Explorations 2005 MECC’S Arts E-Zine

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Explorations 2005 MECC’s Arts E-Zine

The originality, creativity, technical skill, and enormous artistic vitality represented in these pages are something to be proud of. We hope that everyone will enjoy and appreciate the talents displayed. We especially want to thank all the students and alumni who entered the competition, and all of the people on campus in Student Services, the Wampler Library, and the staff of the Public Relations office who make this competition and the publication possible. WELCOME to Explorations, Mountain Empire Community College’s student arts publication. Current and former students were invited to submit work in the categories of poetry, short stories, personal essays, black and white photography, color photography, drawing and painting. The materials recognized by our judges in each category are featured.

Photography MORRIS BURCHETTE, owner of Burchette Photography in Norton, became interested in photography when he was nine years old and has been in business in Norton for 54 years. A long- standing member of the Professional Photographers of America, he has won many awards of his own, including the prestigious Master of Photography degree from that organization.

Poetry RICHARD HAGUE, now retired from public school teaching in Cincinnati, Ohio, is the author of five full-length poetry collections, including Possible Debris, from the Cleveland State Poetry Center, and Milltown Natural: Essays and Stories from a Life, from Bottom Dog Press, which was a finalist for Association Writing Programs Award in Creative Nonfiction and nominated for the National Book Award.

Short Story TAMARA BAXTER teaches at Northeast State Community College in Blountville, Tennessee. A teacher of creative writing and literature, she is also one of the faculty sponsors of their student literary magazine. Her short stories have been widely published and she has received honors and awards for her writing, including a nomination for a Pushcart Prize.

Personal Essay FELICIA MITCHELL is a professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at Emory and Henry College in Emory, Virginia. In addition to publishing scholarly works relating to the teaching of writing, Dr. Mitchell is the editor of Words and Quilts, a book of poems and quilt art reproductions, and an anthology of interviews and critical pieces on regional women writers called Her Words: Diverse Voices in Contemporary Appalachian Women’s Poetry.

Drawing & Painting SUZANNE ADAMS RAMSEY is an Association Professor of Art and Chair of the Visual and Performing Arts Department at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. Holding advanced degrees from Radford University and Norwich University, Ramsey has a background in commercial illustration and landscape painting.

Faculty Sponsors Rita Quillen Alice Harrington Bill Harris

2 About the Contestants:

Bonnie Aker teaches earth science at J.J. Kelly High School and is an avid photographer. Kathleen Anderson, a 2002 MECC graduate, is a student at Virginia Commonwealth’s School of the Arts. Adam Barnette is a computer software specialist major and artist who specializes in portraits. Jeanie Brehl participated in the fall 2004 Creative Writing class in Gate City. She is the program manager for Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the Greater Tri-Cities. Crystal M. Cox from Scott County is in the pre-nursing program. Barbara Dockery of Gate City is a photographer and singer-songwriter, as well as a writer. Anthony Duncan graduated from MECC in 2004 with a degree in Graphic Design and General Studies. Steven L. Elkins is currently enrolled at MECC, studying to become a special education teacher. John Foster, a resident of Fort Blackmore, is majoring in General Studies and hopes to be a professional writer some day. Stuart Hale lives in Fort Blackmore. Tanya Hale lives in Fort Blackmore. Neva Hamilton, a graduate of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, is a writer and project manager with The Corporate Image, a public relations firm in Bristol, TN, a columnist for The Coalfield Progress, and the winner of many different writing awards. She was also a member of the fall Creative Writing class in Gate City. William K. Howle retired from a career in marketing and sales at Eastman Chemical Co. in King- sport. Keaton Lawson is an art major at MECC. Sharyn Martin of Kingsport is retired from a career in broadcasting and was also a member of the fall 2004 Gate City Creative Writing class. Josh Moore is a MECC alumnus currently attending the University of Virginia at Wise where he is majoring in Elementary Education. Angie Orndorff is a senior at Powell Valley High School enrolled in MECC dual-enrollment courses. She plans to attend a four-year college and major in art. Kathy Roberts has been drawing as a hobby since the age of 16. She attended MECC and now lives in Kingsport. Jenny Salyers is a MECC graduate currently working as a freelance artist. Carolyn Scalf lives in Nickelsville. Scott Silcox lives in Peachtree City, Georgia, working as an artist and interior decorator. Dana Thacker, past winner of several writing contests at J.J. Kelly High School, is a MECC student majoring in Elementary Education. Teresa Ward, a 1977 graduate of MECC, retired from her career as a school librarian and now has plenty of time to write. She is currently involved in a children’s book project with Fildlar Doubleday. Neka Wilson is MECC’s Graphic Designer and one of the sponsors of the campus photography club, the Hot Shots.

3 Table of Contents

Color Photography 1st Place - Tanya Hale - “Percussion of Attitude” ...... 5 2nd Place - Carolyn Scalf - “Can You see the Deer?”...... 6 3rd Place - Carolyn Scalf - “Days Gone By” ...... 7 Honorable Mention Bonnie Aker - “Patio”...... 8 Anthony Duncan - “The Long Face”...... 9 Josh Moore - “Ripleys”...... 10 Tanya Hale - “Awaiting Grace”...... 11 Black and White Photography 1st Place - Neka Wilson - “The Connection”...... 12 2nd Place - Neka Wilson - “Fallon” ...... 13 3rd Place - Stuart Hale - “Refreshment”...... 14 Honorable Mention Tanya Hale - “Where are The Children”...... 15 Neka Wilson - “Sweetness”...... 16

Poetry 1st Place - Neva Hamilton - “Husband”...... 17 2nd Place - Neva Hamilton - “Fickle Memory” ...... 18 3rd Place - Jeanie Brehl - “Ash Wednesday on the Farm”...... 19-21 Honorable Mention Dana Thacker - “Sunday School” ...... 22 Bill Howell - “Salute”...... 23 Teresa Ward - “For the Buffalo”...... 24 Short Story 1st Place - Jeanie Brehl - “Ticktown Tales” ...... 25-29 2nd Place - Sharyn Martin - “Summer of ‘55”...... 30-33 3rd Place - Barbara Dockery - “The Voodoo Factor”...... 34-36 Honorable Mention Dana Thacker - “We’re Having a Baby” ...... 37-42 Essay 1st Place - John Foster - “Captain John”...... 43-44 2nd Place - Jeanie Brehl - “The Grande Dame of Mt. Washington”...... 45-49 3rd Place - Sharyn Martin - “Orange Crush and Drunken Pigs” ...... 50-54 Honorable Mention Barbara Dockery - “i (understood)”...... 55-57 Painting 1st Place - Scott Silcox - “Mask, Sunstroke, The Return”...... 58 2nd Place - Jenny Salyers - “Blue Venice”...... 59 3rd Place - Adam Barnette - “Exotic Birds”...... 60 Honorable Mention Crystal Cox- “Sounds Hawaiian”...... 61 Kathy Roberts - “Lighthouse” ...... 62

Drawing 1st Place - Jenny Salyers - “It’s a Long Road Ahead” ...... 63 2nd Place -Angie Orndorff - “Tractor” ...... 64 3rd Place - Angie Orndorff - “Butterfly”...... 65 Honorable Mention Keaton Lawson - “Chaos/Kay-oss/K-oss” ...... 66 Kathleen Anderson - “Italian Made”...... 67 Steven Elkins - “Under the Lamp”...... 68 4 Color Photography 1st Place Tanya Hale

Percussion of Attitude

5 Color Photography 2nd Place Carolyn Scalf

Can You See the Deer?

6 Color Photography 3rd Place Carolyn Scalf

Days Gone By

7 Color Photography Honorable Mention Bonnie Aker

Patio

8 Color Photography Honorable Mention Anthony Duncan

The Long Face

9 Color Photography Honorable Mention Josh Moore

Ripleys

10 Color Photography Honorable Mention Tanya Hale

Awaiting Grace 11 Black and White Photography 1st Place Neka Wilson

The Connection

12 Black and White Photography 2nd Place Neka Wilson

Fallon 13 Black and White Photography 3rd Place Stuart Hale

Refreshment

14 Black and White Photography Honorable Mention Tanya Hale

Where are The Children

15 Black and White Photography Honorable Mention Neka Wilson

Sweetness

16 Poetry 1st Place Neva Hamilton Husband

You were raw white sugar, Sweeter than sweet. Dissolved in my heat, Thick and sticky, Buttery rich and brown, Caramel, melting down.

Now a watched pot: Steady and slow, Simmering steam, Rising above the rim. Ready to turn up the heat.

17 Poetry 2nd Place Neva Hamilton Fickle Memory

Memory is an old photograph: Sepia people wither and curl.

Memory is an old phonograph: Artificial voices rustle and crackle.

Granny pats her cotton-candy hair And rubs her rusty brow.

She plucks my sleeve and asks, “Can someone fix my churn? Does anyone know how?”

I smile and nod. What can I say?

You’re set aside before you’re laid to rest. Be glad memory is fickle.

18 Poetry 3rd Place Jeanie Brehl Ash Wednesday on the Farm

Sweaters still scented with Chloe’ drawers still held surprises: broken rosaries Bridge tallies, one pearl earring, peppermints Pictures of her as a baby, of us as babies. Mom now six weeks passed That last day in four poster bed hovering between Our love and heaven love. Then softly she left. Lives now forever less full, ourselves less loved

Mom, Grandmother, friend, everyone’s life ring. She stirs in memories of holidays, birthdays, wedding days… everydays. Twenty stockings hung with love for children grandchildren… puppies. Mom, Santa’s Mrs.Claus Our perfect Mother

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Hair tufted by radiation, knowing of her dying Worrying for gifts for giving Tractors, trucks, toys opened too soon Santa cards with feeble signings.

