grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

What’s in a Name

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The rules of phonics were pounded into our heads from the start of Kindergarten. Sound-it-out. Find the vowels, short or long?, blend with the consonants, syllable by syllable, beware the silent e… We learned this as soon as we mastered the Alphabet Song.

These same teachers who preached the Phonics Game couldn’t follow their own simple rules when it came to pronouncing my name.

As a kid, I was quiet and shy and preferred to live beneath a cloak of invisibility. My name made this impossible.  On the first day of school, when the teacher came to my name on her seating chart, she stared blankly, trying to twist her tongue into the proper shape to summon the correct sound. Seconds ticked by feeling more like slow motion minutes while kids turned and stared, knowing my name would soon be butchered. This was cause for rip-roaring laughter. This was the Phonics Game in action. Everyone knew my name was next, she had already perfectly pronounced Timmy Stone. I always came after Timmy Stone and before Clay Wade.

School was predictable. Life was predictable. Everything was predictable other than my name.

I wanted to scream, “Just sau̇nd ət au̇t!” 

I can blame Daddy for my odd name. He was a farmer and a man of few words who chose the occasion of my birth to become involved in such girl related things.

In 1962, living in the Mississippi delta surrounded by farmland, he came up with the strangest name ever to be given a baby girl born in the Osceola Memorial Hospital. Back when the top five girl names were Lisa, Marie, Susan, Karen, Linda I got Talya. 

Talya Tate. Oh the alliteration.

I was kər-səd!

Daddy alleged he came up with the name while reading the book South Pacific (a Polynesian chick? a hot war nurse?) What if he had been reading To Kill a Mockingbird? 

Regardless, I think beer drinking was involved.

As I’ve become acquainted with more writers, I’ve met many who have changed their names to something more unique, a name more reflective of their personalities. With my name, Daddy gave me permission to be different from Day One. It just took me a while to figure it out, to sound it out.

He’s been gone eighteen years, but I still have his copy of South Pacific. The pages are yellowed and brittle and smell of a different life. Someday soon, I shall read it.

talya

Name, Goo Goo Dolls

fyi…

Talya is a small village in the Holalkere taluk near Chitradurga district, Karnataka State, India.
The name Talya is a Hebrew baby name. In Hebrew the meaning of the name Talya is:Dew of heaven.
The baby girl name Talya comes from the Indian word which means, “Reach bearer.”
Means Born at Christmas. From the Russian name Natalya.

I Love a Rainy Night

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This week I am attending a one-week writer’s residency program at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs. During this time I will re-post some of my favorite blogs from the prior year. Maybe you missed one? 


originally published 01/24/12…





A trip back home to Northeast Arkansas would be incomplete without at least one long night of thunderstorms, complete with hail, straight-line winds and the resulting power outage.  Last night was that night for my mom and me.  As huge storms brewed in the nation’s mid-section, they roared toward the Mississippi River and our house.


We were relaxing in the den watching Dateline when we were first notified of impending bad weather.  A severe thunderstorm and tornado warning flashed along the bottom of the television screen.  
These storms came up with very little warning. Living on a farm off a dark country road, we were somewhat out of touch with the world. The weather reporters became more and more animated and their maps became more and more colorful. Twirling arrows indicated possible tornadoes and tiny ping pong balls mimicked hail. They predicted an 8 in 10 chance of a tornado in our area. I was skeptical of this statistic.

We ignored the warnings. We were much more concerned with whether or not the newlywed had drowned his young cute wife, but as Dateline was interrupted yet again we realized we may never know.  I thought he was guilty. And I bet the people watching The Bachelor were plenty upset with the interruptions…  

Another alert was issued with this specific instruction that spoke volumes….  “Abandon mobile homes, hide in a ditch and wear durable shoes”.  Seriously. Exact Quote. LifeInTheCountry. I looked at my bare feet as I lay on the couch under a quilt. I glanced over at my mother.  She was wearing purple fuzzy Ugg slippers. Maybe I didn’t give this weatherman with the bad comb-over the credit he deserved?  He actually knew his audience pretty well. Perhaps we should heed his warning? As the wind began to howl and whistle through the fireplace, and the interior door in the den began to shake, I saw visions of those freaky munchkins and flying monkeys.

Ok, I’m going to get my durable shoes!

We escaped into a tiny, interior, window-less bedroom. It was cave-like. At night you cannot see your hand in front of your face. My mother converted it into a kids’ room when the grandchildren were born. It became a place to store old dolls that now had that semi-creepy appearance, old plastic jack-o-lanterns and other toys forgotten by time. In fact, it was quite possibly scarier than a tornado. 

There were at least 30 stuffed animals staring at me, and it was no wonder. I was wearing a black t-shirt from my favorite pizza restaurant, gym shorts and my durable shoes. I had quickly snagged a sweater from my bedroom, along with my bright blue bra. Seriously, if I awake in our rice field in the morning, I will not be braless. It is common knowledge that reporters seek out the most pitiful and scary people to interview after a disaster – I would not be this person tomorrow morning! I also grabbed my well gnawed night guard. I simply cannot sleep without my night guard – it protects my teeth as I clinch and grind. If the house is blown away, and we are relocated to a temporary shelter at the high school gym, I will need my sleep. Plus, this small piece of hard plastic is incredibly expensive!   In the event of a disaster, I will need that money for other things. Like Wine. My mother brought her cat, into the room. Gabby knew the routine well, as she had been born in tornado alley.  She just stared at us, probably freaked out by the stuffed animals everywhere. Or by me.


