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Well, last fall,
after three long years, I finished my book, Spreading Wing. I put it on Amazon,
but Amazon seemed sorta hit or miss. One day right off, my friends and
relatives, I guess, bought seven books, and I looked to see where I stood in
the top one hundred. I was sitting right on number sixty nine thousandth. The
next day I looked, nobody bought a book, and I was right around two hundred
thousandth. After another day of bad sales, I had dropped to around four
hundred thousandth.. I've been afraid to look at those stats after that. I
decided I had to step in, Amazon needed some help. This was no way to sell a
book. Nobody seemed to know me, or Spreading Wing at Amazon, once we got past
friends and relatives and readers of my blog, Forever a Hillbilly.
.
I mentioned to a
friend in Fourche Valley the other day that some of my blog readers had heard
so much from me about Wing and Fourche Valley, they just had to come see it.
She said, “Tell them if they want to come, and don't have a place to stay, I've
got a big house. Your friends can stay with us!” Wow. I thought that mindset
played out along in the 1800's.
I have always
wanted to have my book launching at Wing, in that old church of my childhood. I
knew that was a big risk, since I had been gone from Wing fifty years. I wasn't
sure very many would remember me. We cooked up six packages of salt pork and a
ton of biscuits, since that was a staple at our house in the 1940's when I was
a child. I knew I was running the risk of having to eat salt pork and biscuit
sandwiches for the next few months if nobody showed up, and I had way more than
my share of that fifty years ago.
I went to the Yell
County Record at Danville, expecting to spend an arm and a leg on advertising.
Since my mother was the Wing correspondent
for the Record in the 1950's,
telling who all went to town and who visited who, I hoped for a discount. Well,
David Fisher, the next generation of Fishers at the Record (his dad ran the
Record when I was at Wing) said he would do two or three feature articles on my
launching. For free. What!? “For free” has not existed in my world for fifty
years. That seems to correspond with how long I've been gone from Yell County.
Well, to make a
long story short, (too late) those valley and mountain people of Yell County
just seem to always support their own, even those fifty years removed, and when
launching day arrived, they just kept coming. Sometimes, I had a stack of books
half a dozen high waiting to be signed, and still they came. I've always
dreamed about how great it would be, with a line of people coming to me to get
my signature! But I didn't have time to fully enjoy it. Even so, it was one of
my best days ever. I didn't even get a bite of that mountain of salt pork and
biscuits. We sold seventy books that day. Equally as important, they ate up
every last scrap of that salt pork. Even more importantly, I had a chance to
renew a lot of very old, wonderful
relationships. Edith Turner was there. She was ninety, but not anywhere
near the oldest person in Wing. My children, Corey and Kinley, found out she
was a friend of my mothers. My mother passed away when they were at or near
infancy, and they are now at or near forty years old. They just could not seem
to let her go, just hung with her every word, until long after the big event
was over. She told them story after story of my mother. Kinley said, “Holding
her hand was like finally getting to hold the hand of my grandmother.” Corey
and three others, at great risk to life and limb, climbed up to the old classroom
above. The stairs were long gone. I started up the ladder, but at the top was a
three foot wall, to keep people from climbing up, I guess. Well, I'm sixty
eight years old, so I headed back down. But Cindy Turner Buford, whom I knew
was at least eight years older than me, (maybe more, but who's counting) just
upper middle aged by Wing standards, climbed the ladder, then scrambled up and over that wall. When they
were all about to come down, Corey came first, and I saw him standing under
that ladder, panic in his eyes, already holding his arms out as if to catch
someone. He told me, “There's a lady in her seventies about to come over that
wall!” I didn't worry too much about that. Those normal age limitations don't
always apply to Wing people. I grew up with Cindy, just a tall ridge over. We
often communicated with a loud holler, that went something like this: “Whoooo,
Whoooo, Whoooo weeee ouhooooo! Of course, that was back at a time when I could
still holler that loud. I well knew Cindy could have climbed that tallest
mountain behind Wing again, if she set her mind to it. That hill up to her
house was about as steep as any mountain around.
Anyway, in the
old classroom, they found the name of my aunt, Leta Lazenby, who left Wing
forever in 1930, still just like it had been written yesterday, on that chalk
board. It was just like it was when I saw it in 1950. That chalkboard was made,
it appears, by painting or spraying something on those very wide, virgin pine
boards. It also had a lot of newer names. Seems climbing up there has become a
“rite of passage” for Wing children.
Nephew Ken Gillum said, “It was just like stepping back in time.” The
old classroom had not been used in at least eighty years, maybe much longer.
Nobody living knows for sure.
Effie Turner, an
icon of Wing, ran the store next door all during my child hood. She died in
1979, at one hundred years of age. During her lifetime she rode to Wing in an
oxcart, and saw men walking on the moon. Her son, JR, passed away last year at
one hundred two. Elois Hunnicutt, just across the road and down the lane,
ninety four, still grows a large garden. But she fell, out in that garden last
year, and broke some bones. She managed to crawl to her back door, but could
not get in. She had to lay out most of a day and a night. Remember, cell phones
don't work well in Wing. But she's back now, as lively as ever. I know I'd have
a hard time keeping up with her now, doing the kind of day's work she does.
My sister Jonnie
taught Sunday school classes in Fourche Valley for many years. Once I visited
her class. The best I remember, her youngest class member was in his ninety's.
Scientists should
do a study of folks in the Valley. Try to figure out how they live so long and
so well, here in a remote place far from a major hospital. But actually, I
already know. People in Little Rock would be shocked to realize how quiet,
peaceful, and wonderful life can be, only sixty miles away from the hustle,
bustle, rush, and tension of life in a major city, with next door neighbors
often a mile away. My Dad always said good fences make good neighbors. A little
distance can do the same thing.
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