentle Madness, about book collectors, I subscribed to FIRSTS magazine, and began learning about collectible books.  

My primary interest had been in the information and stories between the covers of books, but I realized that books also have intrinsic value as artifact and work of art.  And I realized that if I had spent my money over the years on first edition hardcover books instead of on cheap paperbacks and book club printings, if I had asked every author I have ever met to autograph my books, if I hadn't thrown away tatty dust jackets, and if I hadn't worn out my books reading and marking them, my personal library would have a much greater monetary value.

  Everything about books began to appear on my radar screen.  An author's signature indicated the author had once held the book.  Dates were meaningful.  Association copies were of historical interest.  Small presses, small print runs, paper, bindings, illustrations, maps, pastedowns, copyrights, the history of printing, an author's ouevre--the whole spectrum was worth study.  

I read in FIRSTS about a week-long seminar on antiquarian books in Colorado Springs, and Ronn encouraged me to go.  In Colorado I met many old book dealers who dealt in old books, specializing in areas such as medicine, Americana, exploration, books on books.  I got some inkling of how the business worked.  I learned about book scouts, catalogs and appraisals, and how to research auction records.   Use of the internet to market used books was just making an appearance on the horizon.  

The founder of one of the first internet services told us about his program, the concept designed by young computer programmers.  Kids.  Many of the old book dealers were emphatic that they could never work that way.  At that time, specific old books were located by a weekly trade newsletter in which book dealers advertised in very small print.  That required another dealer to subscribe to and peruse the letter, to remember his stock, look for the book, and reply with a price to the dealer who had advertised.  The original advertiser then contacted the customer with the information, and got back to the dealer who had the book.  Accurate descriptions were crucial.  Booksellers who did not use the specialized language and identify and describe a book properly were considered amateurs.  The internet has changed all that, and has changed the nature of the book search, prices, and the characterization of certain books as rare.  (Take a look at www.bookfinder.com.)

Ronn and I talked about a bookstore, as so many bookish people probably do at some time or other.  But in this case, we started looking at where a used bookstore might be located in Sewanee.  Ronn may have seen me floundering in Sewanee, and he thought this would be something of sustained interest that we could enjoy together--finding books for now, and perhaps working the business together later on when he retired.  His mother had had a women's dress shop in Salt Lake City years ago, and Ronn was not afraid of starting a small business.  We bought a run-down old rectangular commercial building in Sewanee at the end of 1998, and began to build shelves, paint, remodel, and otherwise fix it up as a bookstore.  We began to scout out books, and add books to the shelves.

At about this time, Ronn had been offered a job in Chicago, as chief engineer of an aircraft parts manufacturing company, to become president when the current president retired.  We both went to Chicago when he had the initial interview, and although it is an exciting city, I did not see it as a retirement home.  I thought I might stay in Sewanee for the time being, while he went to Chicago.  He initially accepted the job, complications ensued with the company that were not worked out for a while, and he decided against it.  I will always wonder how our lives would have been different if we had not bought that building, and had felt free to leave.  

We opened the store in April of 1999, with half-filled shelves, refreshments and great hopes.  Lionel the cat was in residence to greet customers, and Lady the dog usually spent the day there with me.  Ronn built oak-topped counters, and we brought in some antique shelves and furniture and carpets.  It was an attractive store, and became more so as time went along.  Books everywhere.  Also cards and posters.  Contrary to advice I had gotten at the book school, the store became a general bookstore instead of a specialist store.  Many people showed up who wanted to sell books to me, and I was not discriminating in acquisition.  Books began to pile up three deep in the storeroom.  We built a large screened porch on the rear, and Ronn added a washroom in the big book room and a utility sink in the storeroom, and continued to fix up the kitchen, full bath and two rooms at the back of the store, which later we used as a rental apartment after the store was closed.

I had been active in Woman's Club, and invited the  local Woman's Club board to have their monthly meeting there, which they did for two years.  I envisioned selling good books, sponsoring readings and workshops and a book club in the room in the rear, and having a small publishing imprint, Ione Press (named after my mother) to produce books of local interest.  My frog book was published under that imprint.  I also worked on a little tour guide of Sewanee, a short history of Sewanee, and I thought that the nature observations that a local couple, the Yeatmans, had provided to the weekly newspaper for years might be distilled and edited into a little almanac of the Sewanee seasons.  I thought that the publication and sale of one book would provide the funds for publication of the next book.