After about 30 minutes, we ventured out of our “safe room” to complete silence.  Either the storm had passed or the eye was directly overhead. Do tornadoes have eyes?  Exhausted, I slept well (with the help of my night guard). When we awoke in the morning, there were several large limbs scattered throughout the front yard from the pecan trees. Water stood in the field across the road. The sky was clear and blue. We had survived another storm. I was so relieved that we had not been relocated north of the Mason-Dixon Line during the night. I’m pretty sure that’s where the flying monkeys reside.

Red Cowboy Boots

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This week I am attending a one-week writer’s residency program at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs. During this time I will re-post some of my favorite blogs from the prior year. Maybe you missed one? 

originally published 02/09/12…


I could have lived in Nashville. I almost had a date with Buddy Jewell, Osceola’s current claim to fame -the FIRST ever Nashville Star winner! Seriously. I have a love note from Buddy Jewell. He passed it to me after my biology class at Arkansas State, the fall of 1980. He had a class in that same classroom immediately following mine. As I walked out, he was sitting there waiting to go inside, actually playing his guitar. Just kinda messing around on it. Clearly, he was meant to be in Nashville.

I didn’t know him that well – he graduated a couple of years before me – from rival high school Osceola. I was a Rivercrest Colt. Anytime we wanted to irritate “our” boys, or just get their attention, we dated a boy from Osceola… It worked pretty well.
The note was folded up very tightly into a little square. Why would Buddy Jewell be handing me a note? I stuck it in my jeans to save for later. In private. In my dorm room. I couldn’t imagine what it was about. Maybe he wanted to hook up with my roommate? After reading it, I was very surprised. Wow, the first Nashville Star! No, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself….
Apparently it was for real, but we never went out. Way too complicated – I was dating Mark Wooten and transferring to Baylor... he was headed to Nashville – someday. Even so, I stuck the note in my bedroom drawer with all my letters and cards and junk – treasures I had collected throughout my life to that point. Years later, my mother called me to tell me that someone from Osceola was on Nashville Star. Nashville Star? Never heard of it… 

She said, “I think his name is Jewell…?”

Buddy Jewell? Yeah, I know him! I have a love letter from him.

Later, after Buddy won, I dug it out of that drawer and flaunted it to all of my cousins who were duly impressed. (Always hold on to things like that – you just never know.)

Buddy was handsome – no doubt about it. He looked like Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. And that guitar was hot. He carried it everywhere. Obviously he was headed for bigger things. And he was observant – he certainly recognized that I was a Nashville kinda girl. I could have been.

It was probably those Razorback Red Justin cowboy boots I wore – nearly every day – to classes. After I transferred to Baylor, I traded those in for more appropriate ‘Texas-looking’ boots, bought at The Western Fair in Lott – a quick side trip from Waco. All the Baylor freshmen saved their money to buy boots there – a necessity for the Cotton-Eye Joe which we practiced at the fraternal hall in West. The Western Fair smelled of leather and oil, and Lucchese boots were lined up for blocks and blocks. My new boots were brown – a bit more subdued. I couldn’t very well walk around the Baylor campus in Razorback red – the schools weren’t that chummy. I wish I still had those red Justins.

A couple of years ago, right before Christmas, my friend Becky and I, along with her daughter Christie, planned a girl’s trip to Nashville. This was my first trip to Nashville – very exciting for a girl brought up with Conway Twitty and George Jones. I couldn’t contain myself – all those historical sites – the Grand Ole Opry – wow! – Country Music Hall of Fame – I could cross another item off my bucket list. Becky and Christie, on the other hand, seemed to be a bit more interested in visiting all the Nashville malls. We went to at least 3 malls and purchased NOTHING. Only a week before Christmas, parking was horrendous and Christie was determined to park by the front door – very odd for someone with a dedicated workout practice who eats only paleo….

Unless it’s a bookstore or nursery, I don’t like to shop. Secondly, I live in Dallas, 5 minutes from the power of Northpark Mall, with 1.9 million square feet of gross leasable area. It’s probably one of the top 5 malls in the nation based on sales per square foot. Northpark has everything. It’s an incredible place, and I try my best to avoid it at all costs. Becky and Christie were understandably bored with Jonesboro’s retail options – the city only recently got its first escalator.

Becky’s primary goal on this trip was to spot Keith Urban, preferably without Nicole. Honestly, I thought our chances of spotting Keith lunching at Panera on baked potato soup were slim. But we looked. I’m not sure Becky even ate.

We did shop and sightsee – something for everyone… We even worked in a line dance lesson. The absolute highlight for me was seeing Porter Wagoner’s rhinestone jacket and Bocephus’ boots! Buddy Jewell’s college guitar wasn’t exhibited at the Hall of Fame yet, but maybe in time. I don’t remember if any Keith artifacts were there, but I’m sure Becky knows.

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!