"The Watts Line" Revisited
Words you have put into print take on a life of their own. Publications, no matter how small or obscure, never die. That’s why I wasn’t as surprised as I probably should have been when a woman browsing my table of titles at last year’s Kentucky Book Fair said, “You’re ‘The Watts Line’ girl, aren’t you?”
That’s me. Or rather, that was me, around thirty years ago when as a high school student in Corbin, Kentucky, I wrote a weekly entertainment column for The Corbin Times-Tribune. I’m still not sure why the newpaper’s editor, a cigar-chomping Appalachian version of Lou Grant, agreed to let a fourteen-year-old contribute to his publication. He had gone to high school with my very pretty mom. Maybe he had a crush on her. Or perhaps he had been amused by my confidence when I pitched the idea to him. He had nothing to lose. The Times-Tribune‘s pitiful weekend entertainment supplement consisted only of TV listings and a few syndicated filler pieces.
It was probably an act of adolescent hubris to think I could produce a weekly entertainment column in Southeastern Kentucky, which is not exactly a mecca of popular culture. Movie reviews were the staple of my column, yet within easy driving distance there were only two movie theatres (one with only one screen) which changed movies every three weeks. In the best of times, my parents would drive me to Knoxville or Lexington for a play or concert which I’d review. In the worst of times, when I’d seen all th movies at the nearby theatres and had no prospect of leaving the immediate region, I’d trudge to the video store (which, for the record, had a tanning bed) and select a VHS tape from the new releases.
If I were truly committed to doing this blog justice, I’d wade through my messy garage, find the box filled with my old “Watts Line” clippings and revisit the writing of my teenaged self. But I’d rather not. “The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman” seen in those columns makes this middle-aged woman wince. As a young writer, I showed promise but no restraint. I never passed the opportunity for a pun or a witty–or so I thought at the time–aside. Under all the Dorothy Parker Wannabe witticisms, I see a lonely kid who masks her insecurity with arrogance, who aspires to bohemianism without fully understanding it, who wants to be an iconoclast but with every breath is screaming, “Like me! Like me!” I also see someone who doesn’t know herself nearly as well as she thinks she does, especially when it comes to her sexuality. Honestly, was I in such deep denial that I convinced myself that I had a crush on Bruce Willis? “Moonlighting” Bruce Willis, mind you, not “Diehard” Bruce Willis. But still.
While it’s easy for the forty-something I am now to laugh at the teenaged smartass I was then, I have to say that the years I spent writing “The Watts Line” taught me some lessons that are still with me today. The first and most important was to sit down and write, no procrastination and no excuses. My copy was due on Wednesday afternoon so it could make the weekend edition. I got it done no matter what school or extracurricular activities I had going on. Sometimes I’d be writing about something amazing I couldn’t wait to tell people about. Many other times I had nothing to write about but a mediocre movie I’d watched on the VCR while gorging on Doritos. Not inspiring, but I wrote anyway.
I know a teenager hammering out a movie review isn’t the same as a real writer laboring for hours over a story, poem, or play. But writing every week still demystified the process for me thanks to the power of the deadline. I had to write my column–they didn’t pay me $20 a week for nothing–and so I did. My small experience with newspaper work made me remarkably un-neurotic about writing. Some days produce better quality writing than others, but I never have trouble with the act of sitting down and working.
Other than the writing itself, the greatest pleasure I got from “The Watts Line” was having readers–not just my parents, but people who didn’t have to read my work because they loved me. Periodically, I would get “fan mail” sent care of The Times-Tribune. Often these readers expressed astonishment that “The Watts Line” was written by a teenaged girl (As an adult, I am astonished by their astonishment; I might as well have been dotting my i’s with hearts). Kids at achool who never took notice of me otherwise asked me about–and often argued with me about–my columns. A disparaging comment I made about David Lee Roth caused me a few particularly dark school days, but at least I was being shunned for my written opinions and not for something stupid like my shoes.
The most surprising piece of “Watts Line” correspondence came after I reviewed a Neil Diamond concert I’d seen in Knoxville with my mom for Mother’s Day. In the column, I praised Diamond’s talent but poked fun at his (to my eyes then) aged female fan base and his propensity for displaying his graying chest hair. I have no idea how a copy of The Corbin Times-Tribune found its way into his hands, but Diamond himself wrote me a charming note in which he called my wise-ass comments “fun and funny and true.” The note was signed “your fan, Neil Diamond.” I still have it.
Cranking out “The Watts Line” every week was a good introduction to the writer’s life, both because of the steady writing habits it instilled and because of the reader response that made a lonely artistic type feel less lonely. And come to think of it, that twenty bucks a week may have been the steadiest income I’ve ever earned from my writing alone (It also allowed me to have an enviable collection of Chuck Taylor All-Stars). And so while I don’t want to look at any of my old columns any more than I want to look at pictures of myself in braces and big eighties glasses, I know that being “The Watts Line” girl helped shape me into the writer I am today.
