Home > Pulpwood Queen Blog > Archives > 2006 > December > 01
Friday, December 1, 2006
Voice from the Bushes
My Hair Salon/Book Store is smack dab in the middle of our main street, Austin, located in an historic home that was built at the turn on the century. Surrounded by what was once a white painted fence, now to my dismay, looks more shabby chic. I am thinking of having a Tom Sawyer fence-painting day but more on that later date. My shop’s front porch has these amazing bushes. While they may look ordinary, they are in actuality, absolutely magical!
Like a child, my sense of wonder made me clap my hands, as I stood on the front porch admiring the work of Gretchen, (who works for my fellow bookseller, Fred McKenzie of Books on the Bayou that has his shop on one side of the house) and Nelson, (my fellow co-worker and salon professional extraordinaire) decorating skills for the holiday season. Greenery was festooned around the porch with twinkly lights. Big red bows accented the holiday decorations. A blow up Snowman family stood bravely in the yard weathering the wind and dropping temperatures. There is nothing quite as beautiful to me as the Christmas season and all the trimmings!
As I basked in the glow of their pink cheeks and smiling faces, my random mind quickly retorted, “Did anyone see Boston Legal last night on television?”
Gretchen and Nelson looked at me when all of a sudden I heard, from what I thought was the bushes, “Oh my gosh, could you believe that show?”
We all began looking to see where the voice was coming from when Mary Hileman’s head popped up from behind the bushes next door. Mary was decorating for the Jesse Allen Wise Garden Club, the Jay Gould Railroad Car, which is parked and rests next to my shop and of which the garden club gives daily tours.
“Good grief, Mary, I thought it was the bushes talking,” I laughed as I then saw Sharon Thibedeau also appear in our view with a red bow in hand. The first two weeks in December, the Jefferson Historical Foundation hosts private home tours all decorated in old-fashioned greenery and candlelight, thus Jefferson’s Candlelight Tour of Homes. For a good ten minutes, we remarked on the weird turn of events on the show “Boston Legal” with its Denny (actor, William Shatner of Star Trek fame) thinking he was dating his own dwarf daughter and then the strange little man who kidnapped actor, Candace Bergen on the show. You have to see that show to believe it, kind of like Jefferson.
Our whole town gets into the holiday spirit with Christmas lights, greenery decorating the houses and businesses on our brick-lined streets. There are romantic carriage rides, a Christmas Train ride along the bayou, and boat rides on the bayou. Seriously, I came to Jefferson for Christmas nearly twenty years ago and thought I had landed on the back lot of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Move over Jimmy Stewart, here I come! Within two weeks, I packed my books yet again to move from sunny San Diego to “Mayberry on the Bayou.” I realize now I am more like Floyd the barber on the Andy Griffith Show than Jimmy Stewart. I leave all that banking stuff to my best friend Pam McGregor who is Vice President of my bank around the corner and down the street.
Through the week, I kept thinking of Mary popping up out of the bushes next door to my shop. Now you are going to laugh, but it reminded me of the “burning bush” in the Bible. Scary how my mind works. Well, maybe not the real Bible version but at least the Charles Heston as Moses version in the movie. Funny, but in my own distorted way biblical scenarios flash through my mind especially and on a regular basis, “What would Jesus do?” Okay, I have lost my reader on my mind process so I will just move on. Hard to explain so, nevermind.
I thought about Mary because her popping up reminded me of just how great it is to live in a small town. Jefferson is a place that makes me believe. Believe in the kindnesses of strangers who grace my doors and also in it’s residents. A place where everybody knows your name, kind of like that bar on “Cheers” the television show. Sorry, you just have to kind of follow me here. Blindly, I might add. It is okay because I do know where I am going.
Now when I first moved here, having everyone know my business, irritated the hell out of me. Every time I stepped out of my then historic home on Soda Street, my neighbor Tommy would step out for a smoke. Sometimes I would just step out on the porch just to see if he would appear. He did every time. My version of kind of a grownup peek-a-boo. Yep, there was Tommy. After awhile, it became reassuring to know that someone cared enough to see what I was up to. Kind of like a child that finds mommy is hiding behind her hands, “Peekaboo!” Mommy is there, woo.
