Candice Ransom's Blog, page 5

In Search of the Perfect Planner

Every December, when my life unravels due to too many cookies and too little real work, I begin my search for a planner.  I have started many planning systems. Teacher planners, DayRunner (remember those?), ARC (Staples system).  Last year I began a bullet journal.

Bullet journals are wildly popular and I loved the idea of customizing my own planner, but it didn’t work for me.  I disliked drawing the calendar every month and didn’t understand how to “migrate” tasks using the symbols.  I became a bullet journal drop-out.

Passion Planner to the rescue!  I read about Passion Planner in the Washington Post and ordered one immediately.  The Passion Planner has everything!  So many pages to fill!  So many areas to check off and write in and—well, plan.  I loved coloring in my daily schedule.  But there were too many pages to fill and too many areas to write in.  I felt like the planner was running me.

By June I’ve usually quit whatever system I’ve started.  Why on earth is this so hard?  Experts at Franklin-Covey say planners “help people feel organized and in balance.  They create harmony and inner peace.”  Time to grab my share of harmony and inner peace!

This year I went full-bore and bought three planners: a Leuchtturm 1917 (the notebook most bullet journalers prefer), a Passion Planner, and a teacher’s planner.  I also bought fun Post-Its and pens.  Then I sat down at my dining room table and, in a separate notebook (only the truly anal will understand), mapped out why previous planners had failed and what I really need.

More than one planner is overkill, according to efficiency experts.  Maybe so, but I can’t find a single system that will keep me on track, organized, goal-directed, and let me be a little creative.  So here’s what I came up with:

The teacher’s planner will go with me to Hollins.  Last summer I didn’t carry my Passion Planner because it was too bulky and wound up double-booking two events on the same day.  The teacher’s planner is thin, simple, and doesn’t take any time to update.

The Passion Planner is the workhorse.  It stays on my desk and is my weekly scheduler and monthly planner.  I skip all those fill-in pages about five-year goals (at my age I don’t even buy green bananas) and what I’m grateful for.  I color in blocks of time, using a color key I devised.  Easier than symbols.  Instead of highlighters, I use twist-up crayons.

Still, the Passion Planner doesn’t have room for book lists, blogging ideas, quotes, etc.  So I divided up my new bullet journal into sections about 30 pages each.  Freed from monthly lists and migrating tasks, this is my fun take-with-me journal/planner.  I added pockets to the end papers and Post-Its.  While many BuJo devotees create gorgeous calendars in theirs, I opted for a set of calendar cards (Michaels, $1.99) anchored with clear photo corners.

I found myself writing too much under “Books I’ve Read.”  I want to keep this journal a little leaner.  So I cut out the pages I wrote on in last year’s failed bullet journal for additional sections, like reviewing books.  This is not a journal I carry around.  Because I added tabs to both bullet journals, I worried about them getting bent or torn.

I don’t want to tell you how much time I spent looking for a journal cover.  Then I stumbled on these simple pencil pouches at Walmart.  They’re colorful and have compartments for pens.  My journals fit inside perfectly.

For writing and doodling, I use Pilot Precise pens, Pentel Sliccis, and Stabilos.  I store the pens and a 6-inch ruler in a Vera Bradley e-reader case I found on sale.  All the Post-Its, pens, planners not in use at the moment are corralled in a Michael’s storage box.

Let’s review:

Leuchtturm 1917 (Amazon, different colors/styles, about $18)

Passion Planner (order direct, large size $30)

Tim Coffey teacher’s 16-month planner (B&N, $19.00)

Mead notebook insert pencil pouch (Walmart, less than $5)

Storage box (Michaels, $9.99—use a coupon for half price)

Pilot V-5 Extra Fine roller ball pens (I buy these by the dozen—they come in colors, too)

Pentel Sliccis gel pens (Amazon, about $19.00)

Stabilo 88-point Extra Fine markers (Amazon, about $17.00)

Faber-Castell Paper Crafter Crayons (Amazon, $11.00/set)

Wow!  Big investment!  The pens and crayons will last a long time and so will the box if the cat stays out of it.  The planners aren’t cheap.  Yet if factor in I’m both labor and management, with no secretary, I think it’s worth it.  Plus I like color!

Check back in June. I’ll let you know how it’s going.

The post In Search of the Perfect Planner appeared first on Under the Honeysuckle Vine.

