Thomas Tate - grace grits and gardening

Just a Girl

June 4, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

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

Remembering Large Marge (shudder)

June 2, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

July is National Hitchhiker’s Month. When was the last time you saw a hitchhiker? Like pay phones, they are no longer commonplace. As kids, we always saw hitchhikers as we drove to Memphis looking for Elvis. We pointed them out like VW Beetles. Although we are not yet zipping around in personal bubble-lidded aerocars like the uber-cool Jetsons, travel is more accessible today, even for the man with no wheels. Have hitchhikers somehow become charmingly vintage? Is it really necessary to draw attention to thumbing rides by dedicating an entire month? A broiling hot month?

I would never ever pick up a hitchhiker, especially after Pee Wee Herman hitched a ride to San Antonio with Large Marge. As frightening as Pee Wee was, the thought of Large Marge still makes me shudder. “On this very night, ten years ago, along this very stretch of road in a dense fog just like this…” I imagine she is behind the wheel of every eighteen wheeler I pass on the highway, especially in dense fog.

Driving through Oklahoma a few days ago I saw 4 separate hitchhikers (!) which was a bit unnerving considering the Department of Corrections is located in McAlester. The ominous sign on the highway warns, “Hitchhikers May be Escaped Prisoners.” This begs the question – just how often do these prisoners break out of this huge correctional fortress surrounded by tons of reinforced loopy nasty barbed wire? It obviously happens on occasion to warrant such a roadside warning. Government signs are only made after the fact, after a loss, after a lawsuit, after an escape. A reaction. I don’t stop to go to the bathroom around there. Oklahoma doesn’t seem OK to me.

I bet no one celebrates National Hitchhiker’s Month in Oklahoma.

Daddy always reminded us we would be murdered if we stopped at a rest area driving from Baylor to Osceola. This was his regular advice offered each spring break and Christmas holiday season. Never did he say, “don’t speed” or “study hard” or “buy low sell high, but always “don’t get murdered at a rest stop”. I considered his rest stop advice to be ridiculous until I learned of Large Marge. There are lots of big trucks at those places with motors eerily idling.

Tomorrow I will be starting my big adventure driving from Dallas to Piggott – 10 hours – alone. I plan to leave super early, listen to a book on tape, avoid hitchhikers and murderers, and only use the bathroom at well lit McDonalds. I hope there is no fog.

talya

Musical Pairings:

The Champs, “Tequila”

in His Heaven

May 19, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

Nana
Frances Johnson Creecy

I believe places have energy left behind from memories of a prior time. Good energy or weird energy, happy or toxic. When we make our annual trip back to Norfork Lake, we always visit the little cove where our dock is still hidden. We troll the holy water there, inspecting the gravel road leading down to the lake, studying the rocks we explored as kids and trying to make out our cabin through the overgrown vegetation. Regrettably, Papa Creecy sold the house and dock when Nana was sick in the early ’80s which made us sick too. The dock is still there, possibly abandoned, and although we don’t own it any more, it will always be ours.

It’s now barely afloat in our once perfectly secluded cove back before Buzzard’s Roost became so developed, when there were no loud jet skis to disturb the peacefulness. That dock was our home base each magical summer. We loaded up the boat in the mornings with John Deere coolers full of ice and cokes and hot dog fixins’, set out to Jordan Island in search of sand and sun and returned to end the day back on the dock sunburned and waterlogged. Sometimes we read books or napped there lulled by the rocking of the lake, and at night we looked for shooting stars, lying flat on our back on still damp beach towels. The stars are more brilliant over the dock.

Me and Staci on the dock.

As kids we explored every inch of that dock including underneath. We spent hours swimming between the floating barrels that supported it and fishing between each boat stall. Nana once fell asleep on a cheap orange plastic raft and floated away so far from the dock we had to pick her up in the boat. I can still hear her laughing. We shot bottle rockets and Roman candles on the 4th of July, listening to country music on our portable 8-track tape player. Our laughter and music echoed from one end of the cove to the other. It probably still does.

One summer we found a flat wooden board in the storage closet on the dock. A gift from the lake gods? It was simply a rough piece of plywood painted white with a faded red stripe and a scratchy rope that served as a makeshift handle. Splintery, hard, homemade, unsafe and fun as heck. We had no idea how it came to be in our storage closet, but we claimed it. Daddy pulled us on that board behind the boat driving way too fast, especially after a few Schlitz. We screamed, “faster, faster” holding on to dear life and our bathing suit bottoms. Clearly, Daddy’s goal was to drown us. It may have been his favorite thing about the lake. As we skidded over the wake almost passing the boat, the water skinned our legs like carpet burn as we eventually shot off head over heels into the lake. If we were lucky, we were still wearing our bikinis when we surfaced with sinuses full of lake water. Later we bought a real boogie board made of molded, curved plastic meant for riding the waves. It was boring.