Then one day I stepped outside to check the mail and Tommy did not appear. I stood around forever, checking my flower box, sweeping the porch, and thinking where’s Tommy? Then he would appear and I’d smile and go back inside. I began to look forward to talking to Tommy. In fact, many a time, I would walk across the street and we’d chat. I found out he use to live in San Diego when he was in the armed forces. Tommy always cracked me up because I knew that every time the hearse would pull into the alley just down the block, Tommy would call the funeral home and go, “Who died?” Tommy always knew all the news on Jefferson, especially who died. He was a living newspaper. You wanted the towns news, all you had to do was just go visit Tommy.
I got a call one day from my sister asking me, “Kathy, is there something you want to tell me?”
“No, Karen, nothing new here.”
“Were you at the emergency room last night?.”
“What! Good grief Karen, no way, where in the world did you get that idea?”
“Well, Edith Ann (name changed to keep me from getting sued) called me and she said she saw Gayles’ van in your drive so she figured that she was covering your bed & breakfast for you as you must have been hospitalized. Tell me the truth, did you have a miscarriage?”
Now the van in my drive was not my friend Gayle’s but a guest at the time as then I ran a bed & breakfast. I have laughed my head off ever since about this story as I am serious. I am not making this up. Edith Ann was convinced I had been in the hospital, therefore it must be because of a miscarriage. You have got to love the town gossip, as she certainly kept us all highly entertained.
Small town life is ready material for anyone who ever dreams of being a writer. I never have a lack of material for writing this blog for all I have to do is look out the window. Something is happening. Whether it’s somebody’s head popping up from the bushes or where the front page photo feature in the local paper is a mother possum with her babies found in the bushes of The Excelsior Hotel across the street from my shop. Or where my fellow bookseller Fred, thinking someone has finally stole his bicycle only to be found parked in front of The Hamburger Store by the bushes where he left it parked from riding it over to lunch. He had walked back to our shops and just forgot.
I live in a town that holds an annual Bigfoot Convention and people come from all over the country to attend this thing. My friend and photographer, Mike Weber, rents canoes and even has a Bigfoot Special. If you spy Bigfoot as you paddle down our Little Cypress Bayou and document by film or camera this sighting, the canoe rental is FREE!
You’ve got to love a town that has a community wide church choir and Thanksgiving service held this year in the junior high auditorium. Now that’s the Catholic Church, Episcopal, Baptist, Adventist, Methodist, and our outlying country churches. We all do things different at our churches. I know as I sang in that choir and was reminded of that church choir from the old movie starring Don Knotts though I admit. I was not as nervous as he was but I was certainly on my toes. Everything happened fast and though I was use to maybe not slow, I felt like a 33 record suddenly changed to a 45 speed on the record player. Yes, I became a singing Chipmunk. The choir was glorious! I found out I can do Chipmunk, who knew!
I live in a town that has more parades, festivals, celebrations than you can shake a stick at. We may be small but we do make our own fun. We don’t sit around and watch the grass grow here. The sidewalks may roll up at five on weekdays but on weekends, they are more likely to “rock and roll”!
Not wanting to miss out on the eccentric turn our town has taking with it’s Bigfoot Convention, weekend Ghost Walks, and Paranormal Convention. On St. Patrick’s Day, mysterious lawn gnomes began appearing in the front yard of my shop coming out of the bushes. You know those little yard ornaments with green vests and pointed red hats! Cameras flashed left and right capturing the lawn gnomes. They again mysteriously disappeared after St. Patricks Day. I have heard they live in a hollowed out dwelling beneath my box elder bushes. You can never say booksellers don’t have a good sense of humor and with me being a Patrick and Fred being a McKenzie, we do have a bit of the Irish in us coming out!