Wheels on the Pavement

My new planner set the course last week: work, two trips to the library, three trips to the gym.  Time to crack the whip!  Get back in the harness!  But by Thursday, I was sick of my own dictums.  I needed to get away from my desk, my office, my house.  The wheels of the little red truck needed to spin on distant pavement.

I felt at sixes and sevens.  Already the new year seemed to be sliding away.  I wanted to work.  I wanted to not work.  A break was in order.  So we hit the road for Westmoreland County, far enough away to feel we’d actually gone somewhere, close enough that I could still get in a half day’s writing.

Hundreds of gray-backed seagulls, driven inland from the Potomac River, gossiped in cropped corn fields.  Silos and cellphone towers shouldered heavy clouds, pushing the leaden ceiling higher as we drove east.  Bungalows napped like cats around a wood stove.

My camera finger itched.  Donna Hopkins had photographed a house along this stretch.  I wanted to see it, too.  After parking the little red truck, I crunched through years of fallen leaves to the back door.  It opened easily and I slipped inside.  Maybe I’d find the answer to my restlessness in those chill-damp rooms.

What I found was an all-too-common story:  an old place rented by people who dropped behind on rent, were most likely evicted, and packed in a hurry.  The house next hosted squatters.  And then . . . no one.

My footsteps echoed on plywood rotted through in spots, revealing a flooded basement below.  Dark water mirrored my face, wavery with indecision and conflicting desires.

I left the house, aware I’d asked for more than I deserved.  Did the family who once lived there get what they deserved?

Maybe the people who left behind Christmas ornaments bought shiny new bulbs for a real pine tree in the corner of their own living room.

Maybe they nailed a horseshoe over a doorway, prongs up to hold only good luck.

I hoped they were safe and warm.

On the road again, we stopped in the tidy little town of Montross.

We ate lunch in The Art of Coffee, a former gas station.  My sandwich came with carrot sticks and a chocolate chip cookie, which made me feel cherished, like a second-grader opening up a packed lunch from home.

Small pleasures pushed back the January-ness of the day, a cup of soup, a cookie, a different point of view.  On the drive back home, the clouds parted and blue limned the flat horizon.  My outlook brightened.

Rebecca Solnit says “We treat desire as a problem to be solved . . . though often it is the distance between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.”

Truck wheels followed the pavement to our house, where the cat wanted his own lunch, my work waited, and the distant blue faded, becoming the next blue just beyond.

Chicken, No; Donuts, Yes: A New Year’s Day Journal

Is it Saturday?  Every day the last few weeks has seemed like Saturday.  Or a holiday fixing to get ready to happen.  In grocery stores, I squint over lists of special food for Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, Christmas day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day breakfast, New Year’s Day.

Today when I woke up, I reviewed do’s and don’ts for starting the year off right.  Calendars bought, but not yet hung.  Indoor decorations down, but trees still up.  Can’t afford to skip any opportunity for good luck or tick off Janus, the god who rules this day.  Tradition says that in the first hour of the new year, you should do what you want to do the rest of the year.  I planned to write in my brand-new journal during that first hour.

First Atticus must be fed.  He launches out of the laundry room (we put him away at night so we can have some peace), tail fluffed in his usual overnight indignation.  Takes a step and then—thump!—sits down and raises a hind leg.  Runs two steps then—thump!—up goes the hind leg.  This behavior indicates back-door trouble common to long-haired cats.  I sigh, wondering if I need the scissors or just a wet paper towel.  Dingleberry duty is not how I want to spend the next 356 days.

I manage to write a half a page in my journal before my husband comes in my office, sleep-rumpled and needing coffee.  I make breakfast.  Yesterday I vacuumed and did the laundry to leave the first day of 2016 unstained.  I even took out the trash last night.  Yes, those activities are strictly forbidden on New Year’s Day, old-time beliefs weighted with dire consequences.

Next I gather the little tinsel trees that brightened every room in the house.  I can’t put them all away.  One must stay in my sitting room.  The royal blue or the turquoise?  Wait.  What’s wrong with this picture?

A weak winter sun strains to break through the clouds that stayed over us like awnings the last two weeks.  At least it’s not raining.  Our across-the-street neighbors are taking down their outdoor decorations.  They move like clockwork toys, methodically wrapping cords and winding garlands.

Since this is the first year we put up outside lights, we aren’t so methodical.  I’m pretty sure our neighbors did not swear or kick boxes clear across the garage, or knock over the vintage Raleigh bicycle and scratch the truck door.