I was long on ideas and short on staff and income.  John Shaver, who had a bookstore in Huntsville, had advised me against opening a store unless I also provided food.  Ronn was working full-time in Huntsville during the week, and had his hands full with maintenance work on the weekends.  We planted flowers and trees, built a sidewalk and a trellis, hung posters and light fixtures, and sorted and shelved books.  I didn't realize that everything I envisioned would take ten people working full-time, not to mention a much bigger budget than I had.  I was blinded by love--of books.  

One day early on in the life of the bookstore a woman I knew from Woman's Club as Hallie Bennett approached the counter with her new husband, Bill Hampton.  She told me that Bill had put together a manuscript about his former teacher, Father James Harold Flye.  Bill planned to have it printed, but she wanted an editor to look it over first, and would I do the honors.  I was a bit reluctant to take on something more, but I took the manuscript home to read.  

I read and read.  There were lots of interview transcripts.  I liked the story of Father Flye, and his wife Grace, who spent 35 years at nearby St. Andrew's School.  Father Flye was known primarily as the teacher of James Agee, and they corresponded after Agee left St. Andrew's.  Father Flye kept the letters Agee sent him, and they were published as The Letters of James Agee to Father Flye. Unfortunately, Agee, who died in his 40s, apparently did not keep the other side of the correspondence.  This book seemed important to balance the scale a bit.

Father Flye's story had its own drama and conflicts.  Father Flye was an exemplary and unusual teacher.  His wife, Grace, ten years his senior, was a talented artist and painted pictures of many of the children.  In her later years, she had Addison's disease, and became reclusive.  She stayed in Sewanee every summer while Father Flye went to New York.  In 1925, Father Flye traveled to Europe with James Agee, and he stayed in touch with many other students.  The Flyes' dream of starting "Birdwood," their own school, never materialized.   Although Father Flye was an erudite teacher, he was not universally loved at St. Andrew's and was fired, or forced to retire, shortly after Grace died.  He went to St. Luke's in New York City for a good long while, and one time when he returned to visit St. Andrew's, he sneaked in.  He lived to be a hundred years old, and died in a nursing home near Sewanee.  Hallie Bennett Hampton had at one time been his nurse; that's how she and Bill had met.

I made notes on the manuscript, and recommendations based on my reading.  Bill had certain biases, and I recommended tempering them.  I had been reading oral histories.  I told Bill that the book was a good oral history, and that it deserved more than photocopying, that he should look for a publisher.  We talked back and forth.  He said, I want you to do it.  Bill was no spring chicken; he wanted the book out, soon.

I talked with Ronn, and in retrospect I think we were still feeling optimistic and magnanimous. We decided to invest in the project.  We researched standard book contracts, and prepared one.  We would own the copyright to the book, and would produce it in a certain time and make a reasonable effort to market it.  In turn, the author had certain obligations to us.  

It is one thing to edit and publish a book; marketing is a different animal.  However, I did have the connections afforded by the bookstore, and my experience writing press releases and promotional materials.  When we went to Bill with the contract, he said, ahem, there was a problem.  It was to be one in a series of problems.  A woman, Caryl R. Stevens, had worked with Bill on the book, he said, and he was negotiating with her to relinquish her rights, which she eventually did.  I did not meet her, and will never know the extent of her contribution.  I think she discerned, astutely, that retaining any claim to the book would not be profitable for her.  

Bill did have the manuscript on computer files, but I became the copyeditor.  Ken Morris designed and laid out the book, and we proofread it, and created an index, and we had the book printed by a company in another state.  The book was 255 pages.  The process was rushed because of Bill's family's travel arrangements, and on the morning of the book party we were still tracking down the book shipments.  Ronn had to drive to Huntsville to take delivery of some books and get them to the store, just before customers began to arrive.

