Jennifer Wilson's Blog, page 2
December 1, 2012
Let Us Remember Midget Wass
Twitter Fiction Festival Flash Fiction #6. Epitaph by @ammatte and @KyleMunson. Fiction by Jennifer Wilson.
Here reposes Midget,
a curious poetic mix
of playfulness and wisdom
Yet she but three and six.— @ammatte
Daughter of Pearl the Bearded Lady and Ed the Sword Swallower: Midget Wass was a miracle just for being born the moneymaker act she was. It allowed them to stay in the show. They loved the girl, they loved each other, but mostly, they loved the work that allowed them to live freely and without shame.
Circus life was the only halfway comfortable one for freaks, what with Pearl’s scrubby face and all the holes in Ed’s neck. It was the only home they knew.
The circus train was Midget’s lullabye, and it was assumed by all that, though she was a wee thing, she’d end up with the handsome (and admittedly short) Rodney, son of Steve the Lion Tamer. Rodney and Midget played together mostly behind Pearl’s tent, which was pretty safe considering all the creeps hung out at the booby-show. But when they were over at the lion tamer’s, Pearl and Ed worried. That tiger wasn’t exactly tame. He was almost fully mature when they snatched him from the steppe. Plus, the circus wasn’t a big-dough business; the owners scrimped on meat.
It was terrible the day Rodney grabbed the ball and pushed Midget playfully, she’d fallen right through the tiger bars and into the sawdust. The lion moved like the flash he once was, and Midget lie in shreds.
They shipped what was left back home in a shoe box, trusting her granny (the one who carried the midget genes) would find a suitable resting place. Somewhere with a little space, where she could hear the trains at night.
The circus freaks didn’t judge Pearl and Ed for sending away their daughter for burial in a place they didn’t even know. Freaks don’t leave the circus without considerable trouble, and Midget was a circus baby. She knew, in that place beyond that the show had to go on without her.
Join me @WriterJenWilson Sunday Dec. 2 at 12pm-1pm EST (11 CST) and you’ll be featured on the Twitter Fiction Festival Page– four grave images per hour and you tweet the epitaphs. Use the #TwitterFiction hashtag. Let’s make stories together … and tweet the dead.
Let Us Remember the Infant Albert
Twitter Fiction Festival Flash Fiction #5. Epitaph by @archman9. Fiction by Jennifer Wilson.
They said one had to go, that both wouldn’t make it, your momma died to, she just couldn’t take it.
“Ma’am, I’m very sorry,” I remember telling her. “There isn’t enough time.”
For a doctor, “I’m sorry” is shorthand for what you can’t say. Like the word “God” is shorthand for anything people can’t understand.
Really, there’s nothing of comfort for a woman who is carrying twins, and who can deliver only one. Like it was a race to the birth canal, and she had to pick a winner.
“You’ll have to choose,” I said. But she knew that.
I left the room to give her time. Left her in that room full of glass and sharp things.
Then she did choose.
“Oh, Lillian,” I sighed. I’d bought the stone myself. They hadn’t anyone else to look after them.
“What have you done?”
I put my hat back on, buttoned my coat.
“I’m sorry,” I said one more time, and turned to go.
Join me @WriterJenWilson Sunday Dec. 2 at 12pm-1pm EST (11 CST) and you’ll be featured on the Twitter Fiction Festival Page– four grave images per hour and you tweet the epitaphs. Use the #TwitterFiction hashtag. Let’s make stories together … and tweet the dead.
Let Us Remember Lora May Harry
Twitter Fiction Festival Flash Fiction #4. Epitaph by @karasw and @michelledaug. Fiction by Jennifer Wilson.
Lora May Harry was a teacher, a writer, a lover of books; tho sadly not fast enough to outrun evil crooks.—@michelledaug
They called her the lady in gray.
She swished to the country school every morning, wire-rimmed glasses on the tip of her sharp nose: she was a reader in a town of farmers. An air of class followed her everywhere. Unfortunately, no air of warmth or welcome, and she was alone when she returned from the schoolhouse to start her small warming fire to eat her supper of bread and cheese, maybe some tea on the weekends or a particularly cold day. But tea was rich, and a spinster was not.
Her buttons were so shiny, and her gray flannel dress pressed and tidy. Her grandmother willed the house to her, forseeing her smart little favorite lonely and poor. Because the young ones didn’t remember that, she’d gotten a reputation for being well-to-do.
When the men knocked, she answered.
They found nothing but a bookish woman and her tea. They took one and dumped the other in the Raccoon River. Those who remembered her teaching mourned. But mostly, people don’t remember much.
Still, on cold nights, when the bums build their trash can fires under the bridge, some say they still see Lora May in gray, tall like a post near the warming fire, a dainty flowered cup full of river water in her hand.
