grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Piggott Arkansas -The Breakfast Table at Downtown Inn

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The Downtown Inn B&B
Piggott, Arkansas
Everyone brings something different to the table. Literally. For the past week we have gathered each morning around the antique table in the dining room at the Downtown Inn in Piggott, Arkansas.  We came to the writer’s retreat from various places with different levels of writing experience, assorted backgrounds and unique viewpoints. We leave as friends.

Brenda, our amicable host, provides an amazing breakfast each morning – scrambled eggs with bacon, breakfast casseroles and breads, fresh fruit with cream, biscuits and gravy, hot coffee and orange juice – something different every day. She wears a red toile apron and is the organized sister who makes certain we start each day with the most important meal. And a prayer. And a laugh. In only one week, we are a family.  

Brenda
We discuss the prior day’s writings, our plans for the next day and the train that runs beside the Inn, so near the bed vibrates like a New Madrid earthquake several times each night. The whistles disrupt sleep, but less so as the week passes. Brenda says a first timer guest reports the train passed by “twenty-two times in the night” but a few days later only twice. We acclimate. 
Families don’t eat together anymore, not regularly. When I think about the conversations we have had over a few days at the table in Piggott with complete strangers, I realize all the conversations missed not eating as a family because of working late or soccer practice or Dancing with the Stars. 
I’ve met seven wonderful ladies this week at the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Creative Writer’s Retreat along with a few good men. Each person brought something a little different to share. I will miss these ladies and the uninterrupted time I’ve had to write. 
Today is our last day. Tomorrow I return to eating power bars for breakfast. We came to the table as strangers. We leave as friends. 
talya

Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Pat, Dorothy, Me, Judy (standing), Mary (pink curlers)

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

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

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