19 Oxygen tank pumping, wheelchair creaking, charts, charts, food allowed and not medicine given three times a day, four times a day, five times a day, medicine replacing medicine Grown children eyes dazed in stunned shock Mom in wheelchair smiling her blue eyes twinkling As toddlers drive candy red tractors over carpet through oxygen tubes

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Furniture, china, crystal treasures divided eldest to youngest in each frigid room Furnace relieved of responsibility refused to ignite Our breath, we saw inside that January winter night Three boys and a girl, calling up memories Remember when? One time we….. She loved that… Tenderly, we touched each discovery Silver monograms whose? We should have asked…. Three men and a woman bearing sharp unspeakable loss Mementos packed carried to distant dwellings Others could not undo our refuge, homestead, Leaving their portion behind waiting for a time

***********************************

March morning yet dark Ancient wiring corrupted, fire flared Through the house fanned by dawn breeze Firemen from all around could not appease Siblings called siblings, called children, called grandchildren and then back round again

20 It’s gone; it’s all gone…to the ground. Fresh tears flowed, fresh sobs uncontrolled Rubble now, floors walls roof disappeared Chimney monuments of century brick stand watch Over curious crevasse holier than church Yet her presence lingers lovingly in relics of home

I walk in ashes stooping for pottery piece Sugar bowl blackened broken Sooty hands--Ash Wednesday on the farm Standing in debris, wires, glass crunching at my feet Charred file cabinet, skeletal radiators There her tortured, twisted, walker standing in shadow Screams batter my throat for release Memories plunge ripping into my soul Tearing from my soul

*****

Dogwoods lacey viewing of spring sky Who forgot to halt it? There a daffodil! Birds nesting, nestled high in chimney grate Midair where my room ought to be. Get out damn birds. Get out!

21 Poetry Honorable Mention Dana Thacker Sunday School

Cherry-colored pews fiery red symbolizing the blood shed at Calvary

A stained glass painting of Jesus, arms outstretched

The preacher behind the pulpit lecturing about God, brimstone, and fire

Yet we hid behind the seats muffled giggles passing notes about the cute boy two rows over

We played truth or dare in the nursery and hide-and-seek with all the lights off in the back stairwell

Still, we learned right from wrong and who made the sun and the moon all while sitting on bright red pews

22 Poetry Honorable Mention Bill Howell Salute

Trapped by the traffic light Her bumper sticker shouted Honk if you love Jesus Brushed her hair Applied mascara An addition of lipstick Continued to primp Me like an imp Honked I love Jesus She gave me The one finger salute

23 Poetry Honorable Mention Teresa Ward For the Buffalo

I rode into the thundering hills until the earth became the herd itself. A rush of ancient blood made a common path across the continuum. Native sadness stood two-hundred deep and spoke of distant time. They walked this ground… their red-skinned brothers breathing freedom and singing life. I listened to their music on the wind until the restless night appeared. As I rode toward Orion the hunter watched with tears my westward move under the yellow moon.

24 Short Story 1st Place Jeanie Brehl Ticktown Tales

My name is Mazzie Martin. I live in Ticktown. It has been called Ticktown for over a hundred years since farmers drove cattle from the mountains through here to sell them in Mt. Sterling. Farmers stopped here to pull off the ticks and clean up the cattle before driving them down what is now highway 460 to the Mt. Sterling court day sale. The post office and a little white sign say our town is called Jeffersonville but everybody still calls it Ticktown and probably they always will. I have a brother Jack, and baby twin sisters. Next month I will be nine and one half. Jack and I go to school in Mt. Sterling. We walk down our muddy half washed away road, and cross the creek the one that only comes up when it rains. Once, Jack, who is a whole year older than me, slipped on a wet slippery rock and fell into the cold rushing creek. He was so mad and soaked that he cried like a baby as he ran home. After crossing the creek, we walk about a mile down a stony, one-way, no name road to get to the bus stop. If we miss the school bus we just go home and help Momma with the babies. Pa tends to Mr. Collins’ cattle. He makes sure they are safe, not rustled, well fed and counts them every day with Jack and me bouncing along in the back of the old Chevy pickup which is patched together with a blue door on the right and a gray door on the left, one black hood and the rest is rusty red and dented. Pa calls Mr. Collins if a cow is birthing or sick. We live in our house free and Pa gets $150 every month for taking care of the cattle. In the spring and summer, Pa helps farmers put up hay. The helpers eat dinner at each farmer’s house at noon and gobble down a meal of country fried chicken, cream gravy on mashed potatoes, green beans, cornbread, corn pudding and homemade pie. Pa comes home and brags about what he ate and now Jack can’t wait until he can lift those hay bales. Pa sees “fancy dining rooms with gold mirrors and china cupboards and real silver inside them houses.” He saw “one room with red roses and pink roses on the wall 25 paper.” He promised to get Ma some paper like that one day. Right now we have some old newspapers and Sears ads glued on the walls covering up cracks. It ain’t so bad, ‘cause on a rainy day I can read all about lawnmowers and Christmas toys right there in my bed. Pa works most of the year in tobacco. He plants it in the spring after dogwood winter. In August, the tobacco is cut and dries in the field on a tobacco stick. After it is good and yellow they put in the barn for awhile. When it is cured it is taken to the stripping room. A bunch of people come to work in the stripping room pulling the tobacco apart by grades and then tying it up slick with another piece of tobacco. Having done this for years, they can gossip, sing, or listen to the radio while working. When I am bigger I’ll strip tobacco too. After school I run to see Pa in the stripping room, the tobacco smell is so sharp it burns my nose and makes my eyes water up like I’ve been crying. Pa must have chewed about a half a field of that tobacco since I was born. He spits and spits it everywhere and that gets Ma all riled up. Mr. Collins gives Jack and me $3 a day when the tobacco is cut to pick up the yellow leaves on the ground. We tie them with rubber bands and hang them in the corncrib. We will pick up leaves for awhile and then Jack will be ready to have tobacco worm races. We find big green worms and race them to a finish line drawn in the dirt row. Jack squashes the winner until the slimy guts squish out. The he finishes off the loser the same way. Next we bury tobacco worms alive to see which one can dig out. If they crawl out alive they are smashed anyway by Jack. Nobody likes tobacco worms. When we help in the field, we get a drink of water from the tall metal green jug sitting in the back of the truck. Jack drank a deep drink, wiped his mouth on his sleeves and said “that’s a cool swill of water” just like Pa always said. I thought it tasted “tinny and bitter” but no one asked me. In the tobacco field Pa found him a snake or two. He picked them up and kind of quiet like walked to the truck and put them in a wooden box in the back of the truck. You could hear a hissing going on in that box. I heard Pa telling Ma he had caught four snakes for the tent meeting so far. Saturday night, we washed up in the round wooden tub for Brother Jacob’s tent meeting. I screamed, “Let me go first before Jack. He’s been everywhere them cows have been.” Momma let me get in first while Jack yelled “I’ll get you back.” The big tea kettle filled with water heated on the wood stove until it almost whistled.

26 Ma poured the warm water into the tub in between kids’ baths where we scrubbed with Lava soap until our tingling skin felt like it was going to fall off. Pa was washing up and shaving by the mirror on the wall. Gene Autry was at Melody Ranch belting out “Back in the saddle again” from the wooden Firestone “Air Chief” which was Pa’s pride and joy radio. When I was all cleaned up special, Ma braided my long dark hair and put in two red ribbons on the ends. Her hands felt so good caressing and pulling on my hair that for a minute I wondered if I was a princess. The twins piled up front in the truck with my parents while Jack and I rode in the back of the truck. Jack said “Hold on tight on these bumps or you’ll go flying.” We had the wooden snake box with all them snakes bouncing along the rocky road with us and I kept an eye on it in case they crawled on out. Brother Jacob had a big white tent for the camp meeting. There must have been 100 people there. A bunch of them I don’t even know whose kin they are. Once the singing began, Brother Jacob took the wooden box and reached in and grabbed a rattler and held it with one hand holding the head and one hand holding the tail. He looked it close in the eye. The snake spit out its tongue at him. Next thing Pa dug down in the box and picked up a copperhead and held it over his head and went to strutting around the tent shaking it. Soon there were four snakes in the air and almost everyone was watching and hollering “Amen brother” and “alleluia.” Cousin Darrel and even my Grandma were falling out on the floor. Brother Jacob touched Grandma on the forehead saying,”You are saved, sister.” It took three men to get Grandma up again off of the ground. She didn’t look any different “saved” except her hair was mussed up some. Now Pa, he must have spit out his tobacco because he was frothing white bubbles at the corner of his mouth and spittle dribbled down his chin. Pa was saying words I never heard before and jumping around like red ants was biting his feet! Standing by my Momma, I was down right scared. Pa did not look like the Pa who tucked me in at night and planted a big kiss on my forehead. I reached up and held on to Momma’s hand. She squeezed my hand and smiled at me like everything was alright and then she forgot about me and went to singing about the river Jordan. I wondered how it could all be alright since Ma and Pa told us, “Never tell no body that we pass around snakes under the tent or you’ll get a whippin”. I sure wasn’t but in third grade but I already knew that keeping secrets meant we were keeping it from somebody. I wondered who it was since all the families from the Rocky Branch Evan- gelical Church were here and the ‘church going’ part of our family was here, too.