Bill signed copies of the book on the back screened porch.  I wrote up and had lots of brochures printed and mailed them to a long list of  independent book stores.  I wrote to newspapers, magazines, and diocesan newsletters.  I sent out press releases and many review copies.  Booksellers are inundated with review copies now, so review copies are not guaranteed to pique their interest.  The review copies began to show up for sale on used book sites on the internet.  I scheduled a reading and signing for Bill at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, but that experience demonstrated that Bill was not well enough to travel and publicize his book, although he did showcase the book at alumni events at St. Andrew's School.  

I liked the story, and saw it as another "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" or "Mr. Holland's Opus" that I hoped would find interest out of the region.  I was querying and writing filmmakers to try to interest them in the book's possibilities.

 Then I learned incidentally that the South Cumberland Cultural Society in nearby Monteagle, where Bill lives, was planning a production called "Cast a Long Shadow," based on Bill's book.  They had hired a playwright, Ken "Kennesaw" Williams, a friend of Bill's who had read his manuscript early on and in whose house Bill had once lived, to write the script.  I contacted them to let them know that we own the copyright to the book, and that our permission is required for derivative works.  Copyright law allows the owner a window of time to profit from the work.  Eventually a copyright expires, and the work enters the public domain.  Or a copyright may be renewed, or transferred.  Under the terms of our contract, we could ask for royalties on derivative works.  

There was a lot of back and forth with the playwright and the principals of theatre group, but we were never privy to or part of their plans.  On the morning of one of our Cinco de Mayo parties, Ronn went to an SCCS board meeting to present our position.  The SCCS delayed their production for a year, but decided, most probably based on the playwright's assurances, that we had no claim, or would not pursue a claim.   Their newsletter indicated that the playwright had gotten the ideas independently.  Bill, who was retired and had no money investment in either the book or the play, was delighted that his book had stimulated a dramatic production, which would premiere at his alma mater, St. Andrew's-Sewanee School, so he was working with the playwright.  I was exasperated and tired.  

Finally, without being asked, I wrote a letter to the effect that they had our permission for one-time production of the play, but they would need further permission if the play went further.  I asked them to please acknowledge Bill, which they did.  The play closely followed the book.  Interest in Father Flye as a character seemed local and limited, at least for now.

After Father Flye, I decided I did not want to be a publisher of works of other people I did not know well, or who did not appear to read or respect contracts.  I gave Bill a couple of boxes of books, and kept one copy for myself.  We closed the bookstore in 2002, after three and a half years.  During that time, my life had been mostly devoted to the store, and I wanted to come home and take care of the house and enjoy home-cooked meals, and quiet days, free from small talk.  I continued to sell books via an internet service for another three years or so.  I liked not being at a counter all day.  We disposed of all the books, eventually, and sold the building to an architect in 2007.

I did publish a wonderful poetry collection, Walks on Wheels, by my young nephew Bryan Hall, who has spina bifida and gets around in a wheelchair.  It was a pleasurable experience for all of us.

I kept a few collectible books for their beauty, but I am back to loving books primarily for their informational value.

Cinderella, Robin Hood, Midwife, Assassin

My sister Joanie was 14 years older, and I always looked up to her.  She drew beautiful paper dolls and their fashions for me.  Before I entered school, she had graduated from high school, and left to work in Salt Lake City.  She was a single working girl for several years before she got married and had children.  At first she lived in a boarding house on A Street in the Avenues, and then later shared a house on 21st South with other working girls.  

During that time I wrote letters to her, and she sent me many gifts, among them paper dolls and two Madame Alexander dolls, which I still have.  One is Jo March from Little Women.  

Joanie likes to read, and I like to read, and one Christmas when I was ten or eleven, she gave me a copy of Good Morning, Young Lady, by Ardyth Kennelly.  It was, and is, one of the most magical books I have ever read.   It is both a Cinderella story and a Robin Hood story.

It is set in the early days of Salt Lake City.  The heroine is Dorney Leaf, whose grandfather in Wyoming has told her romantic stories about the outlaw Butch Cassidy and set Dorney's imagination astir.  Dorney's parents and her grandfather die and she must come to Salt Lake City to live with an unkind sister, and some unattractive nieces.  She works in a laundry.  Then she goes to work as a housekeeper for a former beauty Queen, who is married to a well-to-do restaurateur.  Queen Alma's husband dotes on her, takes her to dine, and brings her boxes of chocolates.  The Queen gains weight and cannot get into her beautiful clothes, so she gives her dresses to Dorney.  

