Authors: Judy Christie
Miss Pearl told the story of naming Kevin. “Her daddy already had two daughters and thought this baby was going to be his boy. He chose the name of his younger brother who had been killed in the Korean War. When Baby Girl Number Three arrived, he was not to be swayed.” At this point, Mr. Marcus jumped in. “Besides, I figured this surprise gal was going to do something special with her life and having a man's name couldn’t hurt a bit.”
Kevin laughed during much of the story, saying it had certainly made life interesting. “I am on some pretty wild mailing lists,” she said, “ranging from Viagra advertisements to
Playboy
subscription offers. You just wouldn’t believe what can happen when people think you’re a man.”
“So you have a private practice here?” I asked.
“I’m in a two-person family practice office with a physician who wants to retire in a year or two. He needed a partner badly, and not that many young docs want to move to towns like Green. I’ve been back for almost two years. You should see what happens when new patients walk in.” But she told the story without a trace of bitterness, as though she understood she was a different kind of doctor for this little town.
Part of what made that meal so good was the food, part was the talk, sitting around a table in a real home, visiting, laughing. The business of the association had been temporarily set aside, and I was there as a newcomer to town, someone who needed a warm welcome during this cool season. I did not want to leave. This was the first place I had felt comfortable in quite a few days.
After supper, we moved back into the living room for coffee and a frozen pound cake that Miss Pearl had heated, apologizing she didn’t have a fresh one for us. As we chatted, the talk turned again to the neighborhood association. I asked Kevin about her house-building experience, and she wrinkled up her face.
“Do we really want to go over that story?” she asked. “It's sort of old news to me.”
“If you wouldn’t mind …” my voice trailed off, and then I started again. “It would help me gain perspective on what's going on. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about the community.”
For ten minutes or so, Kevin told about moving back to Green, living with her parents for a few months, and choosing a place to live. “I finally had some money to spend after med school, and I wanted something nice. I guess if I admit it, I wanted people to know I was doing just fine.”
The first house she tried to buy was in Mossy Bend, a town-house right on the water. She went through an open house one Sunday and made an offer on Monday. The owner turned her down flat. So on Tuesday she met his price, determined to have that house.
“The next day he took it off the market,” she said, twisting her face up again. “Said his sister and brother-in-law were moving back to town in a few months and were going to live there.”
“The house sat vacant for several months and then went back on the market and sold to a young white couple. It was pretty clear Mossy Bend wasn’t ready for people like us,” Marcus Taylor said.
“Now, Daddy, we don’t know that,” Kevin said, but she reached out and patted his leg.
“Then I decided to build a house, over near the motel, on some property Mama and Daddy own. I hired an architect and adapted plans for one of those great houses that sit up on stilts. But the zoning commission wouldn’t approve my plans. Said it was too close to the lake, and drainage wasn’t adequate. I redid the plans and pushed the house site back. They turned me down again. Now six months later they plan to build a whole slew of houses like that, in almost the same place.”
She smiled, but her words had taken on a little bite. “Now I rent a house across the street in the black part of town,” she said, emphasizing the last words. “It only has one bathroom and no central heat or air, but the neighbors don’t mind having me. And I sure am saving a lot of money.”
“But that's wrong,” I said. “That's blatant discrimination. How can they get away with that?”
“Things have been done a certain way in Green for many years,” her father said.
“I know something will open up,” Kevin said, shrugging. “These things have a way of working out when the time is right.”
Suddenly the Taylor house didn’t seem so cozy. I needed to get back to the newspaper and work on the mayor's retirement story with Alex.
Red carcasses fill pails next to the picnic benches at the home
of Mayor Oscar Myers. “This is what I live for,” the ninety-
two-year-old mayor said, ripping the head off a crawfish.
“Mudbug season is here, and every year we invite the entire
neighborhood. This year it's bigger and better than ever.”
—The Green News-Item
W
hile my early days in Green seemed to crawl by, the next couple of months flew. It was as though someone had taken my life off slow motion and put it on fast forward. My mind was jammed so full of new information that I didn’t know what to do. I practically lived at the newspaper office.
People came out of the woodwork to talk to me about this problem or that. They included Miss Barbara Beavers, dress shop owner and regular advertiser: “I do not like the way my ads look. They are smeared, and you can’t tell the difference between the house coats and the evening gowns.”
And Bud Dillon, “no relation to Matt, ma’am,” who wrote a folksy farming column. “We need more agriculture coverage. It's the backbone of our country. People depend on
The News-Item
for farm prices and new varieties of soy beans and such.”
Some people, like Bud, were friendly characters who made living in Green richer and worthwhile. Others, like Miss Barbara, could be mean-spirited and bossy.
In addition, I was soon called upon by a number of special-interest groups, the number and variety a surprise to me in such a small place. “Can you help us with our literacy fund-raiser?” “Can we count on your support for the Catfish Festival?” “Would you make a donation to the Friends of the Confederacy?”
Many meetings began with polite civility and deteriorated into my feeling evil and misunderstood. “We don’t think we are getting the coverage we might expect,” one club would say. “The newspaper's position is clearly biased,” another would complain.
From our position on zoning to litter control, we drew criticism. What distressed me was how many people seemed to think you were a bad person if you disagreed with them. “We can disagree without being disagreeable” became one of my least favorite phrases, since it generally preceded the newspaper getting blasted with both barrels.