27 Brother Jacob passed the collection pie plate around. “ Ping, ping, ping” went the change going into that pie plate. Brother Jacob yelled out “God bless you.” for dollars. We slept on the way home in the back of the truck with Pa’s old U.S.A. Army blan- ket covering us up. It still had his name “John Martin” stamped on it and it smelled like a wet dog but it was warm. When we got home Momma and Pa carried in the babies and then they woke up Jack and me to get in the house. When I looked up at the sky I saw it was an all starry night and as quiet as could be except for the purring of my cat, as he rubbed up on my legs when I walked into the house. The next morning before school, I saw the snake box that Pa left under a forsythia bush near the house. I quick opened it and grabbed out one of them black snakes and held it up over my head like Pa did. Well, that snake snatched at me real fast and bit my arm three times. I threw it out as far as I could and it crawled into the tall grass in our yard. In school my teacher said “What happened to your arms, Mazzie? What bit you honey?” I shrugged and said “I dunno.” Before I knew it the principal, another teacher and our nosey school secretary, Miss Belinda, were looking at my arm and asking about it. “It must have been my cat or a rat in the hay barn,” I said. On the way home Jack sang, “You’re going to get it. You’re going to get a whipping.” Ma was so busy with the twins when I got home that she didn’t even see the bites and I went straight to my room and put on my summer sweater. Mr. Miller was walking up our hill huffing and puffing like he was a smoker about the same time Pa drove his pickup in from the field. Mr. Miller said that he was from the county welfare department which made Pa stiffen up straight. “Been reported Mazzie has snake bites on her” he said accusingly as he sat down in the shade right on that snake box still trying to catch his breath. “Jack, bring our company some tea,” Pa yelled. “Don’t know nothing about no snake bites,” Pa said. Mr. Miller called out for me and I came out of the house where I’d been ducked down by the window listening, plenty scared, and twirling my hair right out of my head. “Take off that sweater and let me see your arms,” Mr. Miller bellowed. I took off my sweater and looked at my arm hoping the bites had gone away but there they were black, blue, and red. “How did you get those bites, little girl?” asked Mr. Miller. “I guess from the cats we play rough sometimes” I said wishing I could lie half as good as Jack. 28 Pa nodded at me looking as happy as a flea in dog fur. Now, I knew exactly what lot we were keeping the snakes a secret from. “Now look here” Mr. Miller said to Pa “your daughter has been bitten. You can’t be letting your kids around snakes no matter what you and the wife believe. It ain’t right and it ain’t legal.” “Now tell me where those snakes are or I’m calling the sheriff.” My Pa’s mouth cracked a little grin and he said “Well, Mr. Miller, right now you’re sitting on them in that box.” Mr. Miller jumped up off that box and Ma’s purple aluminum tea glass shot out into the yard splattering tea all over as he took off down the hill almost at a run and yelling something back at us about “damn snake handlers.” Pa put the wooden box back into the truck and hauled it to dead cow ridge at the back of the farm. He dumped the shiny snakes out on to the warm rocks where they glistened a moment in the sun and then slithered quickly out of sight down into the ravine. There’d be plenty of time for him to catch up more before the next tent meeting.

29 Short Story 2nd Place Sharyn Martin Summer of ‘55

“Shall we gather at the river”…. the words rang out over Menlo Creek. Me and Jerry were perched in the highest spot we could safely climb to in the old tree that hung out over the creek. The church from Parker’s Valley was having a baptizing, and we had to see it. Jerry’s mom and dad had talked about the “holy rollers” and we wanted to view the activity from a safe distance. We’d heard all about the shines these people cut and we didn’t want to miss a thing. We edged out on a limb as the preacher led the first lady into the water. He held her hand and dunked her under the water. We’d seen baptizings before, but this promised to be a good one. Up she comes out of that water, shouting and jumping, and people on the bank started hollering and dancing around. We’d never seen anything like this at Mt. Nebo. She jumped and hollered some more, shaking her leg, and the people on the bank shouted louder. The preacher started to lead her out of the water and she was pulling back and shaking her leg some more. One of the men on the bank started in the water to help the preacher get this woman back to dry ground. He slipped on the muddy bank and fell in. Me and Jerry laughed ‘til we was afraid of falling out of that tree. The preacher finally got the woman to the bank and she set herself right down on the mud, scream- ing and rolling around. Guess that’s what they meant by “holy rollers”, except in her case a big mud turtle was latched to her toe. Turtles don’t turn loose til the sun goes down and she had a long wait. Three or four men took a big stick and prized that turtle loose and some of the ladies helped that poor woman up to a chair. Me and Jerry was almost sick from laughing. My name’s Eddie Price. Jerry Wills and me have been friends for a long time or as long as two eight year old boys could remember. There wasn’t too much that went on around these parts we didn’t know about, and most of it we witnessed first hand. Jerry’s grandpa was the preacher at the Mt. Nebo Baptist Church, and we kept up with most of the happenings by hearing about them at church. This summer we’ve been to three baptizings, two funerals, two auctions, and seen 30 a calf born. I have to say the baptizings and funerals were the most interesting. Most of the time we stayed where nobody could see us. If our parents knew what we were up to, we’d be in big trouble. We have to cut our own switches at our house, and I reckon Jerry’s is the same. My mama always said we had to show respect at church doings, and I guess we didn’t act like we had much respect. It’s hard not to laugh or get the silly giggles when you see some of this stuff. I remember just last week me and Jerry went to a singing service at his aunt’s church. She didn’t go to Mt. Nebo, but she was a fine lady anyway. We were sitting there and a group of ladies got up to sing. Have you ever heard a lady sing bass? Well, we were just sitting there, looking around, and all of a sudden they were singing “Prayer Bells of Heaven”. Every time they got to the chorus, me and Jerry just looked at each other and started giggling. This lady would sing way down low, “Prayer Bells of Heaven, oh how sweetly they ring”. I mean real low, lower than Jerry’s grandpa could sing. We just couldn’t stand it! Jerry’s aunt took us home before the service was over and told us we were going to hell for being so disrespectful. That scared us for a little while, but once we started mocking that lady, we got the giggles again. Guess we’re going to hell. Mr. Johnson’s funeral was a real good time. We sat on the back row where nobody noticed us. The preacher started on a hell fire and damnation sermon, and he couldn’t find too many good things to say about Mr. Johnson, but he tried. Mr. John- son had not been a very nice man, according to mama, and probably was not going to get into heaven. He was good to his mother, they said, but that was about all. Well, just as the preacher got wound up good, a wasp flew through the open window. It buzzed and flitted around and directly landed on Suellen Collins. She was sitting about the third seat in front of me and Jerry, wearing a blue hat with yellow flowers. I guess the yellow flowers attracted the wasp. The preacher was trying to make a point, and about that time Suellen swatted the wasp on her neck. She let out a yell, the preacher thought she was shouting, and he said “Well, glory” and got the whole church stirred up. Me and Jerry was under the seat by then we was laughing so hard. Suellen was about in tears from the wasp sting and her neck had a real red place on it. We felt sorry for her, but there was nothing we could do except laugh. Miss Emma Quillen kept patting Suellen’s arm, like that was going to make her neck quit hurting. Nobody thought about poor Mr. Johnson anymore. Me and Jerry decided after all this religion we needed to try something else, like tobacco. Jerry’s dad had some left in the barn and we felt the need to experiment. We climbed into the loft when nobody was around and went to the stalks hanging from the rafters. It was dry and brittle but we figured it would taste OK anyway. We pinched off some of the end of the leaf, and I told Jerry to go first. He rolled the tobac-

31 co in a ball and popped it in his mouth. I did the same. We chewed about a minute, and Jerry started turning green. He went over to the edge of the loft and puked his guts out. In about ten more seconds, I was right behind him. I don’t reckon I’ve ever been so sick in my life. We just laid there in that hot barn loft all afternoon, sweatin’ and pukin’. It was about supper time when we felt like getting down. Jerry started toward his house and I went toward mine. We had made a vow right then that we’d never smoke or chew. Mama had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and lemon pie for supper that night. I didn’t eat a bite. She wanted to know what was wrong, but there was no way I could tell her what we’d done, so I told her I’d eat green apples and didn’t feel too good. It was up in July when the Smith’s farm went on the auction block. They were moving away cause Mr. Smith got a job somewhere else, and he had to sell their place. Me and Jerry went across the field early that morning to be sure to get a good seat. Mama and Daddy said they’d be there afterwhile. Mr. Smith had some tools Daddy wanted, and he was going to quit work early to be there. Me and Jerry didn’t want to wait that long. We got close to the Smith place, and there were people everywhere. This was a big event in our neighborhood. The church ladies were selling sandwiches and iced tea, and fried pies for dessert. This was a good as homecoming and dinner on the ground! Me and Jerry walked around with our hands in our overall pockets, acting like the rest of the men. We looked at all the tools and farm equipment, and walked down to the barn. The barn was pretty close to the river and it was a great place to play. The willow trees shaded the place and the stalls had all been cleaned, so it was nice and cool. We played hide and seek, running in and out of the stalls, and around the outbuildings. We heard some kind of chanting talk, and finally figured out that this was what an auction was. We’d never heard anybody talk that fast. We hightailed it back up to the house where all the action was. Jerry decided we could see better if we stood on this old log behind the crowd. We climbed up there, right behind Mr. Cloud. The auction man was holding up a bee smoker and me and Jerry thought of all the fun we could have with that. We watched the crowd, and Jerry poked me and told me to look at Jack Grills’ daddy. He would raise his hand whenever the auction man said something. Well, we decided that was the way things were done at an auction. I raised my hand the next time the auction man called out six dollars. Nobody else said anything. He called out six dollars again, nobody said anything. He called out “sold” and here come a man carrying that bee smoker and handed it to Mr. Cloud. Mr. Cloud looked kind of funny, and asked why they brought it to him. The auction man said “You raised your hand. You won the bid”. Well, Mr. Cloud had no intention of paying for that bee smoker, and he left it sitting there. We

32 had already run out the back of the crowd, ‘cause we knew something was up when the auction man brought the smoker back there. Jerry said we’d get it later if it was still sitting there. I told Jerry he was on his own. I knew my mama and daddy would whale the daylights out of me for this one. The auction put us in a mood for more real estate investigating. Jerry’s great-aunt Belle lived right over on the river in a big old farmhouse, not too far from the Smith place. She had plenty of trees to climb, cows to chase, and a springhouse. We didn’t have one where we lived. We had a Frigidaire to keep things cold, but I’d much rather have a springhouse. Water runs through this trough inside and Aunt Belle kept her milk and butter sitting in that water. Well, me and Jerry decided we would use that water to make a springhouse inside so Aunt Belle wouldn’t have to come all the way out here to get the milk. We took a big bucket and filled it with water. It was so heavy it took both of us to carry it to the house. There was a dugout with a dirt floor underneath the house where Aunt Belle kept all her canned stuff, potatoes, and cabbage. We figured this place would make a great springhouse. There was a slanted door on the side of the house that flopped back right on the ground when we opened it. We carried the bucket down the stone steps into the dugout and dumped the water at the bottom of the steps. We did this many times til we could see the water nearing the edge of the bottom step. We went around to the back door and into the kitchen to announce our great surprise. Mama, Mrs. Wills, and Aunt Belle looked stunned, or I guess that’s what you’d call it. The company tea cups were plunked down on the table, and the chairs pushed back in a hurry. We all went back to the dugout and Mama caught Aunt Belle just as she was about to faint. It was six weeks before Aunt Belle could go back into the dugout for anything, and almost that long before I could sit down without wincing. We won’t be doing any home improvements for awhile. Me and Jerry had a good time this summer. School will be starting soon, and I bet Miss Blake is really looking forward to seeing us in the third grade. She told us at the end of last term “if she never saw us again it’d be too soon”. We’ll see if she means it.