Kids in the cul-de-sac play a stunted form of softball.  Instead of flipping a coin and calling heads or tails, they flip a soda can and call “Ipod” or “Iphone.”  I sigh again.

Being a Southerner, I have the New Year’s food thing down.  Hoppin’ John (black-eyed peas, rice, onions), cornbread (yellow food is good luck), and greens.  Once I cooked our greens with a new dime, to increase our prosperity in the new year.  My husband told me never do that again.

He’s from Pennsylvania and brings his own traditions to the table: pork and sauerkraut.  I throw ham in the Hoppin’ John and pinch my nose at the sauerkraut.  Pennsylvania Dutch also eat donuts on this day.  The ring-shape symbolizes the full circle of the year.

Eating chicken or turkey is bad luck—you’ll “scratch in the dirt” all year.  So, chicken, no; donuts, yes.

The day slid away from me and I became grumpy.  I wanted to work on my 2016 schedules, write something besides a journal entry, finish reading a book.  I spent the last hour of daylight carrying sweet-and-sour meatballs to an ailing neighbor.  I don’t know what that action signified luck-wise.  I took something out of the house!  But I was also the neighbors’ “first-footer,” the first person to cross their threshold, a sign of good luck.

Walking back up our driveway, I noticed the darkening sky streaked with pink.  Maybe tomorrow when I open my eyes, the sun will actually be shining.  I resolve to treat the second day of this tender new year a little more gently.

It’s Coming on Christmas

You are ten in 1962 and it’s coming on Christmas.  At W.T. Grant’s you buy a one-inch tall plastic nativity scene for a quarter.  It looks like the nativity your mother has only much smaller.  You don’t think about the religious connotation.  You want to shrink and slip inside the manger scene.

Early 60s nylon and wire package tie-ons

At Drug Fair, you touch patterned holiday paper.  Your mother can’t afford the fancy paper, but she lets you pick out package tie-ons.  Among tiny cotton batting snowmen and pipe cleaner Santa Clauses, you choose nylon angels.  Only special presents deserve those angels springing from red bows.  You learn how to curl the ends of ribbon with the scissors blade.  You get carried away and make spirals two-feet long.

Outside, you go into the woods with one of the angels you took for yourself.  You climb up on the fallen tree that is sometimes a hobby horse.  Winding the wire around your index finger, you make the angel fly.  You whisper secrets.  She is your best friend right then.  It’s coming on Christmas and you have your very own angel.

Your mother puts out the coffee table decoration: a slab of Styrofoam with bronze and gold reindeer pulling a plastic sleigh.  You love those reindeer beyond reason and worry their fragile legs will break from being stabbed in Styrofoam year after year.  You let your angel ride on the back of the little silver one.

On payday Fridays your family drives to town.  Sitting alone in the backseat you are swallowed by darkness.  Then the shopping center bursts on your delighted eye.  Peebles has the prettiest windows, everything gold and silver.

You feel the tug of Woolworth’s.  As always, you visit the fluttery parakeets first.  A toy bird sings in a brass cage.  You’d like to have that.  And art supplies.  And notebooks!

Holiday pins are all the go.  Ladies wear them on their coats.  Big brooches shaped like Christmas trees with rhinestone ornaments.  Your mother has a wreath pin.  At Murphy’s, she lets you get a Santa Claus pin—his nose lights up when you pull its string.  All the way home, you pull the string.  Light.  Dark.  Light.  Dark.  Your mother says you’ll burn up the battery and you wish you could keep the cheerful red nose shining all the time.

At the kitchen table you color a page in your “Night Before Christmas” coloring book and wonder how a person settles his brain for a long winter’s nap.  You have a new Huckleberry Hound Golden Book, too.  When you were little, seven or so, “Huckleberry Hound” was your favorite show.

Friday night, a brand-new program is on, “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.”  You sit on the floor in front of the TV and watch.  Your mother is in the kitchen.  Your stepfather is still at his second job.  At first you are afraid of those ghosts taking Scrooge around.  Old Scrooge visits his kid self.  He is left in boarding school over Christmas and misses his sister.  Old Scrooge and kid Scrooge sing “I’m All Alone in the World.”  Your sister is gone, too.  The living room feels very lonely and you wish Scrooge would hurry up and visit some other time in his life.

