Alabana moves to East Texas--great folk tales

Want to hear a seemingly authentic East Texas voice spinning tales of World War II times and little towns and gossip and local characters? And talking about such radio programs as Fibber McGee and such things as blackouts--you have to be of a certain age to remember these things, but they were all nostalgic to me. To hear about them just listen to Jim Lee read from his new collection of short stories, A Texas Jubilee (TCU Press). Now Jim will be the first to tell you that many of these stories are based on incidents he remembers from his home town of Leeds, Alabama, and many of the characters come from there. But being, as he now is, the grandfather of Texas folk tales and folklore (and a Fellow of the Texas Folklore Society), he moved  them to his adopted state where he's lived longer than I care to tell you. At first, he set these tales in Bonham but then he decided he didn't know enough about Bonham, so he moved them to the fictional town of Bodark Springs and the characters and stories began to emerge almost on their own, with Jim as a conduit. He'll tell you he's not a writer but he is--he's a master of the short story. He'll also tell you the stories have much in common with Alabama, because East Texas is the South, and anywhere east of I-35 is the South; west of that highway is the West.
Delightful evening tonight. The Bookish Frogs (another name for friends of TCU Press) met at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens for a pot-luck supper and evening with Jim Lee. An impromptu happy hour developed at my house first, with Melinda, production manager at the press, and Carol Roark who said she was going and did I want a ride, and then Christian who came along to get Jacob and stayed an hour, and finally Elizabeth who wandered in after making movies with Jacob. We had a happy time, nibbling on this wonderful rosemary/olive oil asiago cheese I get at Central Market, so wonderful Carol and I were almost late to the party.
Dinner was good--it's amazing the things people bring to pot-luck suppers. One good friend always brings a bok choy salad because it's such a hit. There was potato salad and--be still my heart!--spanakopita (so delicious), tuna salad, fried chicken and ribs, and so much more. I made a layered salad--one of those retro things where you layer the salad, spread mayo and sour cream on the top and let it sit all night. Green peas are an essential ingredient--except I forgot and found them on the counter after I'd' finished off the salad and no way to add them then. They'll be good on leftover salad tomorrow.
I saw people I hadn't seen in a while and was glad to see, missed some familiar faces, but all in all it was a lovely evening. And Jim was the star, as he always is whenever he speaks. If anyone ever had a natural talent for humor, it's Jim Lee. So, cheers for him and his new book. May he sell many, many copies.

OLd friends are gold

Make new friends, but keep the old

These are silver, but those are gold.

An old friend, Jim Lee (sometimes known as James Ward Lee) took me and Melinda to lunch today for my birthday--a delightful occasion with talk of politics, publishing, and trivia. I've known Jim at least since the early 1980s and maybe before. I remember going to a conference on Texas Literature--he, Tom Pilkingotn, and Don Graham co-edited a collection of essays on Texas literature which was the basis of the conference. I knew Jim Lee by reputation and perhaps by then I had already contributed to his biblioigraphy of Southwestern Literature.

But over the years our professional relationship grew. He was chair of the English department at the University of North Texas, and he used to call me periodically to announce that he'd had a "million-dollar idea"--that usually meant work for me. Some turned out to be two-cent ideas but a few were really good. When he came to Fort Worth, we occasionally had lunch and slowly our professional relaitonship became a personal friendship.

About 12-15 years ago (he'll correct me on this) he moved to Fort Worth. One day he was in my office and eyed the stack of manuscript submissions. "I could help you with that," he said. So he became the acquisitions editor for TCU Press, with a letter of appointment from the provost that clearly stated "with no compensation." We loved having Jim in the office--he was funny, witty, always up. But he drove us wild with his haphazard notebook in which he kept a record of submissions and what he'd done about them. There finally came the day that he announced that it was no longer fun, and he  quit, leaving the acquisitions--and that notebook--to me.