33 Short Story 3rd Place Barbara Dockery The Voodoo Factor

… “there’s something in the way she explains to me “please be careful, I exist in someone else’s head” … [Our Lady Peace] Music today with Leland, photographer, graphic artist, jack-of-all-trades Virgo, boyfriend of a Scorpio. Up late last night found me awake too late this morning, and now I’ve driven circles around town looking for his place, making me more late. It’s hot in the near noon sun, I am a well-rounded eleven a.m. sticky. I’m unsure what word I might use to classify my first impression here, for as much as talk goes I feel rather strange and speechless. He bears no resemblances to any memory of Virgo I currently hold, aside from being soft spoken. Leland is tall and thin and normal with semi-Cobain hair and barefoot, Leland is barefoot. Goddamn hip- pies someone once said, a vivid mental recollection that shoots directly to my hemp weaved, flip-flop shoes. A tour of the house is nearly one room straight back with walls protruding here and there. Along them we travel to a twenty-something girl stretched on the bed talking on the phone. A whispered introduction and she looks nice enough, I force a smile and retreat to the front observing. Asymmetrical walls are littered with eight-by-tens of black and white photography, a stone’s throw from I would consider exquisite. I am both surprised and impressed, the website photos aren’t at all fitting with this, taken on digital but basically crap. Completely puzzled I ask, “Why aren’t you using this?” I meant the talent. Leland follows my vague question and sighs unimportantly. “Film development costs and…”, rattle, rattle, rattle, he loses me to the picture, a weeping cemetery angel stark and devastated. What a waste. I slide him a direct forward cue. “So where do we get started here?” Leland re- trieves his instrument from where it rests by the here-and-there. “Hey, nice 12-string”, my genuine compliment. Leland smiles and nods in return approval of the barnyard black acoustic guitar wedged between my knees, my fingers resting and locked loosely around the headstock.

34 The music is somewhat boring but his playing is artful, experienced and smooth. The rhythm and strumming technique outweigh his writing ability and rattle, rattle, rattle, I’m visited by the memory of something I was once told, “Not just anybody can write songs”. I am taken and breathless again. Leland finishes and I come to, hoping his girl doesn’t show up where we are because I suddenly realize I’ve forgotten her name. Feeling silently stupid, I take my unspoken turn and play, wrapping the melody with lyrics that came as a surprise to us both. “I can say.. you are the on-ly one... I can say.. I-’ve been un-done… I can say.. I am changed as I run… I can say.. I am afraid of your love” I occupy sixty seconds with words that just came out yesterday; today’s fitting sew- ing them tighter into my hand. Vulnerability is crude and uninviting. Unable to look up, I stare at the fluffy calico I failed to notice earlier and feel stupid again. “It’s hot. Can we go outside?” I choke on the request, desperately craving a beer. Oddly enough, I’m not a drinker and I wonder, where exactly did that cat come from? It wasn’t there just now, was it? In any case, Fluffy appears completely unimpressed by the all of us. Leland and I work smoothly together and silent as we cart the equipment piece by piece to the outside porch. The Scorpio follows, disappearing to muddle about planting flowers in the back, and pops around front enough for what I would consider neither rude nor overbearing. They are well in tune, I feel it when they share the same space. Rattle, rattle, rattle goes the music among in-your-face inner city traffic and neigh- borly lawn tractors owned by Alice Cooper look-a-likes riding, seemingly, just for fun. The mower is very shiny, and the yard is almost dirt. The girl interrupts for lunch. “Would you like something?” So polite. I’m not hungry, I’m not sick, I’m not thirsty, I don’t have a headache, I just can’t remember your name. “No, thank you very much for the offer”. Her departure leaves me distracted and tense. With her, with him, with the stares from the traffic and with the overwhelming roar of the dirt gnawing. I look at my watch, feeling the sympathy of the hour that just passed by. I feel obligated and rattle, rattle, rattle goes the music, a relaxing melody so we play it over and over. Back again with his lunch, I notice that she’s pretty without being pretty. No make- up, mixture of dark and auburn hair, nearly his own height, semi-chubby but not fat, she reminds me of someone I saw recently… She is smart, a bit different - or maybe it’s just my mood. I’m incredibly annoyed, yet terribly tolerant. She pauses long enough for a nod of approval aimed at the melody. The three of us share a smile. She’s back to flowers and phone, the serene feeling of their togetherness caught up in his heart as he eats the lunch, I play: “you kept me wai-ting all the wh-ile… you made your marks up-on my door… now 35 nothing is left here for the taking… I swear I think that makes you smile… I used to adore you… I’m finding it ea-s-ier to ignore you...” Rattle, rattle, rattle goes the music. Mentally rushing him through his love plate for more work on the melody, I am up to pace the porch and wonder if it would be rude to check the hour again. Crushing the urge, I stop and watch the traffic run, melting from the sun on the far end feeling very much like the blistered white paint looks all crackled up and bent backward in certain places. A need to be here falls through me weighting my left foot, intense desire to run levitates my right, together they stride awkwardly back across the stretch to my lounge. Something instrumental this time, whatever happens to emerge and rattle, rattle, rattle goes the music as I watch the sun shifting to the left. Back to the melody, I could play it forever, simple just like this. Not that it’s ex- traordinarily good, just very soothing. Something very trite about our timing, perfect together save one-eighth of a beat in our rhythms. Leland is very patient, blue eyes will me to continue. I think of how stupid it was to say that I was free until just before work. Hours away, I dig for an excuse and find one, lenient of a decent moment to suggest an early exit. The vibe is good and so rattle, rattle, rattle. An hour and a half more spent on ironing out the timing kink, I am irritated again. I think he should change it but keep the suggestion in check. Capricorn choke. Pretty- not-pretty returns and stays and I am suddenly drained from feeling stupid, annoyed, tired, their synchronicity. Rattle, rattle, rattle , “It was so nice to meet you”. Leland offers his hand in gesture. Rattle, rattle, rattle , “Likewise, my pleasure and hey, I’ll work on some lyrics for that. If you can measure out a chorus we’ll see what comes.” I accept, my expression now crucial but plastic. Rattle, rattle, rattle , I’m never coming back here you know … We let go in sync. I’m running over the curb in my speedy escape. Hurry, hurry, hurry. The interstate pulls me homeward with both windows down, holding one arm straight out as if I were caught up in the passenger’s seat with my face in the sun and the wind in my hand. Another deja’ vu turns nearly memory, then into another, and another. I can’t decide which past action I’m attempting to recreate, so I just make a new one. Gliding with the air outside I drive with one knee, right arm straight out, left hand twisted through the steering wheel turning up the radio. “…there’s something in the way that she makes believe, please be careful, Annie dreams that everyone is dead”… Rattle, rattle, rattle goes the music.

36 Short Story Honorable Mention Dana Thacker We’re Having A Baby

They say marriage isn’t easy. What they should say is that marriage is perfectly fine until your wife becomes pregnant. That’s when it all goes downhill. That sweet, beautiful girl you fell in love with turns into a moody, hormonal mess practically overnight. Now don’t get me wrong, I still love my wife more than anything in this world. I always will. I just wish I had known more about all this pregnancy stuff before I came home that night to find an E.P.T. test lying on the bathroon sink. “Mike, I think I see two lines,” she said. Amy squinted her eyes and stared hard. Those new contact lenses she had been talking about were obviously not all they were cracked up to be because those were the two most visible pink lines I had ever seen. I could have stood on the front porch and held up the stick and cars passing by could have seen those pink lines. “We’re going to have a baby!!!!” Although it was a bit unexpected, Amy and I were both on cloud nine. Those next few days were nothing short of amazing. We called everyone we knew to tell them the good news. And I do mean everyone. Amy even went as far as to call our mailman. Why in the world she felt the need to alert the U.S. Postal Service of our newest addition, I will never understand. But she was excited beyond words. And so was I. I had always wanted kids. My dad had never really been much of a father to me after walking out on my mother when I was just a toddler, and I wanted nothing more that to prove to him, and to myself, that I could be twice the man he ever was. I knew I would be a great father to my children. Actually, my son. Amy found out yesterday we’re having a boy. The only thing I seem to be having trouble with these days is how to deal with the mother-to-be. The clock on the wall ticks as the minutes pass by. It’s 4:47 and my workday is over at 5:00. Normally I would be counting the seconds until I could leave this desk of un- finished paperwork behind and go home to my wife. But not today. I think I would rather stay here at the precinct all night long. Maybe the captain would let me patrol tonight. It’s not like you can ever have too many cops patrolling the mean streets of

