RichEisbrouch
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When Uncle Georg came for Aunt Evie’s funeral, he brought my brother Walter with him. Walter was almost twenty, and he’d known Aunt Evie since he was six. But that wasn’t the reason he came. He wanted to move to Bodark Creek. He didn’t tell Daddy at first. He waited until after the funeral, when Uncle Georg was ready to leave. Then he asked. “You don’t give me a lot of time,” Daddy said. Walter grinned. “I hoped you wouldn’t need a lot.”
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And this was a hundred years ago, the early 1920s, so both cancer treatment and the way children were sheltered rather than included was very different from what we hope happens now.
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Aunt Evie didn’t have hookworm or the flu or anything Mama would have worried about us catching. She had cancer, which even Dr. Waechler couldn’t cure. Aunt Evie saw him when she first moved in with us, and towards the end, he was at our house every day. “What’s cancer?” I asked Rosalind, because Mama and Daddy wouldn’t talk about it. They didn’t even want it whispered. “Where did you hear that word?” Mama asked, the first time I used it. “I h
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Yep, some of them are clearly typos. But that somehow doesn't make them less funny -- especially cumulatively. As I've written somewhere before, I keep thinking, "I'm not gonna laugh this time. I'm not gonna laugh." But they gang up on you.
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Mindglaning of different species can cause disorder. Most of the time it is, except when it isn't. Eliminating the trots from the perks. A bugger pest problem. A higher archy Ishagh Newton. Rife with logical fallacise. It is uncomprehend. Take a furt. Humblity. It is still spritine. The possible dimish. This argument is blostered. Sometimes the information is spart. They are the hope of the whore country. It doesn't sidus
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Thanks. It's sometimes tricky to do that and still remember there's an adult telling this story who once was that child.
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Aunt Evie came to live with us when I was six. She was Mama’s sister, and I always thought she was older. But she was thirty-seven, and Mama was already forty-two. “Is she going to work at the mill?” I asked. Everyone I knew worked at the mill. Of course, all the houses in our part of town were owned by the cotton company. “Evie’s going to help me out,” Mama said, though I didn’t see why she needed that. Rosalind and I already helped, and if Charley was still too small, that did
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You're welcome. As indicated, this wasn't close to my childhood, since that was in New York City and on suburban Long Island, right on the city line. So as I was writing this, I mainly felt I was evoking -- which is to say stealing from -- other writers' fiction and non-fiction, that I'd absorbed over the years. But the family tree is real.
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Mama was almost twenty-six when she moved to Hattiesburg. For three years, she lived in a boarding house and worked in the mill. Daddy had been there longer. “Emilie and I moved there just after Sonny was born, when I needed steady work. Before that, I was mainly on farms.” Mama and Daddy had both grown up on farms, but Daddy was happy to leave. “We didn’t own ours, the way your mama’s family did. And after the war, we didn’t own anything.” “What do you mean?” I
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Thanks. I had a lot of older relatives, too, who'd tell stories about their many brothers and sisters. So some of that's fortunately in play. But some also seems to be drawing from your own memories and imagination. Hope that works for other people as well.
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Thanks. As mentioned, I think a lot of that is unconsciously channeling Harper Lee's tone from To Kill A Mockingbird.
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The youngest of my older brothers was only fifteen when we moved to Texas. Rosalind said Daddy talked about bringing Walter with us, but he didn’t want to go. Partly because he’d just started working at the mill, but more because there was a girl he liked. Rosalind said Walter was very handsome, with light hair and a big smile, and he could get almost anything he wanted. So Daddy let him go on living with Dougie and Sonny, our older brothers, who were twenty and twenty-one. They all stayed in th
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Or he was just tired of being a mainstay of a small community theater, and it took that kind of mistake to make him realize that. Thanks for that note. With just a few words changed, it made me clarify the end of the story.
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It was something of a mystery. One minute, Roger was there, busy as always, and the next, he wasn’t. He had a small part in the production, a good little scene near the end of the second act that part of the action pivoted on, and he’d been working on the large conference table in the green room during the first and most of the second acts. Everyone had seen him as he’d taken apart a wireless microphone and tried to figure out what was wrong with it. It wasn’t giving out the same volume as the o
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Of course, Rosalind may not completely understand the things she's trying to explain to Addy.
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For a long time, I thought Mary and Billie died in an elevator accident. I was two, so didn’t really understand. I just knew they were gone. Actually, they died of hookworm, something that sounds terrible even now. Mary was fifteen and Billie twenty-three. They were my half-sisters, but I never think of them that way. I was born in 1908, Mary and Billie died two years later, and two weeks after that we moved to Bodark Creek. “We” were Mama, Daddy, my older sister Rosalind, and m
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Chapter Index . This is a story about a large family. As in any family, there are people whose names you can’t always remember. This index and the family tree should help. . The index identifies people the first time they appear. It usually identifies them in relationship to Addy. . 1 Mary – Addy’s older half-sister Billie – Addy’s older half-sister Addy Mama – Addy’s mother – Ilene – Daniel’s second wife Daddy – Addy’s father – Daniel Bronner Rosalind – Addy’s olde
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Bodark Creek is a small, former mill town, north of Dallas and close to the Oklahoma border. Starting in 1908, Addy Bronner Braden spends most of her very long life there, surrounded by her large, close family. She loves them, leads them, and depends on them. There is one gay person in this book – my husband. That makes sense, since the book is based on one half of his family tree. But he only turns up at the very end and as a visitor. And that about defines the relationship between gay people and this part of his family.
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Yep, overthought is one of Lucas' strengths / weaknesses. But better overthought than underthought, as long as they both take the same time. Again, thanks for reading.
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He was fine until he met another willing guy. In his mind, he always thought of himself as a “willing safe.“ That is, he wasn’t about to have sex with another man because he knew how much was at stake. It was like his mother, who wasn’t about to have an affair, until she happened on someone at a conference who was perfectly comfortable having an affair with a married woman. Of course, that destroyed his parents marriage, which had otherwise seemed just fine, at least to him and his sister. But h
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Yep, as you easily know, that's what sometimes happens with people. They see and hear what they want to and tend to make up their own minds. As to whether there's a sequel to this book or an effective solution, well, someone here has already pointed out how timely this situation is and how unresolved the issue still is thirty-five years later. Again, thanks for reading.
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“It’s an odd situation,” Ben began, when he was standing in front of the jury for perhaps his last time. “I – or almost anyone else – can predict that in just a few minutes, Counsel Aguilar is going to tell you that officers Jarl and Martel – following all the good rules they’ve been taught – were just doing their jobs. And she’s going to honestly, and in the best intentions, believe that.” He turned to Amanda and smiled in a way he meant as a compliment. He admired how well she
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Thanks. As I've mentioned before, the timing was coincidental.
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“Did you help Officer Jarl put Mr. De Wijk in the car?” Ben continued. “Yes,” Officer Martel said. “How did you do that? “We picked him up. We each grabbed one of his arms and asked him to stand.” “Where did you grab his arms?” “I believe around the elbow area.” “You didn’t grab them around the wrists where the cuffs were?” “Not that I recall. I normally don’t do that because it
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Yep, absolutely coincidental. But, unfortunately, it tells you that things don't seem to have changed, and the treatment Gene was so angry about thirty-five years ago still occurs. I think the lesson, at least for me, is, "In any interaction with any police officer, no matter how minor, don't piss off the cops."