Join me @WriterJenWilson Sunday Dec. 2 at 12pm-1pm EST (11 CST) and you’ll be featured on the Twitter Fiction Festival Page– four grave images per hour and you tweet the epitaphs. Use the #TwitterFiction hashtag. Let’s make stories together … and tweet the dead.
Let Us Remember the Turnipseeds
Twitter Fiction Festival Flash Fiction #3. Epitaph by @Archman9. Fiction by Jennifer Wilson.
Our beloved parents, Momma had drowned, but Daddy was never found.—@Archman9
“David, we’re not putting a date.”
“We are. When she died, he died.”
“We don’t know that, brother.”
“We do, Alice.”
I sighed and looked around the funeral director’s office. It was a nice place. Comfortable. Everything mauve and smelling like violets.
Mama drowned that day they went boating. Sure. We saw her. Blue and gaping and weeds on her dress.
But the men never found Pop.
“We won’t put a date, David. He’s not found yet.”
“You think he survived that, sister? You think he really could? Live in reality, woman! Don’t be afraid to grieve him.”
I just felt it. The women in our family. I knew Pop’s burdens. Had heard those quiet and mincing commands Mama was always giving him. How he dreamed of owning a cabin and building a duck blind and putting up a deer stand up north where it was quiet and free and smelled like evergreens.
I looked at the funeral director. A single man, like me. I wondered if he, too, lived with his sister. Alone.
“They should have the same death date, sir,” I repeated.
The director nodded his head imperceptibly. Alice rose and minced from the room. I’d hear all about it. For the rest of my life, probably.
I looked out the director’s window. Swore I caught the flash of old Pop’s silver-tipped cane in the trees.
I rose and left too.
Comes a time when a man needs to drown his troubles and head north.
Join me @WriterJenWilson Sunday at 12pm-1pm EST (11 CST) and you’ll be featured on the Twitter Fiction Festival Page– four grave images per hour and you tweet the epitaphs. Use the #TwitterFiction hashtag. Let’s make stories together … and tweet the dead.
November 30, 2012
Let Us Remember Private Hartsock
Twitter Fiction Festival Flash Fiction #2. Epitaph by Jennifer Dukes Lee; and Nicole Saylor, Michelle Daugherty, Colin Weinshenker, Gena Philibert Ortega. Fiction by Jennifer Wilson.
Survived the musket and the Bowie knife. The war was more civil than his savage wife. — Jennifer Dukes Lee
“You ain’t no better than the dirt you standin’ on!”
Clarabelle was in a state again, Isaac couldn’t help but notice. The booze always got her this way. She’d been such a curly-haired cherub. Red hair. That always got to him. Curled like ribbons, that hair of hers.
It had gotten him through the war, in fact. He kept a hank of it in a locket around his neck. Been shot at, stepped on, pretended himself dead in a pile of men at the Battle of Franklin, down to Tennessee. This was years ago, back in ’64. A lot of men died there.
“Remember the Maine!” Clarabelle was yelling in the kitchen. Goading him. “Too damned old to go fight for what’s right.”
She’d only loved him when she was a soldier, he was sure of it. Now, with that trouble in Cuba, there would be war with Spain. She was so disappointed. She hadn’t anything but a soldier man, and now hers was too old. She was shamed. He had to feel for her. He loved her. He always did.
She slammed down the frying pan. “I ain’t cooking eggs for no one tonight!” She said it, and he knew she meant it. He’d known her when her daddy was cruel to her, unspeakable cruel, and he’d sworn to her he’d save her. He did, got her a real pretty ring too, but her nightmares never stopped. She’d never be over it. He hunkered down. He’d nearly died at Franklin. It was harder at home.
“No eggs tonight,” she muttered low, like a haint in that kitchen. They’d never had babies. Maybe it would have softened her. Poor Clarabelle. Didn’t have anything the other girls had. They couldn’t even afford a horse. He’d bet on one once, trying to make better for them. He nearly hung them by losing. Isaac absorbed the acid, hoping it would leak out of her quick.
It didn’t.
He was long and tall, and he could lean into the shadows. He thought he’d lean right out the door, but Clarabelle caught him. “I said Remember the Maine!” On her tiptoes, straining red and sweating, her face so close to his. He could reach out and touch those red ribbons, just traced with gray. She’d gone fat, too.
“I was only a private, love,” he said in his quiet way. It usually calmed her, his voice like this. “I couldn’t serve now anyway.”
Again, it didn’t.
“You don’t do nothing but take. You’re no soldier. You’re no better than the rest.” She spoke through her teeth. A hiss.
He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Clarabelle, get to bed now,” he said. “You’ve had far too much of that terrible stuff.”
He hadn’t seen it coming. He surely hadn’t. That hot frying pan was worse than the muskets he survived. The Bowie knife that Southern boy brought to his neck, then cried and ran away from him. God spared his life that day. Spared the boy’s, too. He believed in God, if there was a God in war.