37 Durham. Yeah, that’s right the big metrapolis of Durham, North Carolina. Ok....so maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. To be quite honest, Durham is about as close to May- berry as you could get. There hasn’t been a murder here in God knows how long. The most exciting thing that happened this week was when a little old lady thought she saw a burglar in her backyard. I never knew a ninety-year-old woman could aim a pistol as well as I could. She obviously thought I was a burglar when I arrived on the scene because she was aiming that gun right at me. Luckily her hearing wasn’t as bad as her vision because she dropped the gun and put her hands in the air when I told her I was Officer Kendall of the Durham Police Department. I don’t know how she couldn’t make out my uniform. I wasn’t more than three yards away from her. Maybe she’s wearing those same piece-of-crap contacts Amy bought last week. “Mike, it’s ten after five. You going, or what?” Captain Mitchell stood over my desk. “Yeah, I’m outta here.” Now, like I said before, usually I’m more than ready to leave the hassels of work behind everyday. I love my job, but I love coming home and hanging out with my wife even more. But today, I’ve found myself driving 45 on the highway. The truth is, I don’t want to go home to my wife this evening. She’s been giving me the infamous silent treatment for two days now. She slept on the couch last night, which, as every husband knows, is the ultimate sign that she’s highly ticked off. I guess you want to know what happened? Well, I’ll tell you exactly what happened and you’ll see how ridiculous she’s being. On Monday night, we were watching tv and Amy gets up and goes into the kitchen. She came back into the living room, hands on her hips, and asked me what I did with that pack of oreos she bought the other day. “I ate them.” I said. I swear, when I said that I could see steam coming out of her nose. “For three days, the one thing I have been craving is oreos. And when I finally get my huge stomach to fit behind the wheel of the car long enough to drive to the grocery store and buy some, you have the nerve to eat them.” Amy stomped off and I heard the bedroom door slam behind her. I sat there for a while, debating whether or not I should breathe for fear that even that would tick her off. But I couldn’t help it. She was still my wife and I loved her. So I drove to the grocery store in town and came back with a pack of oreos. Amy was lying on the bed watching tv when I returned. I pulled the bag from behing my back and she started to cry. Nice job you retard, I thought to myself. You’ve upset her again. Maybe she changed her mind and wants Chips Ahoy instead. But Amy got up off the bed and hugged me. “You’re the greatest husband ever, Mike. And I love you.” Thank you, Jesus, I silently prayed. Amy and I sat there and watched a movie and ate the oreos. Actually, she ate the 38 oreos and I miserably sat through an entire movie on Lifetime. I wasn’t about to ask to change the channel. For all I knew, such a question as that could result in divorce papers at this stage of the game. Everything was fine until Amy began telling me about her doctor’s appointment that day. “He tells me now that my due date is on the twenty-fifth.” “What?” I asked. “That’s the Superbowl. “Couldn’t they induce labor on the twenty-fourth or something?” I realized I’d made a huge mistake as soon as I finished my sentence. Suddenly, my sweet girl turned into a monster. I felt like I was in a scene from the Exorcist. I was just waiting for Amy’s head to start spinning in circles. “Is that what you care about?” Amy asked as she ran out of the room. “Our child is going to be born and you’re concerned about the stupid Superbowl? I hate you Mi- chael Kendall. I hate you.” Now do you see how ridiculous this is? I mean, come on. I made a mistake. I’ve apologized until I’m blue in the face but all she does is ignore me. The only attention I’ve gotten from her these past two days was when she threw a plate at my head this morning. I guess that was a sign she’s still not ready to forgive me. It’s just that I’m a huge football fan and the superbowl is better than Christmas to me. Of course the birth of my son is much more important than a football game. I just didn’t think before I spoke. And now I’m paying for it. Big time. I pulled the 2002 Malibu into the garage and shut the door behind me. I’ve been wanting to get something new for a while now. There’s a huge dent on the front of the car from when Amy hit a cow last summer. Seriously....she hit a cow. She came home in tears because she said the cow just darted out in front of her. Now I’m certainly no farmer, but I’ve never seen a cow exactly dart. They’re not the fastest creatures on this planet. But the dent wasn’t that bad so I just never bothered to have it repaired. I guess with a baby on the way, I could start looking around for some good deals on something new. I went into the kitchen and found Amy just standing there, tears running down her face. “Amy, what’s wrong?” “I forgot,” she said. I stood there for a few seconds in amazement that she was actually talking to me again. “You forgot what, honey?” “I forgot how to make chicken casserole. I never even had to use a recipe before. Not only am I fat, I’ve lost my mind too. I just can’t do this. I’m not sure if I’m ready for a baby right now.” Now I knew that my words here were crucial. One wrong move and that pan she was holding might be permanently imbedded in my skull. “Amy, I know this is hard for you, but we’re in this together. We’re going to have 39 a baby, ready or not. And I’m sorry about the other night. I know I’ve said it a million times, and I’m going to keep on saying it until you believe me. I love you and I’m here for you. What do you say we go get ready and go out for dinner? Anywhere you w a n t .” “I’m sorry I was so mean to you. I know you didn’t mean it.” Amy threw her arms around me and rushed upstairs to get ready. She came back down fifteen minutes later wearing the blue sweater I bought her for Christmas. She looked beautiful. That is until she puked all over it. She had to come back in and change before we even made it out of the driveway. I helped her pick out a green car- digan which looked just as great on her. No sooner had I locked the door behind me, for the second time might I add, Amy says she has to pee. “Why didn’t you do that before we came downstairs?” I asked as sweetly as I pos- sibly could. “Because I didn’t have to then. But now I do, so please unlock the door. I’ll hurry.” I unlocked the door and she flew back up the stairs. Boy, was this going to be a fun night or what? At 3:00 a.m., I found myself sleeping on the couch. How I ended up there, I’m sure you can imagine. To sum up our night, we stopped to pee at least fifteen times, Amy threw up again, and she was mad at me by the end of the night because I forgot to bring the left over Chinese back home with us. So now, I’m lying on the hard couch with a sheet Amy threw at me before she slammed the bedroom door in my face. I’m telling you, this pregnancy stuff is just too much. I’ve heard all the horror stories about what women have to go through, but what about us guys? Sometimes I think I’d rather be the one pregnant. At least then I wouldn’t have to deal with Amy. I just wish she could see how hard I’m trying. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” I read him his rights, handcuffed him, and put him in the back of my patrol car. Actually, I lifted him into my patrol car. I’m telling you, it never pays to be drunk in public. They know they’re going to get caught, so why do it? To be quite honest, I really don’t even understand why anyone would want to drink at all. I swear, I’ll never touch the stuff. I guess seeing my father drink himself to death after leaving my mother made me realize that drinking only leads to trouble. I took the man back to the station and turned him over to Captain Marshall. Who knows what would happen to him. At 5:00, I headed out for the day. Driving home, my thoughts suddenly turned to Amy. That happens quite often. Ever since the first time we met back in college, I haven’t been able to get her off my mind. We dated for a year before deciding to get married. That was the best decision I ever made. Amy was the sweetest, most beautiful girl I had ever met. I always hated it when we

40 fought. I guess the fear of losing her drove me crazy. I stood outside in the rain one night when we were dating and knocked on her door for an hour before she let me in. We had had a fight, something stupid probably, and I told her I couldn’t leave mad. So I said would stand outside and knock until she would listen. I really knew how to sweet-talk her then. Even after we were married, I could always make Amy forget about why she was even mad in the first place. But now, everything is so different. It seems like the harder I try, the madder she gets. But I’m not giving up. I love that girl more than anything. She’s pregnant with my child and I’m going to make this work if it’s the last thing I do. I stood in line at the Icee Shack trying to decide what the difference between lemonade-berry and berry lemonade was. Seems to me like it would be the exact same thing. I think they just change some of the words around so they can advertise that they have fifty-two flavors. I mainly stopped by because I know they don’t get much business in January. For some strange reason, people seem to think that icee’s and snow don’t mix. I felt guilty about buying an icee for myself and not Amy so I dialed the number on the cell phone to call her. Actually, I had a terrible fear that if I went home with an icee for myself and nothing for her, I might be beheaded right there in the driveway. “Hey honey! How are you ?” “Good, I guess. What’s wrong?” “Nothing, I was just wondering if you wanted an icee. I’m getting one.” “Yeah. What do they have.” “You know what they have. Don’t you like Strawberry Kiwi?” I asked “If I even see a kiwi right now, I’ll puke. Just tell me what they have.” “Amy, there are fifty-two flavors. We’ve been here a million times. You know what they have.” “I forgot. Can’t you just read the menu.” Now I’m sure you’re wondering what I did in this situation. Well, I did exactly what any good husband would do. I listened to my wife. “Cherry, Banana Split, Oreo, Blueberry, Grape, Watermelon,” I stood in line at the Icee Shack with four people behind me and read the entire menu. All fifty-two flavors. I heard quite a few sighs of frustration coming from the back of the line and a few giggles. Amy finally decided on her usual Strawberry Kiwi. I couldn’t believe it. “You’re kidding,” I said. “That’s the very first thing I said and you still made me stand here and read the menu?” “I had to be sure. I thought something else might sound better, but I guess it didn’t,” Amy replied. “Hurry home. I miss you.” Looking back on it now, I’m amazed that I survived this pregnancy. I guess that

41 sounds pretty strange coming from a guy, but let me tell you, it’s almost as hard on us as it is the woman. My son, Michael Austin Kendall, was born on January 25, 2004. The delivery is another story in itself. Aside from Amy’s screams of pain and her threatening to cut off various body parts of mine (I’m sure can imagine), everything was smooth sailing. The instant Michael was born, Amy and I fell totally in love with this child that we had brought into the world. Yesterday evening when I came home from work, I walked into the kitchen and found a neatly wrapped package with my name on it sitting on the counter. I opened the box and inside was a card from Amy.

Michael,

I could never thank you enough for all you have done for me. Thank you for putting up with me the past nine months. I know I haven’t been the easiest person to deal with, but you were always so understanding. And most of all, thank you for giving me a wonderful son. You mean the world to me and I love you.

Amy

With tears in my eyes, I looked in the bottom of the box and found two tickets to a North Carolina Panthers game in November. For the first time since our son’s birth, I realized that I had missed the Super Bowl. But somehow, that didn’t seem to matter anymore. I went into the bedroom and found Amy lying on the bed asleep, her arms around our sleeping newborn. They looked so peaceful. I knew then that I had the sweetest wife in the world. To think that she went and bought the two of us tickets to a football game after I had spent the past nine months complaining. I went over to the side of the bed and put my arms around Amy and kissed Michael on the cheek, knowing that no football game could ever compare to the feeling that I had right then.