Dorney finally meets Butch Cassidy, and another man, too--a schoolteacher.  Butch gets in trouble and wants her to run away to South America with him, but Dorney's sister foils their plans, and--oh, oh, oh!  I cannot devour the pages fast enough.  It is a bittersweet story, worrisome but satisfying, about dreams and realities, and realities that are like dreams.  I have read the book many times, and it still has the same effect on me.  

Butch Cassidy was from Circleville, Utah.  We drove through Circleville and past Piute High School on our way to Salt Lake City.  We played Piute High in high school basketball.  Butch's given name was Robert Leroy Parker, and reporters loved to come to Circleville and interview his elderly sister, Lula, who lived in Circleville, and write stories about Butch (I found a similar situation when I edited The Tombstone Epitaph; reporters loved to interview Cochise's grandson, who was in the nursing home in Tombstone, and write the old stories about Cochise). 

After reading Good Morning, Young Lady, I wanted to read every word that Ardyth Kennelly had ever written.  I found The Peaceable Kingdom and its sequel, Up Home, and they were every bit as satisfying, and I read them again and again.  They are also set in the early days of Salt Lake City, when polygamy was practiced.  The heroine is Linnea, who is the second wife of Olaf,  a tailor.  Olaf's first wife, Sigrid, is thin and beautiful.  Linnea, who is a midwife, may be sturdier, but she has heart and grit and many friends.  Linnea and her children move often, and each chapter is an adventure.  On the day of the temple dedication, Gertrude drops her new hat down the outhouse.  After a move, the Linnea's dish cupboard falls on Rudie. Linnea is privy to many domestic secrets--Who is love with whom?  Who is the father of that baby?  

The Linnea novels are based on stories that Kennelly's grandmother told her.  Linnea is Swedish.  When she moves, which she does often for various reasons, she loves to clean house and arrange her furniture, then sit down and have a good cup of coffee.  She says the Mormon proscription of coffee in the Word of Wisdom does not apply to Swedes.  

I did not know for many years how many books Kennelly had written, but when I went to a library, I always looked for her name.  

In March of 1968, my husband, Kent, entered the Air Force.  His draft number had come up, and so to avoid a sure trip to VietNam and to have time to finish his master's degree in psychology at the University of Utah, he joined the Air Force, which was a four-year commitment.  We were living on the Avenues in Salt Lake City, at about 10th east and C Street, in a four-plex.  I loved the location and the little apartment, which had a hookup for a washing machine.  We had found a used washing machine in the classified ads, and I liked hanging out clothes behind the apartment.  

I had been taking some classes, too, and working at the Holy Cross Hospital in personnel, and as a typist at the Political Science Department at the U.  I remember those two quarters I attended the University of Utah as one of the happiest times of my life, when the light was crisp and bright.  I understand now that I was emerging from a period of depression.  One of the symptoms had been a fear of driving.  I hadn't told anyone, I just avoided it.  My brain had changed settings, had switched from "anxiety" to "sponge," and I absorbed every photon of fall light and every fact and nuance.  At the U. I took anthropology classes from Charles Dibble and John Dewey and a young MesoAmerican specialist, physiology from Dr. Goldfarb, and geology from W. L. Stokes.  Lo, forty years have passed, and I still remember those classes.

I worked for J. D. Williams and Helmut Callis in political science.  I had met Dr. Williams from a distance while I was still in high school, because he had moderated the Model United Nations conference that I had attended for three years.  He was a graduate of Harvard Law School, a Democrat, and had run for political office.  He took the office staff out to a restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City for a prime rib dinner at Christmastime.  I  had never eaten prime rib.

Dr. and Mrs. Callis were historians specializing in China, and had escaped Nazi Germany to China, thence to the United States.  Dr. Callis was so pleased with my spelling and accuracy in transcribing his manuscripts that he invited us to the Callis house to see their collection of Chinese art objects.  They included large carved cabinets that were taken apart like puzzles so they could be shipped to the United States.  The Callis house had a red door.  He told me that red is the color of happiness in China, and that Chinese brides wear red wedding dresses.

