Be specific, a writer is told.

“Caress the detail, the divine detail.” [Vladimir Nabokov]

Book Events

December has brought two opportunities for book signings. First on December 7, Currie Alexander Powers and I participated in Davis Kidd’s authors’ night series, Home for the Holidays, featuring the anthology Gathering: Writers of Williamson County. This was our first opportunity to take the book across county lines into Nashville. Several people stopped by to chat, we sold a few books, and we claimed the experience of being an “author” at DK.

Currie & Kathy at the Authors’ Table

Writers of Williamson County in Davidson County

A Long Table of Authors

December 12-13 brought the annual Dickens for a Christmas celebration in downtown Franklin. Characters from Dickens’ stories dress in period costumes, and folks enjoy music and food and displays of life as it was during Dickens’ time. I was thrilled to eat sugar plums and to watch Irish dancing on the stage by City Hall.

CWW hosted a booth this year for the first time. I’d suggested this during our first publicity committee meeting for the book Gathering: Writers of Williamson County — after all, Franklin is home, and Dickens brings 50,000 people to its streets for this weekend event. I thought we’d be able to sell some books. And we did jolly right well at that!

CWW Booth on the Square

Booth, Decorated for Christmas
Bill Peach, Bob Gross, Angela Britnell, Dave Stewart

Carriage Ride, $2, and the Blue Heeler on the Horse

Main Street Crowd & CWW Booth

Gatherings and Gathering

In 2006 I had a vision of publishing an anthology. An old English teacher, I couldn’t seem to get away from encouraging others and empowering them to step to the next level in their work — in this case, writing. I enjoy working with writers, watching them catch the excitement of the written word, standing beside their glowing faces as they see their stories on the pages of a book. I feel blessed to have published the works of 28 writers, myself one of them, some of us already solidly published, some published for the first time. It was a dream come true — for me, for them. I was proud to hear reports of the writers sharing the anthology with their friends, their co-workers, their college bookstores, in their home locations, in the universities they served, in different regions of the country, having their own book signings in their hometown bookstores. What a joy for all! It may sound as though I am tooting my own horn, and maybe I am, but as someone once said, if you don’t, nobody will. It fell to me as editor to set up the local launch party for the book — a mass signing on a Saturday afternoon at the Cool Springs Barnes & Noble with all authors invited. Nineteen were close enough to come. We made store history — the most authors ever in the bookstore, signing at the same time. A story about us was sent out in the B&N corporate newsletter. We still hold the record! (And while I’m tooting, I also hold another store record for my book of essays — most books sold ever at a local author signing. I sold all the books the store ordered, all I had brought in my car, and ended up having to give out vouchers and deliver books to buyers the following week.)

That book was Muscadine Lines: A Southern Anthology. The writers were veterans of the first year of Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal. Up front, the writers were told how many books they needed to sell in order to recoup their costs of this print-on-demand process. We all had the knowledge needed to be successful. It was up to each individual writer to promote and sell books he/she ordered to claim that success. I think we all made it happen.

While I’m just a lowly English major, I worked as Business Manager of the small company my husband owned. He was an engineer, a UT graduate, with a twenty-year career in management at the Alcoa headquarters in Pittsburgh and an MBA from Pitt.  I had someone to run my own business dealings through if I needed to, I learned a lot from him, and a lot is just plain common sense. There are costs of doing business.  There are editorial costs; there’s money laid out for artwork and book layout. There’s inventory — the stock of books on hand. It’s a constant seesaw — books ordered, books sold, costs repaid, profits made. It was as much fun to plan the business and marketing aspect of the project as it was to do the gathering and editing of stories.

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In 2008 others and I had a vision of publishing an anthology. This anthology, published in 2009, was sponsored by a literary org, CWW, of which I was a member and president at that time. It was all accomplished through committees and members in celebration of CWW’s tenth birthday.  It’s a benchmark — a literary work of the literary org of Williamson County. Thirty-one writers are included in the book, some famously published, some published for the first time.  The writers are somehow connected to CWW, whether through membership or literary Hall of Fame recipients. The book is a marketing tool for the organization; it contains valuable history of CWW, available to local citizens for the first time. It explains and defines what the organization does; it gives meaning and life to the work of a very small group of people who have labored diligently and sacrificed much over the course of the org’s short life to leave a legacy. It also fulfills the org’s mission: to encourage, educate, and empower writers. A writer’s organization now has its own beautiful book!

This book is Gathering: Writers of Williamson County.