42 Essay 1st Place John Foster Captain John

Captain John had a way with words. I remember when my sister was still in dia- pers; every time she would soil them when we came to visit he would lean over and tell me she was “making treasures” for mom to find. Indeed, if that’s what treasures were I was sure to never become a treasure hunter! I was only five years old at the time my sister was making treasures, but I never forgot how Captain John or Grand- pa as I called him could conjure up the coolest little phrases to describe those things in life that were, well, less than pleasant. When people he knew had passed on, he would never say that they had died, that just wasn’t the Captain; he would say that they’d taken a “dirt nap”. That one is probably one of my favorites. If he had been alive during the whole movement to make things politically correct, he would definitely gone down as one of the founding fathers. After all he was the first to tell my mother that she wasn’t short, just “verti- cally challenged”. Grandpa had his own mental dictionary, that’s for sure. I remember one par- ticular conversation at dinner when I was about seven; he was going off about how the people in Washington were all “crooks”. I looked up at him and I just had to ask “What’s a crook Grandpa?” He told me to look up the words “banker” and “politi- cian” in the dictionary and I’d learn all there was to know about the “real crooks of this country”. Needless to say, Captain John did not like banks. He did not trust them; he kept all his money wadded up in a pair of old socks in his dresser drawer. That was where he kept everything important. The four pair of khakis he wore in rotation through the week along with a few button up shirts were up top in easy reach. Below that there were a few empty Crown Royal bottles he had saved to remember special occasions. Now that I think about it, if Crown Royal was for special occasions, Scotch was for everyday drinking. Grandpa wasn’t a drunk, but he did enjoy a good “snort” of Scotch as he called it, every now and then, of course. Grandpa’s gift for words also lent itself to some great storytelling. I wrote a paper once in high school on JFK and I decided one Sunday afternoon to pay grandpa a 43 visit and see if he could lend any insights into my project. As it turns out, he had quite a lot to say. I was seventeen years old at the time and until that day I never knew that during the time my Grandparents were living in Texas, they had been neighbors with George Bush Senior and his family. He proceeded to tell me the story of how JFK’s Granddad secured the family fortune. What he did, according to Grandpa was to stockpile as much alcohol as he could afford to and as soon as prohibition went into effect, he proceeded to bootleg it with the help of certain mob connections, and thus the family fortune, as well as the much publicized ties to organized crime were born. While this was interesting enough to be sure, I had to ask; “What does all this have to do with the assassination of JFK?” Now grandpa had three veins in his forehead. The one that ran up the center would bulge when he was slightly agitated and the other two which ran up the sides of his receding gray hair line only made their presence know on special occasions. My question had precipitated such an occasion; if there was one thing he couldn’t stand it was being interrupted in the middle of telling a story. “Patience!” he exclaimed. “Who do you think was head of the CIA when JFK was assassinated?!!” “I don’t know grandpa, who?” “George Bush!” he replied. According to grandpa, Bush made the hit on JFK because long as JFK was running the country, then it was really being run by the mob, and if any crook was going to be running the country it was going to be him, not JFK. So there I had it, a story so explosive that I dared not write it. I copped out and went with the Oswald angle instead. Grandpa didn’t care much for politicians, but he always voted. He said it was up to us to pick the “lesser of the two crooks”. I wish he had been around to see the circus they had in Florida last election. I think my Grandmother does a good job of emulat- ing how he would have responded to that whole mess. Captain John got his title for being a navy captain during WWII. His friends would always call him captain when they would come by to visit. He never talked much about the war and I somehow knew not to ask. I could tell by the respect he got from his friends that he must have been a powerful man in those days but I could also tell that he had moved on and was much happier with his role as father and grandfather. Grandpa passed a few years ago, and my grandmother now lives alone in the two story house they once shared. Each summer, I travel back home to the place I grew up, and always spend a few days visiting my grandmother. She is always telling me how much I remind her of John. I never really noticed it that much before, but when I look down at the khaki pants I’m wearing and realize that I don’t own enough to last a whole week without washing, I cant help but to see a little of the Captain in myself. For the record though, I’m not a cheap or sloppy dresser, I’m just fashionably challenged.

44 Essay 2nd Place Jeanie Brehl The Grande Dame of Mt. Washington

‘Didgie” was my grandmother’s name. Her nephew, Danny, stuttered it out for “Virginia” one day and it stuck for a lifetime. Her real name was “Virginia Murphy Buchart Miller.” Her two daughters duti- fully named their first born daughters “Virginia.” I was one of the two” Virginias” nicknamed “Jeanie.” It never made sense to me to be called that, but in the Grande dame’s family you could make your own rules. Didgie’s guidelines for living were taught to me as a young child. There is no color but green for home décor. Pray to St. Anthony for lost keys, dogs, cats or gloves. Every home should contain Holy Water for blessing children with fevers. Holy Wa- ter from the shrine at Lourdes should be reserved for more serious illness as Lourdes Holy Water was like the high octane, premium of holy waters. All babies and young children take a “sun bath” for at least 20 minutes a day. Stop having a bored look when adult visitors came to call on her even if the Pinky Lee show was immediately turned off. “People can read you like a book; it is un- seemly. Be more animated and smile.” Get your throat blessed on St. Blaze’s feast day so you won’t choke on a fish bone or get sore throats. Multiple layers of scarves also prevented sore throats in the win- tertime. Never smile in a formal picture as it looks common. Not smiling is aristocratic. To keep from having my father’s “McDonald” nose I should pinch my nostrils closed when reading or watching television. If all prayer is failing, then pray to St. Jude for lost causes or read the prayer to Our Lady of Perpetual Help. My mother prayed to Our Lady of Perpetual Help in church on Sundays while raising us. I do not know if she needed help with my three brothers and me or her mother. Didgie’s husband, Oscar, died in the great flu epidemic of 1918 in Louisville, Ken-

45 tucky where she was born and raised. He was only 28 and my mother, Frances, only 8 months old. Didgie was 27 and sick with the influenza but survived. An old obitu- ary stated that due to “the contagion of the influenza” there would be no funeral or service at the cemetery. My grandmother returned to her childhood home with my mother. It was a great Victorian home called “ Windsor Place” in Louisville’s Cherokee Park area. Her Mama and Papa lived there along with her famous architect uncles, the Murphy Brothers, who designed the original Churchill Downs and many churches, and busi- nesses in Louisville. Papa was the Louisville city tax assessor for 30 years and a popular man around town despite his job. His sister, Nora, a school teacher lived there with Mama and a cast of help. My mother remembers her Uncle Pete sending her stuffed monkey up the dumb waiter to her. Childish laughter rang from the third floor as she sent her favorite monkey back down to her uncle. Didgie remarried when my mother was six years old and moved to Mt. Sterling. It was a small town of six thousand with a pecking system that was hard to crack. Her husband, “Daddy John,” operated a small town department store with “women’s and children’s apparel” plus carpet and linoleum. People came from far and wide to have “Mr. John” fit their children for school shoes with ‘enough room to grow.’ They would marvel at his accurate predictions of childhood growth in Buster Brown shoes. Daddy John was a kind man without a cross bone in his body. He once kept an embezzling employee saying to her “I know that you will never do this again.” And she didn’t. Didgie frequently informed guests that her aunt was a Mother Superior of the Ursiline order of nuns in Minnesota and her great uncle Daniel Francis Murphy a former Archbishop in Australia. She owned his gold handled walking stick. Her bragging fell with a thud on Baptist ears in Mt. Washington. The ladies arched their eyebrows at each other in a secret code that did not bode well for Didgie. Didgie had a doorbell buzzer installed on the floor at the head of the table in the dining room. She impatiently pressed her foot on it quite often causing a dissonant, spine- chilling noise in the kitchen to summon Fannie or Annie Laurie in their black uniforms with white aprons to tend to her guest needs and pass a dish again. She frequently served lunch to her friends in this formal dining room with a large oil portrait of my aunt dressed all in white, not smiling, regal pose hovering in a gold frame like an apparition over the silver punch bowl from Windsor Place. She confided in me “to get invitations in Mt. Washington all you have to do is hang a sandwich out the window.” Even though I was a child, I knew the ladies of Mt.

46 Washington would be as mad as wet hens if they heard that comment. When dining out with Didgie, we all held our breath as she took her first sip of coffee. If it didn’t come close to burning the roof of her mouth, she would declare the coffee “too damn cold.” Waiters might be summoned several times to keep bringing her yet warmer coffee. If the coffee was the right temperature on the first sip, we ex- haled a massive breath of relief. Didgie was a beautiful bride and in later years a distinguished looking genteel lady with white hair, and mischievous deep blue eyes, who wore silk print dresses bought in Lexington on the sly(not at Daddy John’s store). She wore dark glasses in the house and carried reading glasses on a chain around her neck, or perched on top of her head. She often watched her soaps in the afternoons where she claimed to doze off in “As the World Turns” and wake up in “Another World.” She spoke of the characters like they were real people on the phone to her lady friends. “Now why did Tom run off with Betty? Mary is such a nice girl; it just doesn’t make sense!” Overhearing these conversations I tried to figure out who the floozies were in our town. She loved her dogs Hedi Lamar, Friend and later Puppy. She believed they should run free, a notion not shared by her next door neighbor who complained regularly. Hedi and Friend chased cars on North Maple nipping at tires until each died a hor- rible death of strychnine poisoning. The attorney next door was suspected as myste- rious pet deaths paralleled his moves about town. Didgie was inconsolable at her pet’s death beds nearly collapsing on to the floor. Being branded as a pet killer was as evil as it could get in Mt. Washington. The ladies talked on the phone and hanged his reputation. She had founded the Human Society in town and so had a wide support group for her grief. . Didgie and Daddy John owned one of the first televisions in town. They liked the news with John Cameron Swayze who advertised the Timex that “takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin’,” “The Lawrence Welk Show,” “What’s my Line?” and “Playhouse 90.” Didgie brought her husband bourbon and soda in a sweating sterling silver julep cup on a silver tray with store bought cookies for supper in front of the TV almost every night. Daddy John would say, “Thank you, Virginia, it looks delicious” every time. She had no idea how to cook and didn’t want to heat up leftovers. Any grandchildren staying over scrounged for peanut butter and jelly that they made themselves. The Murphy’s in Louisville had been a musical family and Didgie loved to play