She’d screamed when she brought it up side his head, something he couldn’t hear, probably some nonsense that wasn’t her true soul. He died and still knew her, the pure girl defiled, and hit the ground with her, clutching those red ribbons like salvation.
Join me in the Twitter Fiction Festival: You write epitaphs based on grave photos I post daily at @WriterJenWilson. I turn the best into stories here. Join me today at 12pm-1pm EST (11 CST) and you’ll be featured on the Twitter Fiction Festival Page– four grave images per hour and you tweet the epitaphs. Use the #TwitterFiction hashtag. Let’s make stories together … and tweet the dead.
November 29, 2012
Let Us Remember Adelaide
Twitter Fiction Festival Flash Fiction #1. Epitaph by BastianKom, fiction by Jennifer Wilson.
Sailed to the treehouse where the best memories were made. Then floated to the moon with a smile on her face. —BastianKom
She adored it there.
As a girl, all manner of trouble was followed by a quick snip to the tree house behind her mama’s place. Run and run on legs like reeds. She put a salamander in the sugar bowl. Or used the spyglass on her brother and the neighbor lady. Kicked a cat that hurt her pet chicken—Mama’s cat, so big trouble there.
And she’d run! To the tree house to think about things. It was her sailboat! Her big old Buick! Her very fancy house made for a queen. Once she’d watched a fox kill a vole from up there, marveled at wild things, and the tree house was her elephant on safari.
She grew. Her trouble changed.
The banker who visited Mama used to leave a bit from time to time. But things were turning tough, he said. Still, he came at night, so Mama would keep their deal, and sometimes Adelaide could hear things that she didn’t even want to get the spyglass for.
The banker noticed her, eventually. Legs like reeds weren’t just for running anymore. She’d grown up. He watched. Brother was away looking for work, and it was just she and Mama, and the banker when he came.
Adelaide wasn’t much for boys. She didn’t want babies like the other girls. She wasn’t much for anything except for helping Mama on their land.
The banker wanted to take it, though. Things were rough at the bank, he kept saying. The land was worth more than when Mama and he struck their deal. The deal had to change. Maybe they should talk about the girl. Mama was in a panic, and Adelaide knew she had to make some trouble.
Late spring, and it was easy to mess with the banker’s car when he was in seeing Mama. Adelaide honked that horn and he came running out because no one’s supposed to know he’s there.
She lit the match. All done. Except she hadn’t counted on the gas that got on her dress.
Through the pain she knew something, and made it not so bad. Only thing Daddy left was protection money on the two of them. Mama would be okay now. She ran on legs like reeds to the tree house, floating like ash to the moon.
Join me in the Twitter Fiction Festival: You write epitaphs based on grave photos I post daily at @WriterJenWilson. I turn the best into stories here. Speed round 12pm-1pm EST Friday and Sunday featured on the Twitter Fiction Festival Page– four grave images per hour and you tweet those epitaphs. Use the #TwitterFiction hashtag and you’ll be featured on the Twitter home page, too. Let’s make stories together … and tweet the dead.
November 28, 2012
Tweet the Dead with Me! Collaborative fiction.
My Croatian travelogue Running Away to Home was partially set in a cemetery. My next book, which is fiction, also creeps around a cemetery.
The Twitter Fiction Festival begins today (totally related, you’ll see). I will be one of 29 featured authors tweeting fiction this week. I’m at @WriterJenWilson.
Inspired by my thing for graves, I’ll post images of gravestones from the cemetery near my home. You make up an epitaph for that grave and tweet it to me. The best epitaph will be posted on this blog, where I’ll write a very short story about it.
A quick breakdown:
1. I tweet the grave pic.
2. You tweet me an epitaph for the poor soul.
3. I choose my favorite and write a short story based on your epitaph on my blog here.
I’ll start today, but we’ll be featured on the Twitter Fiction Festival showcase page on Friday and Sunday at noon EST (11am CST). Tweet epitaphs at that time, and you’ll be starring, too. https://twitter.com/hashtag/twitterfiction
Let’s tweet dead people! They really like when you speak for them. Really. They do. They’ll come and tell you all about it, if you ask them.
Boo,
jw
October 1, 2012
A Scoop of Sweet
Lots of savory dishes have made their way onto the recipe waterfall of this blog as we’ve gotten ready for the paperback version of Running Away to Home, released tomorrow on October 2, including both antique recipes and travel photos.
How time has flown! Just one year ago, I was anxiously wondering what would happen when this book that had been my life for so long would be released for others to see. I hoped people would be kind to this third baby of sorts. I was entirely unprepared for all the good will, family connections and outpouring of love from readers that Running Away to Home would bring back to me.