Though Scot/Irish, I do tend to push my luck now and then. I also did an “Erin Go Braless” tree in my front yard. Yes, I got my Pulpwood Queen “Splinters” to throw leopard bras up into the Sugar Maple out front with green Mardi Gras Beads as an awareness for Breast Cancer. I annually participate with The Pulpwood Queens in our “Relay for Life” with the American Cancer Society. For the third year running, we hold the title for Most Spirited Team and this year finally won the coveted “Most Money Raised” with $6,000 going to that incredibly worthwhile organization. I thought the tree clever, out of the box, insightful. Really, a fun way to make people aware that one out of every four women get breast cancer. Unfortunately, there were those in the community that thought, “NOT!”. At eleven p.m. that night I was fishing the bras out of the tree with a rake handle. Better stick with mysterious lawn gnomes, underwear in trees in Jefferson, Texas. That is a major no-no.
Our town has quite a lot of characters but here in the south we embrace our eccentricities. As author, River Jordan, who is coming this weekend from Nashville to our annual Pulpwood Queen Christmas Party, once said, “Up north, they hide away the crazy family members in the attic but here in the south we proudly prop them up on our front porches for all to see.” I have the feeling I am one of those propped up crazy people. If you come to Jefferson, I will be waving madly from my porch. If you stop, I will probably talk your fool head off too. I guess it’s because in my hometown in Kansas leading society never seemed to catch my interest. But the young woman who would come into Mariani’s Rexall Drug Store wearing only her slip to sit down at the spinning bar stool and order a glass of blood, now that was something. The drugstore clerk would calmly say, “Just a moment,” and then call her family to come and get her. I would watch the whole scenario sitting on the ledge in the front window peering out from behind a comic book that was for sale from the display there at that corner in the store. Or I loved to walk from my grandparents store, Maloney’s Shoe and Saddle Shop, to the corner and sit at the bench that was the bus stop in front of the Greenwood Hotel. All the old men of the town congregated there as they had a tobacco shop inside and a liquor store in the front on Main Street. One old man would invariably come by and pick up all the cigarette butts on the ground to smoke later. There were tons of cigarette butts. It was fascinating.
I never know what may happen in Jefferson. Denzel Washington might be on Austin Street scouting for location for his new movie. Shoot even my mail is different in Jefferson than anywhere else I have lived. My first Christmas card this year was from the cowboy singing group, “Riders in the Sky”. My second was from the guys who pick up my trash. Jimmy Dean, the sausage king has played cards down at Auntie Skinners Riverboat Club and I noticed a signed photo of Jessica Simpson made out to the owner of The Bakery, Jeff Fratangelo across the street from my shop. And who knows, you may never know who might pop up out of the bushes!
Looking for entertainment? You never know it might be in your own backyard! One thing I guarantee, you’ll never look at bushes in the same way again.
Tiara wearing and Book sharing, Kathy L. Patrick www.beautyandthebook.com , the official website of the Pulpwood Queens www.marshallnewsmessenger.com , the official Pulpwood Queen Blog site www.southernliving.com , the official “What the Pulpwood Queens are Reading” website www.pulpwoodqueens@yahoogroups.com, the official chat site of The Pulpwood Queens
P.S. Author, River Jordan of “The Messenger of Magnolia Street will be our special guest speaker at the following Pulpwood Queen Christmas Parties. We invite all to attend our holiday celebration, so come join us on our mission to promote literacy.
December 3, 2006, Sunday night, 6:30 p.m. The Pulpwood Queen Christmas Party at Bull Durham’s on Austin Street in Jefferson, Texas. Tickets are $20.00; include dinner, and book talk by River Jordan. Call for tickets at 903-665-7520 or email me at Kathy@beautyandthebook.com Bring a favorite gift-wrapped book if you want to join our annual holiday book exchange.
December 4, 2006, Monday night, 6:30 p.m. at All Saints Episcopal located at 9051 Youree Drive in Shreveport, Louisiana hosted by The Pulpwood Queens of North Louisiana and again featuring author, River Jordan as their special speaker. Free of charge, just email Head Queen Lynn Laird at entrenous@peoplepc.com or call 318-458-1666 to r.s.v.p.
Check out her website at www.riverjordanink.com
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