47 her baby Grand piano. She played church hymns and Stephen Foster songs. Her favorite was “Beautiful Dreamer.” On her stereo she played Irish songs from her “Holi- day in Dublin” album. “Danny Boy” always made her quiet and tearful. She loved to sing along with: “Show me the way to go home. I’m tired and I want to go to bed. I had a little drink about an hour ago and it went right to my head. Where ever I may roam on land or sea or foam you can always hear me singing this song. Show me the way to go home.” This song made her laugh every time and we grandchildren sang it along with her. . Sometimes, we drove to see my Aunt Anne and her family in Illinois. We said an assortment of traveler’s prayers mostly to St. Joseph and St. Christopher for safety and the rosary too. I never felt so safe as traveling snuggled in the car with my Mom, Didgie and Daddy John praying our way to Peoria. Didgie, my Aunt Anne, and my mother amused themselves by creating nicknames for their friends. The lady next door said, “Woo, Woo” when she stepped out into the heat of the summer to tend her porch flower boxes. She was always called “Woo, Woo.” Other friends were called “Oh Law,” “Thankkk Youuuu,” “Bless His Heart,” and “The Great Lady” to mention only a few. The three of them would laugh themselves nearly into breathless hysterics with happy tears flowing down their cheeks over a good story or when a new nickname was created. Didgie’s greatest love was for her young, handsome, deceased husband, Oscar. He, of course, had the advantage of being young, handsome, and deceased forever. When she spoke of him, it was with a combination of sadness and adoration. She loved him best and time did not erode that love. She never spoke his name in front of Daddy John. Christmas was a tough time for Didgie. She kept her living room very dark when listening to the Christmas Perry Como Show where Perry always sang “Ave Marie,” and “Oh Holy Night.” If you dared to glimpse her way, you saw tears streaming down her face as she thought of Oscar, Momma and Poppa. At Christmas, Daddy John usually gave her a gift like six pair of nylons from his store. She acted thrilled to receive just the right personal gift. I wondered, if she didn’t, what gift Oscar would have chosen She bought her grandchildren special gifts. I was given a spinet piano with a mut- ing practice pedal which I was highly encouraged to use by my whole family. It was hard to deny that she had been the source of money for the crate of Rhesus monkeys my brother, Dan, ordered from a zoological supply house. How was he to know that they couldn’t survive a Kentucky winter and must winter over in his room? Since she

48 did things to help us out quietly, I guess I will never know if she helped my brother pay for his first car or did he earn the money as my father and I were led to believe Didgie was one of the original scrap bookers as she kept beautiful books of mementos with newspaper clippings and verses and sonnets of poetry written on the pages in a delicate feminine hand. She cut out magazine pictures of dreamy, roman- tic couples placing them near invitations or announcements. An aspiring writer, she often read her stories to her grandchildren. Many were hilarious remembrances of her childhood. In the quiet afternoons and evenings she created her stories and typed them out on her Underwood typewriter. She sent many stories to publishers and received many rejection notices which she kept to herself. It was a day of mourning for us, when we learned that one rejection letter put her over the edge and she gathered up her works and burnt the only copies in a tall metal trash can in her room. My mother said we were never to speak of this incident in front of Didgie. After Daddy John died, Didgie needed someone to live with her as her health failed. Hattie became her companion, friend and employee. Hattie’s son, a drug ad- dict, reportedly stole the Archbishop’s gold handled cane which probably ended up in a pawn shop. Didgie’s dining room was changed into her bedroom on the first floor as she could no longer climb the stairs. Aunt Anne’s regal portrait had long been shipped to her home in Peoria and in its place hung an oil painting of the seaside. Didgie died a peaceful death at 86 in her own bed with her daughters, Frances, and Anne at her side. Her daughters swore that Momma and Poppa were there too. By then the dining room buzzer, now under her bed, instead of the dining room table was no doubt hooked up to heaven. I hope St. Peter didn’t keep her waiting too long at Heaven’s Gate.

49 Essay 3rd Place Sharyn Martin Orange Crush and Drunken Pigs

Benjamin Harrison Winegar, hereafter known as Papaw, came into the world No- vember 4, 1893. Knowing him as we did, we feel assured that although it was probably a joyous occasion, it was undoubtedly a loud one. Growing up in eastern Hawkins County, Tennessee, near the Virginia line, meant living by the river. Papaw would tell stories of his childhood to my brother and me, his only grandchildren at the time. He would almost come to tears telling of his sister Sally, who drowned in the Holston River trying to get from one shore to the other in a small boat. Sally was “tetched”, he said, but we probably know it now as bipolar. “She was the best ‘hand’ with a flatiron”, he’d say. He used to tell of when he tried to iron his own shirts and on one occasion Sally said “Here, Ben, let your crazy sister iron that”. Those irons are in my home now, and I never look at them without thinking of Sally, and wondering what was going through her mind when she got into that boat. World War I sent Papaw to France. He never did talk much about the war, but pictures show a tall, solemn faced young man standing proud in his uniform and leggings. He wrote to a young lady during this time and they exchanged several letters. She asked for a picture of him, and thinking this was a wonderful omen, he sent one. He never heard from her again. It probably didn’t do too much to bolster his ego at the time but later he would laugh when telling the story, although my grandmother failed to see the humor. Papaw often told about he and his fellow soldiers standing at attention. Body lice were a large problem due to lack of proper sanitary conditions and most of these men were afflicted with the creatures. The officer in charge would stop at each man,- dar ing the soldier to flinch or bat an eye. As soon as the officer went down the line, feet started moving. The lice would be underneath the leggings, and the soldiers would try to kick the devils and kill them while trying to maintain composure, still standing for inspection.

50 My grandparents married in the early 1920’s. My father was born in 1924, and after that my grandmother assumed her work was done. My grandfather loved her totally and completely, although we remember her as a self-centered woman. Her name was Bessie, but Papaw always called her Bet. As long as I can remember, he waited on my grandmother, cooked meals and either did the laundry or someone from Kingsport Laundry came by and picked up a bag of laundry each week. Every- thing that could be laundered commercially was and pieces we have now still show the BHW mark somewhere. He was a Baptist preacher, pastoring a church when I was young. He was one of the old style preachers….the kind who held his hand behind his ear and would chant and get louder and louder, preaching hell hot. He could hold his breath longer than anyone else I knew. I didn’t know there was any other kind of preaching until I grew up. Papaw worked many years at the Mead Corporation, or the pulp mill, as he called it. My grandparents and my father lived for several years in Carter’s Valley before moving to Kingsport. During this time, Papaw had to wade the river twice each day to walk to work, which was several miles. There was no bridge, and if the river was up, this could be quite dangerous. Every night his dog, Betty, would be waiting for him at the top of the hill when he waded across the river. Papaw was invited to Ridgefields Country Club for a special dinner given by Mead for some men in his department. He left home and came back just a short time later. He had gotten there around noon and no one there knew anything about a dinner at that time. The receptionist checked the calendar and told him the dinner was sched- uled for six that evening. He told her that had to be wrong. Dinner was as twelve and supper was at five. His retirement led to some great adventures. My dad decided we would all go to Norfolk, Virginia, to see Cleo, his foster sister, who was actually his first cousin. Papaw had raised Cleo and she had moved to Norfolk after marrying a Navy career man. Papaw, Mamaw and me were all stuffed in the back seat of an old ‘40 something car; my parents and my younger brother in the front. I say “stuffed” because my grandmother was what she called “stout”. HOT does not begin to describe the climate inside this car in July with the windows all tightly shut. Mamaw would com- plain of any air blowing through the windows and we all suffered rather than listen to “Ben, you’re jostling me, Ben, that air’s too cold. Ben this, Ben that”. Well, we stopped somewhere in northern Virginia at a small store. Papaw got us all some soft drinks, or dopes, as we called them then. Piling back in the car, I was again squashed in the middle of the back seat between my grandparents. I finished my Orange Crush and gave the bottle to Papaw. As littering was not the sin then that it is now, Papaw drew back to sling the empty bottle out the window. “Thwack”. A