By the time he moved to Fort Worth, Jim was a single man, but he had a harem of women trailing after him. Once the man who was then editor of the press asked, "What is this? The Jim Lee harem?" I told him  yes, and I was proud to be part of it. But Jim soon began to keep company with a woman he met at a party at my house. Several people who knew us both thought we should have paired up, so once at lunch--we went to lunch often in those days--I asked him when he was casting his eye about he didn't look at me. He was purely astonished. "I like you better than most people I know. Why would I want to ruin that?" It was probably one of the nicest compliments I ever got.

Jim and I have collaborated on books--Literary Fort Worth and Elmer Kelton: Memories and Essays most recently--and TCU Press published his collection of essays, Adventures with a Texas Humanist (with a clear nod to Walter Prescott Webb's classic Adventures of a Texas Naturalist). We work well together, though we have also been known to quarrel to the point that one colleague once said, "For God's sake, it's like a bad marriage." I guess that's why Jim and I are good friends.
TCU Press will publish a collection of his short stories in 2013, but he warns that he could be dead by then. Melinda and I told him he couldn't die because he'd have to promote the book. When I said he needed to go on Facebook to promote, he said, "I'd have to commit suicide if I did that." Jim is nothing if not cantakerous--but loveably so.

I don't see much of Jim these days, and I miss him. So lunch today was a fine treat and a fine birthday present. Yep, old friends are gold, and we must keep them.

Life gets in the way

My youngest grandson, Kegan David Alter, when he opened

the package of Star Wars figures I sent for his birthday. That is life at its best.

I did not work on the great American novel at all today--or yesterday. My excuse is that life gets in the way. Too many things to do. Today it was errands, menu planning for a friend's b'day dinner this weekend (a challenge since she and her husband are gluten- and dairy-free) and for Easter, when I think there will be nine of us. Menu planning is one of the joys of my life--it's like cooking in anticipation, and I relish it. I won't detail here but will report if some of my experimental recipes turn out well--liked naked (no tortilla) chicken tacos with tomatillo sauce, or vinegar-based coleslaw. I went by the office, then to CVS to buy plastic eggs and jelly beans (and ended up spending $45--how does one do that for plastic eggs and jelly beans?). Then off to buy a pair of canvas shoes to wear around the house--threw the old ones away with great ceremony. They were down to their last threads, the soles worn through in places, and they smelled bad. Also bought myself a pair of Easy Spirit walking shoes.
Tonight Easter has claimed my attention--spent a good while filling 36 large plastic eggs with jelly beans to drop off at the church for Saturday's egg hunt. Christian and I will be taking Jacob, along with a picnic lunch. Then I got small--really small--Easter packages ready for the out-of-town grandchildren, a b'day present for Lisa, and cards for various other people. I think that all was the $45 but I now have a lifetime supply of unwrinkled tissue paper. I don't know about you, but I save it and when I pull it out of the bag to use in a gift, it's so wrinkled I'm embarrassed. Got lovely pastel shades today.
Last night's program on Elmer Kelton for the Burleson Mayor's Club was a success but with a glitch. I reviewed Elmer's life and accomplishments for the audience of about 50, stressing the way being the son and grandson of working cowboys and then an agricultural journalist had shaped his approach to the people of West Texas and the land. Jim Lee took over to lead a discussion of The Time It Never Rained--only nobody discussed and the poor man worked really hard for 30 minutes. I maintain it was because the facility--the Burleson campus of Hill and Texas Wesleyan colleges--is in a former church building, and the lecture hall was the sanctuary. There we were with soaring beamed ceilings, beautiful stained glass, church pews--who discusses in church?
I'm hoping for a better outcome tomorrow when I talk to three junior high groups at a Burleson school about my novel, Sam Houston is My Hero. But I know from my oldest granddaughter, kids her age aren't into history--they're reading The Hunger Games and Stephanie Meyer (two of the books most often challenged on censoring lists). As Maddie's mom once told me, if I could make Texas history into a vampire story with paranormal elements and love gone awry, she'd be all over it. I keep telling myself I'll pretend I'm talking to Maddie. I emailed her for advice--shoot, I even need wardrobe advice so they won't think I'm an old lady (which I am)--but she hasn't come up with anything. Tomorrow will be a long day but, I hope, a pleasant one.
And then maybe I'll get back to writing--but wait, there's the Easter egg hunt Saturday and Saturday night's dinner to cook . . . .

