grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Archives for 2012

A Place to Remember

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I don’t think you see a town until you spend time walking around. Every place has hidden treasures to uncover, even those nearly invisible communities tucked among the corn fields hours away from the closest Dillard’s. You may need to squint to clearly see.
Presbyterian Church, Piggott, Ar

Flying down Main Street in a cool car driving somewhere better, the old church cornerstone is a blur, the cemetery overgrown, the dilapidated house with gingerbread trim faded. The town appears abandoned, a ghostly whistle-stop off the interstate. Small-town stereotypes come to mind leaving an empty feeling, a who-on-earth-lives-here feeling. Stopping at the single red light seems ridiculous with not a soul in sight. You have some place to be. Some place exciting. Some other place. But walking the neighborhood, studying the building design and reading the historical markers bring back life. A life. A history. Every place is someone’s home, someone’s place to remember. It crosses someone’s mind.

Faded mural on side of building

Last night I walked for hours taking pictures of this little town that at first glance appeared forlorn, forgotten, faded. A passerby waved and an old man said hello from his porch swing. A stone cottage surrounded by a sizable garden with rows and rows of vegetables and apple trees caught my eye. It was framed by a rock wall, crooked yet perfect. I coveted it. I considered knocking on the door to ask permission to walk beyond the stone wall. Tomatoes already grew heavy on the vine. Could I have garden tour and learn the secret to this abundance? Would the gardeners who live within those walls consider me crazy? Do I care? It was late so I thought better of it.

Piggott reminds me of Keiser where I attended grade school, trick-or-treated on Halloween and hung out with my friends on weekends. I’m sure travelers blow through thinking it to be a sad, depressing place. They didn’t know Vic and Bobby Don who always hung out at the gas station guarding the entrance into town, or Howard Ray who road his bicycle affectionately named Trigger, or the Shake Shack with slap-yo-momma Pizza Burgers. But we do. We were part of it. We remember cotton trailers lined up at the gin, Edwina’s Beauty Shop always smelling of perms, and Spin-the-Bottle in Nana’s dimly lit attic. We remember cheering on the Keiser Yellow Jackets. We remember.

talya
“Living in a small town…is like living in a large family of rather uncongenial relations. Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s perfectly awful, but it’s always good for you. People in large towns are like only-children.”  Joyce Dennys, Henrietta Sees It Through

Choiring Trees

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My brain hurts. Writing and thinking and revising and listening is exhilarating to the point of exhausting. Especially listening. Listening is the tricky part, listening to my own thoughts and hearing what I have to say. What if there is nothing to hear? A dull ache had been building all morning behind my left eyebrow. I found myself rubbing this spot, trying to get the ideas to flow from behind the throb. After lunch I took a break, disappearing beyond the barn, beyond the trees to a grassy patch, underneath an old tree that has likely kept watch over this property for years. Flat on my back with shut eyes, I felt the warm sun on my arms and face. The birds chattered. A distant train. There was a nice breeze that moved the trees to stir, to sing.

My canvas book bag became my pillow. Inside, a short story I had written. Dr. Lott had edited it this morning, returning the pages to me over lunchtime lasagna. My first feedback at this retreat. I was excited to read his comments, but anxious, like waiting on a big test grade in school. Right off I saw the pages were filled with comments, blue ink scribbled in the margins, his thoughts, his professional opinion. I stuffed it in my book bag, like a note passed in school tucked away to savor later when all was quiet and my head was clear. Afraid to read the suggestions but longing for reaction, I would digest it after the aspirin had a chance to work its magic. These pages, my words, now made the stuffing of my makeshift pillow. I was careful not to crumple them.

Opening my eyes, I studied the leaves, imagining the view to be that of Donald Harrington’s as depicted in his Ozark tales of fictitious Stay More, Arkansas. His tree colors included every shade of green from spring pea to black forest, like crayons in the jumbo box, the box with the sharpener in the back. But more than the shades of green, he described the lilting sound of the trees, the choiring of the trees. I heard the choiring of the trees this afternoon. 

Studying for final exams in college we often joked about sleeping with a book, with our head resting against a bulky economics textbook. As if the sheer nearness of the written theories and definitions and charts inside would seep into our brains allowing us to awake with amazing clarity, with the ability to discuss the Keynesian spending multiplier with the same ease of counting to 100 or making skillet cornbread. Maybe as the trees sang, Dr. Lott’s wisdom would percolate on the pages of my short story, filtering into my head. 
This peaceful moment was interrupted with a bee sting on my arm. It was a sweat bee, more of a nuisance than a sting. I hadn’t thought of a sweat bee in years. Do they only exist in Northeast Arkansas? I gathered my book bag pillow and returned to my writing spot inside the barn. Pulling out the marked up short story, I was thankful Dr. Lott doesn’t use a red pen.

Immediately I noticed, “Perhaps a bit of description here?” My husband begins sentences with ‘perhaps’ when he is attempting to be diplomatic. But I understood this suggestion, and it was easy to add. We had spent time this morning discussing story endings. What makes a good ending or a confusing ending, a strange ending, an ending that makes you wish you had not wasted your time, or an ending that leaves you wanting more? Quickly jumping to the last page of my story he had written, “Good ending… the characterization is very good.”

Nowhere on the paper did he offer, “Perhaps you should return to banking…”

Whew. 

talya
“February came. He imagined the buds were a-swelling. The trees were not going to sing for another month or more, but the buds swole up as if the trees were humming in practice and tune-up.” Donald Harrington, The Choiring of the Trees

Just a Girl

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Today. At the writer’s retreat… Tell us a bit about yourself….This is a huge question. How do I convey what I want these folks, these soon to be new friends, these writers, to know about me in 3 minutes? Who am I? 
Last night I thought about the words I threw together describing myself on the “About Me” section of my Grace Grits & Gardening blog, strung together simply off the top of my head with very little thought. Words to fill that blank spot on my intro blog page. Truthful but quickly written.

  • I am a wife. John thinks its cool that I put this first. Maybe all that subliminal southern Baptist rearing stuck back in my head that teaches subservient wifely things? Nah. John describes me as a hard-headed woman, assuring me this is a compliment. I think he is trying to convince himself…
  • I am a mom. These words, this short simple sentence, form the badge I wear most proudly.  If I never do anything else, my life has been productive. I know I have contributed. This allows me to sleep at night.
  • I am a farmer’s daughter. Huge influence. In this life I learned to wake before sunrise, do what I say, reap what I sow, and memorize the words to every classic country song, skills all southern girl should master. 
  • I love to dig in the dirt. Yes, I started making mud pies at an early age. I do my best thinking wearing my worn gardening gloves and would spend my last five bucks on a perennial rather than food or water, unless my Black Eyed-Susans were thirsty of course.
  • I am a book junkie. Oh the places I’ve been within the pages of a book – through the doors of musty wardrobes, behind secret garden walls, into the dark forbidden forest and journeying across cold mountains. Real books that you can see and smell and touch and hold. Books you fall asleep with like a favorite feather pillow that leave imprints and lines on the side of your face and within your heart. 
  • I am a beginning yogi. Yoga has opened my eyes to the possibilities. If you practice you know.
  • I am a beginning writer. This brings me here, to this moment in time, sitting in the very barn where Ernest Hemingway wrote portions of A Farewell to Arms. I am in awe.
  • I try to do something creative every day. See all of the above. 

I’m just a girl from Arkansas.

talya
“Write drunk, edit sober.” Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway Barn


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