A plan for success was explained to the membership; every detail was spelled out — sell every book of the original order at full price!; status reports were given monthly. CWW ordered books; members ordered books. Excitement ruled as our launch party and purchases the following week generated enough sales to pay for our order. Sales at other events, including the Southern Festival of Books, began to chip away at amounts the leadership considered “costs of doing business.” Individual writers were encouraged to make their own sales calls, to have their own signings in their own corners of the county, to make press contacts and gain publicity for their works — and many did! We were on our way to success!

I am proud to be one of 31 writers in Gathering. I am thankful for the opportunity of serving as co-editor, a thankless job that nobody else wanted, a job that required me to give days and weeks and months to editing stories, making sure the writers shined and voices came through, to ordering the stories, to composing the other components of the book, to writing the Introduction, to putting all the individual stories into one document, ready for a final proof and layout. Yes, it was hard work, and this was precious time I could have applied to my own writing, my own business of editing and publishing, my own work on a state and regional level. I am proud to have had a part in producing this literary legacy for my county and proud to be one small part in this fabulous book that belongs to us all.

Now, I have passed on from leadership and moved onward with my work, I have passed the baton to others, and I had high hopes that they could also catch the vision and view this legacy with favorable eyes for the positive tool it was designed to be and is on track to be, and take it to the Promised Land.

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Tomorrow, I am happy to be included in an author gathering at Davis-Kidd in Nashville. I look forward to promoting this anthology of 31 writers and the org that empowered them and gave them voice.

Delta Cotton Quips

I love traveling the backroads of Mississippi. The old narrow highways hold haunting images of what life was like back in the day I was a kid — old country stores with crooked screen doors and PURE Oil signs and empty gins and red dirt roads and kudzu and old family homes leaning to decay, smothered in vines. I am constantly braking to look, and I am always grabbing for my camera. My son has threatened to create me a bumper sticker that says, “This Car Makes Violent Stops and Starts.”

Last week’s jaunt deeper South took me down the Natchez Trace to Tupelo and then across Highway 6 through Oxford and Batesville to Clarksdale, where I hit the famous 61.

It’s still cotton time in the Delta, and in places the road was lined with white, little fluffs that were blown off trailers and hang to edges of the asphalt. I traveled through fields of picked cotton, cotton still on the vine, active gins and compresses…and those cotton fluffs at the side of the road. It chokes me up to even think about it, and the tears flow freely. I think my blood must be white. Cotton was King when I was little.

In Batesville, trailers of cotton had been dropped off for ginning, and I noticed plant yards full of them, all with messages spray-painted on the front sides. “I Am Sick of Healthcare.” “God bless America.” “The Dollar Shall Rise Again.” This was new! They didn’t used to do this when I was a little girl. I found it funny and fascinating and made one of those violent stops on the side of the road to take some pictures — thoughts and concerns and prayerful thanksgiving of grassroots America. Free billboards.

This Old House

He removed a roasted turkey from the ice chest and set it on the kitchen countertop.

“Um, do we, um, have a knife?”

“Oh, a knife,” I answer. “Well–”

“When I took the butcher block table home with me, I took most of the utensils in its drawers.”

“Then I guess we don’t have a knife.”

“How am I going to carve the turkey? I guess I’ll have to get my hunting knife from the car.”

And so it went for Thanksgiving 2009. There was no can opener for the green beans when it came time to put the traditional casserole together. Yep, hunting knife again. There wasn’t even a table to sit at.

I spent Thanksgiving at the house of my childhood, that constant place, the place of stability and security and order, even at times when my life had none, the place my children knew as a home that would always be there; they’d moved around so much they never had a home like that. My parents bought this house at 807 Deering in April of 1949 before I was even born. It is the only “home” I have ever known. Now, my parents are gone. Dad in 2006, Mama last month.

We’ve done some cleaning and weeding out of things — clothes, shoes, dishes, cookware. The grandchildren have brought rental trucks and removed big furniture items  — a butcher block table, a freezer, table and chairs, recliners, bed, rocking chair, safe. Now, it’s the little stuff that’s left, and the whole family had planned to meet for Thanksgiving for one last celebratory meal together. Everyone backed out, except me, and a son and daughter-in-law and twin grandchildren came for a few hours.

First off, a realtor met me at the house. “It looks good…don’t need to do anything…it’s ready to show…I have a young couple in mind.” Took my breath away.