51 sickening sound. He drew his arm back again. “Thwack”, a little louder. “My God, Pap”, dad shouted. Papaw had tried to throw the bottle through the window that had to be kept rolled up because Mamaw thought the air was too cool. We finished our trip with a window that looked like spiderwebs. My mother and father married in 1945 and lived with my grandparents for a few months. They were awakened around three one morning by loud noises coming from the back yard. Daddy got to the kitchen about the same time as Papaw, who was carrying his mattress out the back door. Daddy looked out and all the parts of Papaw’s bed were scattered across the yard. Water was boiling on the stove. Papaw insisted that bedbugs were invading the bed, so he had taken it down and was pouring boiling water on all the slats, springs, whatever. Daddy and Mother then decided it was time to move on. Papaw never could abide insects inside the house. Ants lived short lives anywhere around him. A few made the deadly decision to crawl up the center leg of his kitchen table. He went to his shop and came back with a piece of tin, which he nailed about midway up on the table leg. He then sealed this with a tar like mixture and filled it with water. His table was probably the only one in the world guarded with a moat. Our home in Carters Valley was where my grandfather grew up. We had a lot of relatives in the valley then, and my Uncle Edgar, Papaw’s brother, lived just up the road. We raised chickens and pigs when I was young, and Uncle Edgar had sold dad some pigs. My mother made apple butter right after we bought the pigs, and that evening we took all the apple peelings and cores to the pig lot and tossed them into the trough. The next morning we went to check on the pigs and take them water, and they were staggering all over the lot, couldn’t stand up, falling down, looking really strange. My mother went straight back to the house and called Uncle Edgar, telling him there was something wrong with the pigs he’d sold us. Well, Papaw and Uncle Edgar came down, looked at the pigs, looked in the trough, and just started laughing. Mother didn’t see anything funny about several dollars worth of sick pigs and demanded to know the joke. “They’re drunk”, Uncle Edgar said between snorts of laughter. The apple peelings had fermented and the pigs got snockered. Ever see a drunken pig? Papaw loved having his picture made. I was moving to Chicago in the late 60’s and wanted pictures of everyone before I left. My grandfather always wore khaki work clothes and long sleeved shirts year around. The picture I made shows Papaw wearing the usual khakis and a black bow tie. He always “dressed up” to have his picture made and since I’d caught him off guard, this was the best he could do. My mother still talks about how he always dressed in a suit until my sister got married. Papaw came to the wedding in a sport coat, work pants, no tie. Didn’t matter. The wedding was a disaster in the making anyway. My mother has told me about Papaw’s stories of death and cemeteries. His brother, 52 C.E., was known for drinking and bootlegging during the 1920’s. C.E. and a friend were making a bootlegging run one night, and just before dawn decided to lay down to sleep. They were probably both drunk at the time and neglected to notice the rail- road tracks beside them. This incident brought C.E. to a rude awakening when the train came by and he couldn’t pull his friend from the tracks. The man was decapi- tated. Papaw said that when anybody died in the country, family or neighbors built a wooden coffin and dug the grave, usually in a church yard. The coffin was loaded into a horse drawn wagon and the mourners walked along side singing “We’re going to the grave with this body.” Papaw was a worker just as long as he could work. He probably was in his 70’s when he tried to fix the roof on his house. Not a good idea. He started sliding off the porch roof, couldn’t stop, and landed on his feet in the back yard. This resulted in a crushed ankle. When that got better, he thought he’d help the deliveryman who’d brought a load of rock to dad’s house. Papaw was standing in the back of the dump truck, pushing out the rock when the load shifted and the truck turned over. He was under the rocks, and this time broke his leg. This kept him down for quite a while, but he kept thinking of other projects while he was incapacitated. Painting was never one of his strong suits. He always felt the brighter the colors, the better, and as many colors as possible. His house was the only one on the block with a blue porch floor, dark green railings and columns, and his favorite, robin-egg blue for the ceiling. He had a beautiful antique dresser and he was not happy with the knobs and handles. This resulted in a unique piece of furniture when the original hardware was replaced with bright blue plastic. He thought it was lovely. The fancier clothes were, the better he liked them. Buttons, bows, lace, whatever. When I was a small child, he loved to buy dresses for me. My mother cringed each time he came with a bag from Charles Store or JC Penney’s. She knew it would be something that required a lot of care and hours of ironing. Crinolines and ruffles were a favorite. I was probably four or five when he bought me a dress with a hoop skirt. I’d never seen anything like this, let alone worn one, and had no idea of hoop skirt etiquette. I wore it to church one Sunday morning. As soon as I sat down, this hoop shot straight up over my head. I looked like an umbrella turned wrong side out. I can’t remember wearing it the second time. We sometimes talk about how he would have adjusted to technology now. I can- not imagine him dealing with an automated telephone system. By the time he heard “punch one”, “punch two” would not have had a chance. The phone would have been out in the street. This was a man who never believed the United States, or anyone else, put a man on the moon. Papaw drove everywhere until he finally realized he better quit, and then he let my mother take over. He called her his secretary. Papaw found out he couldn’t bear 53 not being able to go where and when he wanted to. One summer day, he came up our driveway. On his lawn tractor. He had driven the lawn tractor from his home in West View, through Midfield Subdivision, and along the bluff ‘til he came by the river and to the house. He was not a man to be outdone. His driving did give us a great deal of concern. He had driven to town one day and coming back had gotten totally confused. He drove by his own house four times before he realized where he was. My grandmother became ill and suffered from dementia. This was a great burden for my grandfather who tried his best to care for her himself. She had long hair which she had always worn plaited and wound around her head and pinned with long hair pins. She would barely let him brush her hair and certainly would not allow him to braid it. She would hit him and yell and he just was at a loss. My sister came by one day and noticed something looked different. Papaw had pulled my grandmother’s hair up in one long strand and cut it off to her scalp leaving her with a most unusual hair style. Papaw became ill in early 1984 and suffered from congestive heart failure. This resulted in many trips to the hospital and during this time my grandmother was admitted to the hospital as well. Our family was at the hospital weeks at a time, trying to care for each one, and many times during these months both grandparents were in the hospital at the same time. My grandmother was finally admitted to a nursing home in Johnson City and had only been there a couple of days when my Dad received the call that she had died. My grandfather was home at this time and we went to give him the news. He had wanted to make sure she was taken care of and now his job was over. He gave instructions for Mamaw’s funeral arrangements, and wanted her funeral in the church he had once pastored. Papaw became sicker after Mamaw’s funeral and we made another trip to the hospital. The heart failure caused his breathing to be labored and loud, and he began to swell from fluids gathering in his body. We brought electric fans to try to keep him cool because he felt he was smothering and in reality, he was. My grandfather died Memorial Day weekend, 1984, thirty-three days after my grandmother’s death. He died having most of his family around him, even if he didn’t know it at the time. He would have loved all this attention because one of his greatest pleasures was having people fuss over him. The traditional hearse should have been replaced by a horse drawn wagon carrying his coffin and mourners walking along side singing, “We’re going to the grave with this body”.

54 Essay Honorable Mention Barbara Dockery i (understood)

this is my story. this is me sticking to my story. this is me not giving up halfway through, thinking all my pages are complete crap, crumpling and tossing. this is what i sound like when i’ve made three starts already. i’ve said it before [not to you, there are others] and i’ll say it again, i do everything backwards and if i’m lucky three is my charm. i rarely practice good grammar; it is my opinion that all letters, numbers, words and phrases should be created equal except in cases where things such as capitaliza- tion and say, comma’s would reduce confusion. [breathe] sometimes i choose to confuse you deliberately, trip you over your own two feet and make you wonder which one of us is stupid. i can do whatever i want here, my paper. i can begin in perfect present tense - slip you the hyphen - and then skip the next …, or i can laugh or haha [with or without exclamations] or draw you a picture with words of how my face squishes up when it’s pouring wet from the hee haw’s all red and puffy from no air while i’m sucking in laughter and watching it pour back out of me. [running on fused sentences]. sticking to my subject i’ll go ahead and say, i think wrinkles are called laugh lines because you notice them most when mixed with intense humor. [it’s called elaboration] i can even talk to you from inside my head without saying a word. [feel the power] i am licensed; i write, therefore i am. words never escape me although sometimes my mouth won’t allow me to speak them. conflict. where was i? oh yes, backward motion, i bathe in it. i love to ride facing backwards in a car and watch the road run away from me. going forward is so aggressively not my nature.

55 that’s the most exciting part of my obsession with reverse and it’s such a long story i don’t think i’ll tell it. i’m allowed to lose patience with my own rambling and move on. [passive voice position in a ghostly sauce] i wield this pencil and name her two-edge, one for each side of me. [simple as that] so far she’s delivered me to and from the gates of hell. can’t wait to see what’s next, of late i’ve been floating aimlessly along a stream that branches off the river of evolution. i use these words well together they contrive my shield. trustworthy not enough to speak aloud her thoughts align as weapons holding men in revelry. [up shifting third gear in person] she will make you come here or go away, turn you as off and on as she pleases playing god with the switch that makes the light go off and on in your head. flip, flop, flap and flit. [onomatopoeia and stuff] keeps most of this to herself. leaves out crucial information you need. [fragmenta- tion expertise] complete sentences, five in ten have trouble, she is one in five. you, you, you, you, you. [second gear in person] barely worth mentioning, it is [understood]. you exist, else i do not. i am ready to move on again. [imperative] still with me? [indicative] if so i have created your need. [subjunctive] this element is crucial to my success and to fail you is to fail me. i am unprepared. there are few desires within me to lead any race aside from yours. i crave your complete attention and seek for you to demand mine. as these words meet your eyes our lips now touch, your hands falling to my paper waist. we are locked inside the millimoment before emotion surges and your beliefs will follow as ragged intakes, your mind will pause and rewind and i will get off on it. creations are extreme selfish existences designed to bend will, cave divinity, but the combination of you and i as we both travel left to right is seduction at it’s best. [metaphoric transplantation] like all good magic, herein lies the hidden secret to my tricks. utter silence and the lack of it. i am requiring today only hushes and harnessing the wild ones thoughts, putting the rest of my stock into safety netting. [modifiers dangle taunting and grin- able before my hungry eyes and watering mouth] freedom comes disguised, packed tightly into microscopic multi-use boxes and tins. safety pins. definated opinionage on freedom: this page can contain any person, place or thing [nounish], any way [think verb], any time i desire [present tense just passed]. with all due respect to you, to mine own self i am true as my guts push the lead across this page leaving you in their wake. [antecedent, you’ve just been served] i amble onward toward nothing dragging you alongside the fences of creativity making positive to bounce your head off every wretched post.

56 running on shortened fuses by now there has been very little silence today. to ref- erence this chain of events i will remind you of my inability to follow the rules. you’re not missing it, there really is no structure here. is there? [hook, line and thinker] pssst… parallelism? i can’t decide, but you can if you like and if you think this is a stroke of genius think again; picture a girl flipping through her english book bored and home alone. [coordination not so good; natural born klutz] word choice. three words. too many choices. [persona plays a staggering role] something out of the blue, a change up if you will - possessiveness is the pits. take this paper for instance, it’s either mine or yours or jack’s or james’s. we even hold races to see who can possess something first. roses’ petals fall closest to their owner. finding something within your grasp means it was meant to be possessed by you. a manual on knowing when not to stretch beyond our reach would be helpful in such situations. don’t you think? i’m a bit more content with this story now than when i first began but it happens too, that i might become bored with the chore of proving my point. the race to possess you is cross-country jogging at best and i am out of breath again. practicing strategy with no pain and no gain, my tormentors, i am praying to end on an appositive note. you see, the key to this personally argumentative essay is to present and defend my point on the uselessness of rules when imagination is introduced and since you’ve made it this far, my work here is done. post script: [could i get an A on this please thanks that would help a lot…]

57 Painting 1st Place Scott Silcox

Mask, Sunstroke, The Return

58 Painting 2nd Place Jenny Salyers

Blue Venice

59 Painting 3rd Place Adam Barnette

Exotic Birds 60 Painting Honorable Mention Crystal Cox

Sounds Hawaiian

61 Painting Honorable Mention Kathy Roberts

Lighthouse

62 Drawing 1st Place Jenny Salyers

It’s a Long Road Ahead 63 Drawing 2nd Place Angie Orndorff

Tractor

64 Drawing 3rd Place Angie Orndorff

Butterfly 65 Drawing Honorable Mention Keaton Lawson

Chaos/Kay-oss/K-oss 66 Drawing Honorable Mention Kathleen Anderson

Italian Made 67 Drawing Honorable Mention Steven Elkins

Under the Lamp 68