From our apartment, I walked to the University along tree-lined narrow streets.  I wore navy blue knee socks and a wool houndstooth skirt, a tan cableknit sweater, and a very uncomfortable, undoubtedly too small, pair of blue loafers that rubbed blisters on my heels.  I often took the bus home at the end of the day.  I was also typing notes for a political science doctoral student who was researching conflict in the Middle East.  He marked passages in books, and I typed the excerpts onto 3x5 cards for him.  I used my old turquoise-colored Royal portable typewriter to type the cards on our kitchen table, for Kent's master's thesis, we rented an IBM electric typewriter for a few weeks.

Kent turned in his thesis and completed his oral exams at the end of winter quarter, we returned the rented typewriter, put our few belongings in storage, and I left him at the airport.  We had a round-back white Volvo, with red seats.  I drove to Escalante to see Mom and Dad, then to Scottsdale, Arizona, where I spent a few weeks with Joanie, then I drove solo across country to Biloxi, Mississippi, where my airman husband was completing basic training at Keesler Air Force Base.  

For a short time, we lived in a little moldy trailer that reeked of gas, then we found an apartment in the upstairs of an old two-story white frame house on the Beach Highway, where one of my husband's friends from the Air Force and his wife also lived.  Our landlady was Miss _; her daughter, Miss _, also lived with her.  They pronounced the air base name Kees-lah.  Jeff Davis' house, a historical attraction, was just down the street.  The cemetery vaults were above ground.  I was in another country.  The summer of 1968 was memorable in other ways; it was the summer of the Moon Walk and Hurricane Camille.  

We were up high with a beach view, and out of the trailer, but our mattress smelled like mildew, and the cockroaches seemed as big as mice.  They flew out of grocery bags, and they scattered like a school of fish when I came into the dimly lit foyer at night.  The mosquitoes were vicious, and sometimes I saw a disoriented crab scuttling sideways down the highway.  My husband was gone much of the time, assigned to KP duty in addition to his other training.  I could not find a job, so I spent my time at the air-conditioned library on the air base.  I looked for Ardyth Kennelly on the shelves, and I found The Spur.

It was like running into an old friend in an unfamiliar place, and sitting down with a good cup of coffee and interesting conversation.  The Spur, about Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, is not as common as Kennelly's other books, especially the Linnea books, at least one of which was published in a book club edition.  But it is every bit as good.  Kennelly was fascinated with John Wilkes Booth, and read everything she could find about him.  One of the books she relied upon heavily for her novel, she said, is The Mad Booths of Baltimore, by Stanley Kimmel.  Booth was wearing spurs in the Ford Theatre and he caught his spur in a theatre curtain when he jumped from the balcony to escape.  He was injured, and his injury changed the trajectory of his story, and history.

When I was at Utah State University, I heard a scholarly presentation about neglected Western women writers.  Ardyth Kennelly was one of them.  The book flap text of  The Spur is revealing about women's status at the time Kennelly was writing.  Much is said about Kennelly's doctor husband's accomplishments, and Kennelly is said to enjoy housekeeping.  But then Linnea enjoyed housekeeping, too.  And so do I.  And that cup of coffee in a clean house is deeply satisfying.

When I came to Sewanee, I learned that John Wilkes Booth had once visited the old Brooks Hardware store here (now Taylor's), where he pawned his pocketwatch.  

Raccoons Take a Grand Tour of Grundy County, Tennessee

When I was in elementary school in Escalante in the 1950s, one of our assignments was to find a pen pal.  It may have been in third grade, when Iona Alvey (wife of Dad's Barney relative, Edson) was my teacher, or in fourth or fifth when Roland Porter (Dad's Uncle Rol, his mother's brother) was my teacher.  Or maybe in sixth grade, when Lorenzo Griffin (son of Charles "Pappy" Griffin, Dad's great-grandfather, by his second wife) was my teacher.  We looked at the map, and chose a town in another part of the country.  We wrote to the elementary school in the town, told about ourselves, and asked to be matched up with another student for a continuing correspondence.