Then I spent alone-time going through every cabinet, every drawer, throwing away, saving. It surprised me what I saved. A tiny crystal vase filled with stubby red Maybelline eyebrow pencils, the kind we used way back in the day. She had this sitting on her dresser. I cried when I picked up a jar of Vicks Vaporub. Vicks Salve, she called it. How many times did she rub this on my chest when I was little? I cried again as I picked up her jar of Noxema. She always bought this for my sister and me when we were teenagers. She still used it, and I think my sister does, too. Her jar of Ponds cold cream. Her hairnet. Her tea bags — I threw them all away. Box after box of Lipton orange pekoe. They were hers and no one else has the right to use them.

I looked at the backyard where the sandbox used to be. And the slide and swingset. And merry-go-round. I sat Indian-chief style on the front porch where I used to play jacks, next to a big hydrangea bush. Now there’s an azalea and daylillies. I looked at a portion of the driveway that is in front of the living room window and remembered how I would pull in the driveway going 40 mph and brake at the last second as Dad watched from inside. He always shook his head.

Everything happened there. Every. Thing. I kept crying and asking myself, “How do I let it go?” I’m not one to let go easily. I want to hold on dearly to things that are special to me.

Then Thanksgiving morning, as the kitchen was alive and active again, a little seven-month-old boy who bears the family name, the name on the deed of the house — Hardy — came crawling into the kitchen and smiled up at me. And this is what life is made of. The old passing, the new taking over. And it is bittersweet.

My Dead Battery Story

I like to think I am self-sufficient…that I can handle whatever situation comes my way. I have cut limbs and hauled them to the street, cleaned out a goldfish pond, fixed a vacuum cleaner, wrestled with a lawn mower, trimmed bushes, changed light bulbs in the ceiling, hauled furniture up and down the stairs, painted exterior and interior, handled finances, and executed a hundred other tasks all by myself. But the one thing that takes me down is the car.

You’d think I could handle that. I had a father who taught me how to change a tire, who told me to change my oil, who told me that if I wanted something done right to do it myself. Did I learn? No. I have always been surrounded by men — father, boyfriends, husbands, sons. They always dealt with car emergencies, although I have made many a trip for service and dealt with the mechanics myself.

I have two cars, both Subarus, one an Outback and the other a Legacy. I’ve made it a point to drive both cars, to keep them in good running order. The Outback is newer. In recent months I have bought four new tires, new brakes, and had a few other things under the hood addressed, something about oil leaking in three places. The Legacy is my favorite; it fits me perfectly and has a sun roof and other amenities. But right now it needs an oil change and I haven’t had time to take it to Valvoline, so I haven’t been driving it much during the past month.

This afternoon I put the dog in the Legacy with plans to go get gasoline and drive it around the neighborhood to give it a good workout. I stick the key in the ignition, turn it, and sc-c-c-ratch. Then no sound. Nothing. The battery is dead. I have ignored it too long.

Okay, so, battery cables. I know I need those. I look in the Legacy trunk and don’t find any, surprised that my husband never put any in there. He was an engineer and a former Eagle Scout and big on making sure I had everything I needed … even if I didn’t know how to use it. There is stuff in there to change a tire with, though, but I’m sure I won’t know what to do with that when the time comes.

I call my son due to come home over the holiday. “Do you have any battery cables?”

“Um, no, I don’t have any.”

“I thought every man had battery cables.”

“They do.” He laughs.

I raise my eyebrows.

Then I go look in the Ouback. I remove the tray in the back and pull up a carpeted lid. Voila, there’s a huge built-in tray full of tools:  10 screw drivers — one about 15 inches long; wrenches; tire changer things — is it called a lug something?; a Cheater Pipe, whatever that is; tweezers; something that might be called a ratchet that is wrapped in one of my old kitchen dish towels; some brand new rope still in the package; a knife; a whisk broom; work gloves; and get this — a rain jacket. A rain jacket? In case someone might have to change a tire in the rain. I’ve been driving this car around with all that stuff buried in the back, and I didn’t even know it was there. The built-in tray has a handle, and I lift it up and see the spare tire well, and there are the battery cables. Okay, I’m good.

Now, using them. Uh uh. Not me.

I call my son again. “Do you know how to use battery cables?”

“I think so. It’s been a long time.”

I have a vision of this child at sixteen with his first flat tire — actually two flat tires at the same time. And he sits with a sheet of directions in the street in front of our house with nuts and bolts and tire parts all over the concrete around him and learns step by step how to change a tire. It’s also the same child who last year fills my oil too full and I have to take the car in for service. Hmmm.

Now, I’m remembering the man I met in the parking lot of First Tennessee Bank in Brentwood. He has a business of making house calls or office calls for cars. He’ll come fix a flat, charge or replace a battery, do minor repair work on site. I went over and talked to him, got his business card, told him I’m a single woman and might have to call him sometimes if I get in trouble with my car. Sam’s Mobile Auto Repair Team. 23 Years Experience. 615-613-8008.