Way back in Draft One, in Rovinj … probably a little cup up super-crank hot coffee just outside the frame here. Note all the terra cotta tiles outside the window. And the little orange post-its that would turn into plot points someday.
I thank everyone for such glad returns. I would like to thank you today with something sweet.
It’s time for a dessert, something Croatians are particularly good at.
This recipe was Josephine Golick’s. Anyone know if that’s the same Golick from Mrkopalj, the family that ran the store across the street from my family on Novi Varos? I’d love to know.
Enjoy this funky little dish with hot coffee on a crisp fall morning as the leaves are turning. Here’s how you do it: Put Sterc in your favorite bowl and set in the middle of the table, scooping up spoonfuls and dipping in your coffee or milk.
Love to all of you!
CRUMBED COFFEE CAKE (STERC) by Josephine Golick and Delores Sisul
1 c sugar 1 ¼ c Crisco
3 eggs 1 c milk
½ t salt 1 t baking powder
3 1/2 -4 c flour 1 t vanilla
Measure flour and baking powder. Set aside. Cream shortening and sugar, add vanilla and salt. Add eggs and beat until well blended. Add flour and milk alternately, beating well until dough forms a sticky ball and holds its shape.
In a medium hot pan, 10- or 12-in skillet, melt ½ c Crisco. Add dough and start chopping and turning at a steady pace until dough becomes of crumb consistency (your preference of fine or medium-sized crumbs). Watch dough carefully while constantly chopping or turning so it doesn’t get too brown. Lower heat if necessary. About 35-40 min.
September 24, 2012
Soon It Will Be the Season for Making Sausage.
Seventh in a series of antique family recipes—from myself and others—celebrating the paperback release of Running Away to Home on October 2, which will include recipes from the village and photos of our journey.
Drazan’s smokehouse. He’s boiling head cheese in that kettle.
We ate some version of sausage or bacon at most meals in Mrkopalj. Drazan Horacek had his own smokehouse—Mario helped make it, and we wish they’d come to the States and build one for us—and he’d smoke hams and prosciutto and boil head cheese in there after the November pig slaughtering weekend. I had to ease off the meat for a while there, because on our tight budget I couldn’t afford new pants.
However, now that we’re home, and my YMCA membership is again up and running, I’m back on the meat train.
Here’s a recipe for making your own fresh kielbasa. It’s surprisingly easy. You can either get a sausage stuffing kit (which you can use for your spring zelodac, too) or cut a 2-liter bottle in half for a makeshift stuffer.
Any other tips from those who have made sausage out there?
FRESH KIELBASI by Helen Bubenyak
4-5 lbs pork shoulder
1 T salt
1 ¼ t pepper
1 t marjoram
2 cloves garlic, chopped very fine
½ c water
Grind meat and add remaining ingredients. Blend well and put into casings. To cook, barely cover with water and simmer for 1 ½ hours.
Making blood sausage at Zjelko and Andjelka’s house.
Sausage making day in Mrkopalj. Always first weekend in November.
Drazan getting the prosciutto and ham ready.
Hooves!
September 13, 2012
Recipes You Don’t Cook: An Art Project
Since my family has no real culture or ties to our roots, I am not really able to respond to your request for old family recipes in a way that links to family ancestry in the spirit of your book. (Sad, I know). Still, I love the concept and am sharing a photo in case you need any visual fodder for the project.
It’s a collage I made of index cards from my grandma’s recipe box, all in her handwriting, which makes them priceless to me. The cards are under glass on a serving tray that leans against the wall on a shelf in my kitchen where I see it every day.
I’d like a crack at those bread and butter pickles, Mrs. Clinkenbeard.
When we were sorting through my grandparents’ house following their deaths, I grabbed several index cards from her recipe file which embodied Belva Clinkenbeard, the homemaker. I don’t have a personal memory of most of them; however, many are a perfect snapshot of a time and place that make me smile.
While I have yet to make the “Original Maxon Manor Orange Rolls” or “Des Moines State Fair Ice Cream,” I could. Maybe 2012 is the year that I put together “Mom’s Christmas Punch,” which starts off with four bottles of Burgundy and serves in Grandma’s punch bowl set (which has never seen real action and just sits in my dining room hutch).
Some of my favorite recipes are not for human consumption but rather are instructions for homemade cleaning elixirs that include a great deal of sudsy ammonia. One that holds a special place in my heart is her potion for deterring animals from grazing in her beloved flower garden. The secret ingredient is urine, and my sisters confirm with a smile the memory of a jar of urine (donated by Grandpa) in the back of the refrigerator, clearly labeled and at-the-ready to be put to work in the garden. I have never washed and starched a set of curtains, but I am equipped with the necessary information should the occasion arise.
I love that you are putting these together and will definitely check out what you are collecting and sharing. (Note from Jen: Keep those recipes and ideas coming, friends. This is fun!)