Elmer Kelton

Raise  your hand if you've read a book by Elmer Kelton. Raise both hands if you've read The Time It Never Rained. That novel was the choice this year for the Mayor's Book Club in Burleson, a city adjoining Fort Worth, and Jim Lee and I presented a program tonight. Elmer, who died in 2009, was a Texas treasure, a man who wrote novels about the American West that weren't westerns. And The Time It Never Rained has been called one of the dozen or so best novels written by an American in the twentieth century.
Elmer was ranch born and raised but he was a bookish child with poor eyesight, and he never made a hand. HIs younger brothers could rope much better. His idea of watching the herd was to keep one eye on the cattle and the other on the book he'd propped up in his saddle. As he neared high school graduation, he told his father he wanted to study journalism, and in his words his father gave him a look "that could have killed Johnson grass" and said, "That's the trouble with you kids. You don't want to work for a living." Elmer studied at UT, his education interrupted by WWII, from which he brought home an Austrian bride and her son. He began publishing in Ranch Romances, a popular magazine, and then writing pulp, formulaic novels for Ballentine Books. In the 1970s he broke out of the stereotype with The Day the Cowboys Quit, a novel about the cowboy strike at Tascosa in the 1880s. As in all of Elmer's books, the research behind the story was thorough and impeccable. Other major novels during the 1970s included Stand Proud, The Man Who Rode Midnight, The Wolf and the Buffalo, The Good Old Boys, and, of course, The Time It Never Rained, all published by Doubleday.
For forty years, while writing novels, Elmer worked as an agricultural journalist, most of those years as editor of Livestock Weekly, the weekly bible for West Texas ranchers. He traveled to auctions and sat in coffee shops and absorbed the people and the land. It was his country, and he spoke their language. He said once he wrote Time because it became harder and harder to write a story about the drought. There were only so many ways he could say, "It isn't raining." He wrote the novel but New York publishers rejected as a quiet agrarian novel; in the early 1970s, he rewrote it completely and it was published.
Elmer liked to put characters in a time of change and see how they react. In Time, Charlie Flagg, a rancher getting on in years, sees change all around him. The seven-year-drought of the 1950s causes him to sell his cattle and raise sheep; then sell his sheep and raise goats. He loses his leased land and has to take a mortgage on what he owned free and clear. Others are taking government aid, but Charlie refuses. He had always been the patron, but relationships between Anglos and Mexicans are changing. His son leaves the ranch for the rodeo circuit, marries a floozy from Dallas. The fire has gone out of Charlie's own marriage. And yet he clings to what he knows is right; he plods ahead day by dogged day. This is a story of West Texas and the kind of people who survived in that dry, unforgiving, and unpredictable land, the land that Elmer knew so well. No spoilers here except to say that Elmer didn't believe in tying things up in neat little packages. That's not, he explained to me once, how life happens.
If you haven't read Time, maybe you saw the Tommy Lee Jones movie of The Good Old Boys. That book too is a good place to start dipping into Elmer's sixty-plus novels. TCU Press has reprint editions of many of the major ones (1.800.826.8911 or http://www.prs.tcu.edu/).
Elmer Kelton died in August 2009. I miss him still. There's not a book festival, historical meeting, or literary gathering where I don't still expect to see him. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around a world without Elmer. In tribute to that feeling, Jim Lee and I edited Elmer Kelton: Essays and Memories, now available from TCU Press. Elmer was one fine writer and one great and humble man.