Cards arrive in batches every day.  Your mother pegs them to a red-and-white line stretched across the mantle with tiny red clothespins.  Numbers are popular.  “Merry Christmas from the Five of Us!”  “Holiday Greetings from the Four Snowmen!”  The card your mother sends to friends doesn’t have a number.  You receive a card from grandparents you have never seen.  You sign a little snowman card from one of your stuffed animals to another.

In 1954, a Christmas card was sent from Paris, France, to Pennsylvania.  It was read and displayed and then stored in a box of letters that you were given many years later.

You inherited many treasures from your mother-in-law, who died just before you married her son.  The German putz houses are nearly a hundred years old.  When you decorate for Christmas, the putz houses are unpacked first.  The celluloid parrots are hung in places of honor.  Ornaments from your husband’s family are mingled with decorations from your family.

As you arrange these old things left in your care, you think about your husband stationed on an army microwave tower in France the Christmas you were two years old.  And how years and miles shrank until you were both in the same scene.

The angel granted your wish. It’s coming on Christmas.

Happy Thanksgiving . . . from Atticus!

Read my face: disgusted.  I’ve been living in this house almost a year but if the people here don’t shape up, I’m leaving.

First Mama got sick.  They say cats love sick people, and it’s true to a point.  Nothing better than a warm body in the bed, somebody bringing food.  But Mama kept emitting noises.  Disgusting.

Then Daddy got sick.  And nobody was taking care of the cat!  Some mornings I didn’t get breakfast until 8:30!  Unacceptable.  Treats?  Forget it.  Whenever I wanted to play, Mama just coughed and told me to go away.

Today is Thanksgiving.  Daddy, who has done all the hunting and gathering of food, bought an already-cooked turkey, already-made mashed potatoes, jars of gravy, cans of cranberry sauce, an already-baked pumpkin pie.  We have had Thanksgiving every night since Monday!  I am sick of turkey!

Yesterday Mama crawled out of her death bed and said it was time to take the Christmas card pictures.  I was thinking she’d make a good Halloween card, with her hair looking like she’d been pulled through a hedge backwards and her pale green face.  But no!  She meant me!

“Last year,” she said, hacking, “I put Winchester in that chair, told him to look sweet, and snapped one picture.  That was the card!”

Do you know how many times I’ve heard about that other cat?  “Winchester never carried on like you do.”  “Winchester had his own blog.”  “Winchester took the best pictures.”

And Winchester never messed up as many pictures as I did.  Hee-hee.  “The worst Christmas card we’ll ever send,” Mama grumbled.

You know what?  Something funny happened to Mama this year.  Last year she kept saying how much she didn’t like Thanksgiving and hated Christmas.  She didn’t want to put up a tree, or bake cookies, or drive around and look at the lights.  She took the decorations down on Christmas Day.  I hardly had any time to play with all that stuff.

Me, last year. Aren’t I cute?

Then Mama and Daddy went to New York City a few weeks ago (where Mama picked up those germs, serves her right, leaving me here by myself except for the neighbor who fed me).  Anyway, between nose-blowing, Mama talked about Christmas.  She sounded kind of excited.  The decorations were already up in New York.  Must have put her in the mood.

So yesterday, Mama and Daddy went to Walmart.  They bought lights for the bushes and a lighted wreath and stuff for the porch railing and little lighted trees.  Mama has never put up outside decorations before.  Blue lights on the bushes!

I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t get a Santa Claus for the roof and reindeer for the yard.  After that already-made Thanksgiving dinner they’ve eaten all week, it’s obvious their taste is all in their mouths.

Now that I think about it, I’m grateful Mama and Daddy rescued me from the SPCA, even though I was very popular and would have been snapped up in a heartbeat.  Still, I’m glad it was Mama and Daddy.  And I kind of wish I’d met Winchester.  I bet the two of us would have kept Mama on the run!

Guess I’ll stay after all.  Happy Turkey Day!

Tell Me About Your Book . . .

This past weekend, I went to our regional SCBWI conference, a happy gathering of children’s book writers and illustrators.  I believe there were 265 in attendance, not counting the faculty.  The ballroom at the Holiday Inn Dulles was comfortably packed and energy crackled. I always love waiting for this conference to begin, the year-long work of many people about to unfurl.

There were workshops and break-out sessions and panels and presentations.  Discussions spilled into the hallways and lobby at lunch time and during breaks.  The event was two days (counting the workshops), but it wasn’t enough time.  It never is.