Mercifully, these meetings were punctuated by the “social callers,” those who wanted to say hello and welcome me to town. They often brought a cake or produce or flowers from their yards. “We want you to know how happy we are to have you in Green.” “We’d love to have you speak to our garden club.” “This is the recipe that won first place at our Homemaker's Tea. We hope you enjoy it and our community.”
At first I tried to refuse the small gifts, citing the age-old newspaper conflict of interest issue. However, Iris Jo and Tammy intervened, telling me that refusing was seen as arrogant or “uppity”—Tammy's word.
“Just go ahead and accept them graciously and share them,” Tammy said. “I hardly think Gertrude Lindsey is trying to buy you with that batch of brownies.”
Some of these individuals became friends, mentors of sorts. They dropped by, or I would run into them on the street, heading into the library or at the grocery store. They would occasionally send me a handwritten note with a word of praise.
Lots of them invited me to church, but I put them off. “I’m still settling in,” I said.
In between all the community meetings, I decided to meet with every person on my payroll and see what we might do to make the newspaper better and maybe make the Green area a better place to live. I considered this Step Two in unloading the paper in a few months, following Step One of relocating to Green and Step Three of moving away from Green.
My first such meeting was with the news staff—all two of them, plus Tammy, who seemed to have a hand in every department. The part-time photographer didn’t show up. “He works for advertising,” Alex said.
We sat down with sandwiches and soft drinks, and Tom immediately spoke. “I’d like to write editorials,” he said, chewing noisily. “For every edition, the way we used to. I can sign up community columnists, too, to give their side of the story.”
Up until shortly before Ed bought the paper,
The News-Item
had used old-fashioned country correspondents, and we decided to bring those back, mostly older women who wrote about comings and goings in their tiny communities.
We roped Tammy into lining those up. She worked the phones like a telemarketer from a major corporation and collected a long list of citizens who produced local news for ten bucks a column. “Dr. and Mrs. Ricky Coffey welcomed out-of-town guest from Waco, Texas, over Easter weekend.” “Estelle Gardner celebrated her ninetieth birthday with five generations at her table.” “The Daisy Fellowship Garden Club invites you to its gumbo supper. All proceeds will go to maintain wildflower areas in the city.” They even helped us cover the all-important local sports, from city leagues to high school games.
Alex was not to be left out during the planning discussion. “I want to do more investigative projects. I’m telling you, something's up with zoning. I can’t quite pin it down, but I’m getting tips about Major Wilson and the McCullers and the projects they’re handling. Plus, I’m hearing a lot of buzz about the proposed route for the new interstate highway.”
Tammy interrupted. “I hear we’re getting a Red Lobster.”
“That's not true,” Tom said. “Green doesn’t have liquor by the drink, and they said they won’t come without a change in our liquor laws.”
“That's not what I hear,” Tammy said, with a sniff. And so our first planning meeting went.
One of my rising expenses was paying for public records, a luxury I had taken for granted in my former life. Sometimes I would see Alex's car in the parking lot at the paper late into the evening or find him sifting through official papers when I came in after a community function.
These community functions were mostly new to me. While I had gotten out some in Dayton, my primary role had been in the newsroom. The workflow and news cycle had often interfered with my attending events—and I had been proud of keeping an arm's length between newsmakers and me. Here it was different.
My phone rang steadily. “We’d like to invite you to our annual banquet, Miss Lois,” a club or business would say. “We’ll have a place for you at the head table.” The calls also came when I could not make it. “Dub and Chuck always found time to attend,” a civic club president said. “Our members will be so disappointed that you won’t be there.”
In between all of this, I was doing some digging of my own, still trying to get to the real story on the newspaper's finances.
I had learned in journalism school to follow the money to the heart of a story, and used this approach at work. I relentlessly analyzed spreadsheets and went to Iris Jo with questions.
Mostly Lee Roy, my money man, stayed out of my way, unless I trapped him in his office. Sometimes I thought he deliberately went the other way when he saw me coming.
“Oh, Lois, just heading out to make sales calls,” he often said. “Need to go check some racks” was another of his lines. I finally forced him to sit down with me and go over a list of advertisers and tried to chart a budget for the third and fourth quarters of the year, an exercise that seemed to displease Lee Roy on every level.
“We’ve been doing it the other way for years,” he said, with a sneer. “It works. Why go fooling around with it when it works?”
“Lee Roy, I have to know more about what is coming in.” I felt my face getting warm. “The last time I looked, my name was on the bank loan.”
For some reason during this conversation, Pastor Jean's sermon that first week in Green popped into my mind. She had said God gives us wisdom to do what we’re supposed to do. After Lee Roy stalked out, I dug around in a stack of papers on my desk and found the notes I jotted that day. “God guides you, no matter who you are. He surrounds you with love and mercy. He provides answers when the questions are hard.” I sure hoped so.
One of the questions I had on my mind was about the girl Katy, and I finally remembered to ask Iris Jo about her. Iris looked solemn and then slowly started talking, her voice quivering slightly.
“Katy's somewhat troubled.” She paused. “She's mad at her mother for remarrying after the death of her father a couple of years ago. Then she lost her boyfriend, Matt, in a bad car wreck out near the church.”