 Dad, whose job in the Post Office kept him at the hub of Escalante's communication with the outside world, was interested in this assignment.  He and I together looked at a map of the United States and some reference books,  and we zeroed in on the little town of Palmer, Tennessee, on the Cumberland Plateau, in a green part of the country.  

"Palmer has a third-class post office like Escalante," Dad said.  I wrote to the teacher of the appropriate grade at the elementary school in Palmer, and it wasn't long before I heard back from a student my age.  Her name was Sandra Meeks.  Her handwriting was very neat, and she was obviously a good student.  We were well-suited as pen pals.  Our letter exchange lasted for several years, into high school.  

With Dad's encouragement and interest, I sent petrified wood and other souvenirs from Escalante.  Sandy sent souvenirs of Grundy County, photos of her in her basketball uniform, and something surprising--a photo of the Mormon church in Altamont.   Sandy attended Grundy County High School in Tracy City.  I thought Grundy was a strange name, but it was just not a Utah name.  Felix Grundy (1777-1840), I learned, was a well-known name in Tennessee.  The original Felix Grundy had  been a state legislator, a U.S. Senator, and a U.S. Attorney General.  The major industry in Grundy County was once coal mining, but that is no more, and today Grundy County boasts some of the most beautiful recreation areas in Tennessee.

In 1992, when we moved to Sewanee, in Franklin County, Tennessee, I realized we were not far from Palmer.  I wondered what had happened to Sandy.  I called the high school, and a relative of Sandy's answered the telephone (it was much the same as Escalante in that way, too).  She told me that Sandy's married name was Willis, and that Sandy was a history teacher in Knoxville.  I called her, and we had a long telephone conversation.  Her father had died, and her mother had remarried.  Sandy said her two children were basketball players, too.  We have not met in person, but the telephone conversation was a nice epilogue to our years as pen pals.

In 2004, Mary Priestley, who is curator of the Herbarium at the University of the South, was working on an environmental outreach project for area elementary schools.  She created nature trails for some schools, including Sewanee Elementary School.  In Grundy County, Coalmont Elementary School's location did not lend itself to an adjacent nature trail, so Mary conceived another nature-related project.  Coalmont students took field trips to various sites in Grundy County and drew pictures and wrote about what they saw.  Mary brought the student papers to me in a big paper bag, and I distilled them into a children's book story.  When the idea for the story was fixed--raccoons taking a grand tour of the sights of Grundy County--the students drew additional pictures, all of them delightful, for possible use in the book.  

I wrote about a country raccoon named Felix Grundy, who is told by his mother to entertain his city cousin, Taylor.  Taylor is skeptical of seeing anything of much interest in rural Grundy County, but on the grand tour is persuaded otherwise.  Latham Davis designed the book and created the map of the raccoons' travels.  He used student drawings on every page of the story.  I added two pages of facts about raccoons.

I was invited to the book's coming-out party at Coalmont School.  They had an assembly in the gym, in which they danced and sang.  I read a few paragraphs of the book to the assembly.  Every student received a copy of the book.  I  visited the classrooms afterward and signed some books.  It was a happy day and a great celebration.  

I was emotional that day, and kept shedding tears, much to my embarrassment.  I was thinking about Sandy, and about myself long ago, about how I miss my Dad, who was kind to children and amused by their capacity for originality, and who would have loved the raccoon drawings.  I was thinking about my friend, Chris Kohler Smith, an artist who would have loved the raccoons, too, but who had just died in Marshall, North Carolina, having also made the trek in recent years from the American West to the East.  

I was thinking about how the young find everything is new, but life feels like it will stay the same forever, and yet it passes so quickly.  I was thinking about Escalante, about Palmer, about Felix Grundy, and the pen pal assignment, the specific teacher who cooked it up lost to me no matter how hard I think on it, about how the ribbon of life curls and folds back on itself, and about friendships and family, and how different people get to know each other, and how we find similarities and ways to laugh and to be of use no matter where we are.

One of the Coalmont teachers said she was so proud of such a positive project about Grundy County.  I am proud to have had a small part in it.