I wish there had been less time devoted to talk of platforms (tweeting, blogging, and other social media), getting an agent, the measure of one editor against another.  I was reminded of a recent post by photographer Guy Tal:

Call me prejudiced but when an artist goes to great lengths about the tedious necessities of business, marketing, and equipment, I find myself less interested in the art . . .

Conferences bring writers and illustrators together so they can learn about those very things—the creating of platforms, the getting of agents, the measure of editors. It’s called networking. But I longed to hear more than shop talk.

Tell me, please, about the way your art makes your life elevated and worthwhile . . .

Behind the lips of everyone there were stories eager to be shared, ideas ready to be explored.

Tell me about your moments of doubt . . .

Knees jiggled nervously before a scheduled manuscript consultation with an editor, agent, or writer.  Prayers fluttered up to the ballroom ceiling.

Tell me about finding inspiration . . .

I slipped into an art director’s presentation for illustrators and took pages and pages of notes, more than the illustrators around me.

Tell me about overcoming anxiety and about finding solace in your work . . .

I took my latest published book and the f&g of a forthcoming book. I kept them in my bag for two days, pulling them out only once to show someone.  The finished products are wonderful and out in the world.  But I wanted to be at work on a new one.

Tell me about being different . . .

How many times did I explain I didn’t have a smartphone and if they want to reach me, they’d have to call me, and if they leave a message, I might not be able to retrieve it.

Tell me about finding courage . . .

At least one hundred of the 265 attendees were first-timers.  I hope they all come back next year.

Tell me that there is still place for beauty and inspiration and individuality in this mechanized world.”

Books are still important to kids.  Real books, with printed words on paper and illustrations they can trace with their fingers.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard a kid say he wanted to create a story with a layer of glass over the words and pictures.  I think kids want writers to tell the truth, and they want illustrators to get their hands dirty.

We will keep trying.

Pumpkin Day!

Welcome my latest book!  Pumpkin Day is my first pre-K reader, about a family that visits a pumpkin patch.  Erika Meza did the cheerful, autumn-perfect illustrations.

I never went to a pumpkin patch when I was a kid.  We raised our own!  Pie pumpkins (smaller, for cooking) were grown next to the corn in our big back garden.  But pie pumpkins were too small to be interesting.  I wanted to plant a giant Big Max pumpkin.

One year my stepfather got some seeds.  He wasn’t sure, but he thought Big Max seeds were in the mix.  Like Jack in “Jack and the Beanstalk,” I planted them, fingers crossed.

In order to raise one big pumpkin, you have to pinch back the others to give the big one room.  One baby pumpkinling seemed to hold promise.  I tended it with care.

By September, my pumpkin seemed to have a gland problem, as we say in the South.  Was it my imagination or was the pumpkin longer than it was round?  Maybe that was a temporary stage.  I still pictured myself rolling my giant pumpkin across the yard to our house.  I’d carve the biggest jack o’lantern ever!

Busy with school, I forgot about my pumpkin for several weeks.  Then one day I walked through the weedy patch.  The pumpkin should be big and round and orange by now but where was it?

I nearly tripped over it.  My “pumpkin” was big, all right.  Only it wasn’t orange and it wasn’t a pumpkin.  I had grown a gourd the size and shape of a baseball bat.

I carried my giant pale-green gourd to the back porch.  “Some Big Max,” I said in disgust.  Halloween was almost here and I had no pumpkin to carve.  Living in the country, you learned to make do.  So with a marker I drew a face on one end of the gourd and propped it up on our front porch.

When Halloween was over, I brought the gourd into my bedroom. There it stayed until its pale green skin turned soft and my mother made me throw it out.

Now when I visit the pumpkin patch, I’m tempted, like the boy in the story, to haul away the biggest pumpkin I can find.  Instead, I bring home one “just my size.”

 

 

 

 

Atticus: All Grown Up

The last time I posted about Atticus, he was heading into the record books as The Worst Cat in the World.  When I left for Hollins this summer, I gave my house one fond final look, knowing it wouldn’t be the same when I came back.

Amazingly, the house was the same when I returned home at the end of July.  But somebody had swapped our fuzzy teenage kitten for an 11-pound furry black bear of a cat.  Atticus is now a year old.  Has he settled down any?

He still gets in the sink, mainly to admire himself.

