Geez, I got caught again – here goes, 10 things you may not know about me. 1. My older brother and I used to climb high into scuppernong vines and watch traffic go by, counting Fords and Chevys – and daydreaming about our futures. Wayne said he wanted to drive a log truck. I wanted to write stories. Like Eudora Welty, I had learned that stories did not magically occur on paper, but actual people wrote them. I wanted to be one of those people 2. I was about 14 when my first fiction was published -- in the National Beta Club magazine. They paid me the eye-popping sum of $25 for a story about a dog. This writing was not only fun but the road to wealth! 3. I was in either late elementary or early high school when my first letter to the editor was printed -- in the Macon Telegraph. I responded to an irate letter writer who protested the use of the word “ire” in crossword puzzles. As one who was constructing crossword puzzles, I wrote that sometimes a puzzle writer could be forgiven for resorting to an unusual word like “ire” even if it raised the “ire” of some puzzle solvers. 4. I was the best darned 5’2” center guard in half-court high school basketball, guarding the tallest girls on other teams. I could jump and was quick and aggravated them – until whooping cough ended my playing basketball. Then Murphy McRae, editor/publisher of the Lumber City Log – weekly paper, four pages at least – let me be the sports reporter. I got to ride the team school bus for away games and Woody Woodrow let me wear his letter jacket. Sheer bliss. 5. For most of my childhood, my sister Joyce and I shared a bed. She was a “nervous” child and so I put her to sleep by telling her stories. She remembered that after Sputnik, I made up endless tales about what it would be like for a human being to go into space – particularly that I thought that food would be packaged like toothpaste. 6. Sputnik excited my imagination so much that I won first place in the school and then regional literary competition by writing a detailed description – weight, trajectories, where in the sky it might be visible. 7. Shakespeare tugged almost as powerfully on my imagination. Mrs. White, the English teacher, let me check out the volume of his complete works over summer between Junior and Senior years – and I sat in the chinaberry tree and read aloud to the chickens. Pronunciation was likely “interesting” and comprehension limited, but I did like the way those words went together. Even the sonnets. 8. Mrs. White sought to cure my stuttering by loaning a long play record of Winston Churchill speaking. She said play this over and over and learn to speak as he does. I did slow down and it helped, but didn’t completely take away stuttering. Also shaved some of the deep southern drawl off my speech. 9. Mrs. White also organized a debate team and convinced me to be first affirmative. My cousin Don Livingston was also on the team. Topic: “Resolved, that the Russian system of education is preferable to that of the United States.” It was not easy to praise anything Russian in that Cold War time, but I learned that the first affirmative gets to set the parameters of the debate – and Sputnik & science/math was where I pitched the debate. Our team won in district. Mrs. White gave me a hand-me-down suit from her daughter, pink seersucker. Loved that outfit. 10. Not finishing college nagged at me until at age of 52, I commuted 2 ½ hours each way to Institute, West Virginia every Thursday and every other Saturday for a year to finally be awarded the Regent’s Bachelor of Arts degree. I was so tired driving home at midnight that several times, I was in danger of not making it. Once in particular I was within two miles of home when I jerked back in time to not veer off into the Greenbrier East High School band practice field. School was so invigorating that I enrolled in the Marshall University masters in history, took 12 hours with all grades of A and then was told I had to take the Graduate Record Exam before taking more courses. My score on the practice GRE was so pathetic that I did not take the exam and so did not complete the masters.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 00:24:46 +0000
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