Random December memories…

Longtime special friends Martha and Dick Andersen, who know well my affinity for all things Scottish, sent me a Scottish Santa tree ornament this week. To my delight, it is by folk artist Jim Shore. More than a few years ago Shore’s Christmas figures—Santa, angels, snowmen—were the rage in Texas, or maybe I just thought that because I had a friend who carried his work in her gift shop. My great splurge one year was to buy a Saint Nicholas figure. A year or two later I looked for a tree ornament for a friend who collects angels but could not find a single Jim Shore angel ornament. I assumed his popularity had peaked and waned, so I was surprised to get this wonderful figure.

A web search showed me how wrong I was. Shore has gone from a regional artist with a few subjects to a one-man industry, with a craft studio, a superstore, an affiliation with Amazon, and contracts with Disney, Peanuts, Coca Cola and other name brands. His Heartwood Creek brand is now internationally known. But he still relies on themes and patterns from folk art—quilting, rosemaling (stylized painting on wood, a Scandinavian artform), and tole painting.

It’s a Jim Shore Christmas at my cottage. Want to see more of his work? Here’s a link: https://jimshore.com/pages/shop-by-type

I had a second nostalgia trip this morning when a friend confessed to one of those incongruities that can creep into fiction—she had mentioned the Golden Gate Bridge (I think that was the bridge) in a story set several years before the bridge was built. That triggered a memory of the Dorothy Johnson short story, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,”—I have a vague memory that Johnson had a Congressman witness an Old West gunfight and then head for the airport. It was corrected before publication, but the memory is rattling around in my head.  One mention led to another, and it turned out another friend is a huge fan of the film version of that story  but knew nothing about Johnson’s other work. Now she’s reading one of the short story collections.

Dorothy died in 1984, and her work, once widely heralded and filmed, is now pretty much unknown. Her most famous short stories, in addition to Liberty Valance, are “The Hanging Tree,” “A Man Called Horse,” and “Lost Sister,” her take on the sad story of Cynthia Ann Parker’s return from Indian captivity to white society. Western author Jack Schaefer wrote a classic introduction to her stories, describing the “singing sentence” at the end which causes readers to gasp with surprise and delight.

I was privileged to know Dorothy. Met her at Western Writers of America meetings and developed a correspondence with her. After her death, I gave my thick Dorothy Johnson file to Sue Hart of the University of Montana, who did a documentary on Dorothy’s work. My folder included not only letters but research notes for two introductions to short story volumes and the text of a monograph.

So this morning, Dorothy came galloping back into my memory, half falling off her horse as she did on her letterhead photo. A pleasant trip into the past. I wish I’d written that book about her. The memories are fuzzy now, the people who knew her well all gone.

Christmas is a time for making new memories and treasuring the old. Tomorrow night my entire family will be gathered under one roof. Lots of memories to be made. I am like a kid waiting for Santa, fidgety with anticipation.