He still gets on my desk and walks all over the keyboard, making my computer do horrible unfixable things.   I push him off the desk, but he sneaks back, thinking I won’t notice.

Nope.

Nice try.

Unh-uh.

He still gets in boxes, only he doesn’t fit so well any more.  What you are seeing is a box of furry belly, hind feet against the back, head and front feet under the flap.

Remember when he slept so sweetly (and briefly) in the vintage wire baskets on my desk?

Well . . .

He is still a pill and still earns Time Out in the laundry room.  But somehow he wormed his rotten little self into our hearts.

I guess we’ll keep him.

Farewell, Summer

Lots of people crowd the beaches Labor Day weekend.  We prefer to put a stamp on summer’s end by going to the Shenandoah County Fair in Woodstock, Virginia.

I will be on an Internet sabbatical for the month of September.  This is not “Farewell, blog,” but just “so long for a while.”

Dateline: Saltville, VA

Friends have had enviable summer vacations to Italy, Myrtle Beach, Ireland, L.A., and Hilton Head.  On the eve of my husband’s retirement, we took an overnight trip to Saltville, Virginia.  Don’t rush to the map—I’ll tell you how to get to this fabulous place.  Drive down I-81, following the mountainous spine of Virginia until you develop a crippling cramp in your right hip because your foot hasn’t left the gas pedal for four hours.

Why Saltville? It was mostly a research trip, and partly a visit to my father’s home town.  Nestled between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains, Saltville is known for its salt caverns that were vital to the Confederacy, its salt marshes where Ice Age mammals were trapped, its chemical plants—Saltville was a company town—and such famous people as Hobart Smith, banjo virtuoso, and his sister Texas Gladden Smith, who sang folk ballads with a voice that scared small children spitless.

I’d been to Saltville twice, back in ’92 with my husband to find my roots on my father’s side, and again in 2002 on school visits in Smyth County, including Saltville Elementary.  When I first viewed the town from an overlook—a collection of houses and businesses ranged along Main Street—I felt no sense of home.  I hoped to find people who would help me find connections to the Farris family.

On this trip, I had an appointment with the manager of the Museum of Middle Appalachia.  He told me that William Campbell, hero of the Battle of King’s Mountain, slashed Tories in half with his broadsword, that Kentucky got its name from the Native American “dark and bloody ground,” that Saltville was the birthplace of modern chemistry, that fossils contain traces of rare earth minerals, that Patrick Henry’s two sisters (who lived here) carried on normal conversations a half a mile apart over the stillwater pond dividing their properties.

I took notes feverishly for two solid hours and looking them over now read “fossil mastodon dung” hard by “all natural gas in Mid-Atlantic stored in capped salt wells.”

The man I interviewed knew little about my family. Apparently we pale beside the fearsome Campbells and Buchanans.

It’s difficult to generate traction about my family, even armed with genealogy that dates back to 1720, because I have no stories.  My father was an only child.  He left Saltville before he finished high school to join the CCC because he stole either a hundred dollars or a typewriter.  My sister says Daddy denied this story.  Whatever, he kicked over all traces of Saltville and never once looked back.

After the museum closed, we toured the sites.  Old salt kettles and cabins.  Interpretive trails.  Archaeological digs.

Then we climbed back in the truck and headed for the hills.  Winding roads led us into hollers where houses clung to hillsides like mushrooms.  A sign read “Slow Church Zone.”

Here I saw the real Saltville, scenes that burst upon my astonished eyes.  It was impossible to pull over and take pictures.  Maybe it was best I didn’t.  Not every experience needs to be recorded.

Later we stopped at Ed’s Drive-in where I was sorely tempted to order the fried bologna sandwich.  If it had been served on Wonder Bread instead of a soft roll, I would have.  We dined on Philly cheese steak, grilled cheese with tomato and lettuce and mayonnaise, hand-cut French fries, hand-dipped onion rings, coffee, Cokes, a single scoop of moose tracks Kemps ice cream that was easily a pint—all for $9.

This couple sat at the table behind us.  I thought they were long-married high school sweethearts.  Both from Saltville, they were actually dating.  He drew us maps and she told me a little about my family.  The waitress and cook sat at the counter, their talk as easy as mountain water over stones.

Everyone in the diner laughed and chatted with everyone else, including us.  Even without stories from my father’s side—he left our family when I was very young—I felt a small piece of myself settle into Saltville.  I came for ghosts and found kinship instead.