I think I’m in trouble. I think I will call Sam.

Being self-sufficient doesn’t mean I know how to do everything. It may just mean I know when to call someone and whom to call.

An Open and Shut Case

I’m sitting at my desk getting ready to do some research on historic Route 66, when all of a sudden, a buzzing vibration noise comes from the garage beneath me. The door is opening. Yes, opening! I am upstairs typing, no one else is here, except the dog, and she doesn’t have a remote opener. I lift my hands from the keyboard and drop them in my lap. I close my eyes and shake my head, as the door rolls to a stop. This is the third time it has happened.

There is no reason for this.

The first time was on a Saturday night a few weeks ago. I was sitting in the family room and heard that familiar noise I used to hear every evening about dinner time as my husband arrived home from the office.  He died a year and a half ago. It frightened me, and I called the police. Later, I attributed it to Mama and wrote a story about how I always told Mama to come back after she died and ring my doorbell. The permanent opener for the garage door on the wall outside the back door is like a doorbell.

The second time it happened was last Saturday morning, only it was the other way around. It closed! I had a dog grooming appointment and was rushing to leave on time and took the dog outside through the garage to the island across the street — yes, across the street! — so she could attend to her business before we got in the car. All of a sudden, the door started closing. Yes, closing! I screamed and pulled and dragged the dog back across the street and tried to make it under the door before it touched the ground, like Indiana Jones, but no such luck. I didn’t even get a foot under it. So I’m slammed locked out of the house. Locked out! Seriously. No way in. Period. My first instinct was to cry, but time was of essence, and I didn’t have it for crying. My neighbor Ken had to come to my rescue with his ladder.

I sort of attributed that to Mama, too, because I had done something she wouldn’t have liked. Now, today? Did Mama push that button today? Yes, there’s something she wants me to do today, and I know exactly what it is, and I have no intentions of doing it, and she never was one to let it go.

So either Mama needs to find somewhere else to meddle, or I need to call the D&D garage door boys tomorrow! I think I should hang my hat on the latter solution.

Gathering and Signing

Today was the long-awaited book signing for Gathering: Writers of Williamson County. I have to admit I was very excited — more excited than I have been in a long time about anything. It just felt good and right to be in Barnes and Noble with writers and friends and readers and guests. Sixteen of our 31 authors participated. We didn’t break the store record, but it was a fantastic showing.

Gathering contains 42 stories — fiction and creative nonfiction — by new, noted, and famous authors. Gathering is a celebration of CWW’s 10th anniversary. Gathering showcases the talent and voice of Williamson County.

Gathering on the Display Table

Co-editors Kathy Rhodes and Currie Alexander Powers

Kathy Rhodes, Robbie Bryan of B&N, Currie Alexander Powers

Authors and Guests

Kathy Rhodes and Chance Chambers

Sally Lee, Tom Robinson, Suzanne Brunson

Chance and Currie chatting with Robbie

Dancing with Leaves

The Japanese maple outside my living room window is beautiful now, as autumn takes what was once green and sets it afire. Red. Brilliant red when the sun shines on it. It reflects on the white carpet and makes the whole room pink. I could sit on the couch and look at it all day long. Do I dare wish that autumn would last all year?

I push my boundaries and go forth into a world of red and yellow — some color still hanging to frames, most on the ground, filling yards, blowing into streets, racing toward me, rolling, tumbling, coming at me all too fast. I take the lesser traveled route, up Hillsboro, through a neighborhood, to Manley Lane, through tunnels of red and yellow, where deer hop across, where I see nothing but a black road surrounded by yellow leaves and a yellow stripe down the middle, and I follow that stripe to Holly Tree Gap, to Murray Lane, to Granny White Pike. The hills are covered in color. The whole earth is pressed out in patchwork.

I stand outside in the wind and listen — leaves dry like parchment blow toward me and they sound like big raindrops hitting hard ground, like a rainstorm moving in, and I let the pattering overtake me.

I wish for a whole day to sit outside in the woods and look at it all and listen to it blow by me. I know this is the final show, before the earth “goes inside” to rest during its cold season.

I don’t want to go in.  I want to hold onto the sunlight and color and movement and dance with the leaves.

Jilliebean’s Boots

Some girls just seem to have it all! Looks, clothes, style. Jillian is already one of those girls at 7 months, with her jeans tucked into her trendy white furry boots. She looks like she knows it, too.