That’s me. Or rather, that was me, around thirty years ago when as a high school student in Corbin, Kentucky, I wrote a weekly entertainment column for The Corbin Times-Tribune. I’m still not sure why the newpaper’s editor, a cigar-chomping Appalachian version of Lou Grant, agreed to let a fourteen-year-old contribute to his publication. He had gone to high school with my very pretty mom. Maybe he had a crush on her. Or perhaps he had been amused by my confidence when I pitched the idea to him. He had nothing to lose. The Times-Tribune‘s pitiful weekend entertainment supplement consisted only of TV listings and a few syndicated filler pieces.
It was probably an act of adolescent hubris to think I could produce a weekly entertainment column in Southeastern Kentucky, which is not exactly a mecca of popular culture. Movie reviews were the staple of my column, yet within easy driving distance there were only two movie theatres (one with only one screen) which changed movies every three weeks. In the best of times, my parents would drive me to Knoxville or Lexington for a play or concert which I’d review. In the worst of times, when I’d seen all th movies at the nearby theatres and had no prospect of leaving the immediate region, I’d trudge to the video store (which, for the record, had a tanning bed) and select a VHS tape from the new releases.
If I were truly committed to doing this blog justice, I’d wade through my messy garage, find the box filled with my old “Watts Line” clippings and revisit the writing of my teenaged self. But I’d rather not. “The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman” seen in those columns makes this middle-aged woman wince. As a young writer, I showed promise but no restraint. I never passed the opportunity for a pun or a witty–or so I thought at the time–aside. Under all the Dorothy Parker Wannabe witticisms, I see a lonely kid who masks her insecurity with arrogance, who aspires to bohemianism without fully understanding it, who wants to be an iconoclast but with every breath is screaming, “Like me! Like me!” I also see someone who doesn’t know herself nearly as well as she thinks she does, especially when it comes to her sexuality. Honestly, was I in such deep denial that I convinced myself that I had a crush on Bruce Willis? “Moonlighting” Bruce Willis, mind you, not “Diehard” Bruce Willis. But still.
While it’s easy for the forty-something I am now to laugh at the teenaged smartass I was then, I have to say that the years I spent writing “The Watts Line” taught me some lessons that are still with me today. The first and most important was to sit down and write, no procrastination and no excuses. My copy was due on Wednesday afternoon so it could make the weekend edition. I got it done no matter what school or extracurricular activities I had going on. Sometimes I’d be writing about something amazing I couldn’t wait to tell people about. Many other times I had nothing to write about but a mediocre movie I’d watched on the VCR while gorging on Doritos. Not inspiring, but I wrote anyway.
I know a teenager hammering out a movie review isn’t the same as a real writer laboring for hours over a story, poem, or play. But writing every week still demystified the process for me thanks to the power of the deadline. I had to write my column–they didn’t pay me $20 a week for nothing–and so I did. My small experience with newspaper work made me remarkably un-neurotic about writing. Some days produce better quality writing than others, but I never have trouble with the act of sitting down and working.
Other than the writing itself, the greatest pleasure I got from “The Watts Line” was having readers–not just my parents, but people who didn’t have to read my work because they loved me. Periodically, I would get “fan mail” sent care of The Times-Tribune. Often these readers expressed astonishment that “The Watts Line” was written by a teenaged girl (As an adult, I am astonished by their astonishment; I might as well have been dotting my i’s with hearts). Kids at achool who never took notice of me otherwise asked me about–and often argued with me about–my columns. A disparaging comment I made about David Lee Roth caused me a few particularly dark school days, but at least I was being shunned for my written opinions and not for something stupid like my shoes.
The most surprising piece of “Watts Line” correspondence came after I reviewed a Neil Diamond concert I’d seen in Knoxville with my mom for Mother’s Day. In the column, I praised Diamond’s talent but poked fun at his (to my eyes then) aged female fan base and his propensity for displaying his graying chest hair. I have no idea how a copy of The Corbin Times-Tribune found its way into his hands, but Diamond himself wrote me a charming note in which he called my wise-ass comments “fun and funny and true.” The note was signed “your fan, Neil Diamond.” I still have it.
Cranking out “The Watts Line” every week was a good introduction to the writer’s life, both because of the steady writing habits it instilled and because of the reader response that made a lonely artistic type feel less lonely. And come to think of it, that twenty bucks a week may have been the steadiest income I’ve ever earned from my writing alone (It also allowed me to have an enviable collection of Chuck Taylor All-Stars). And so while I don’t want to look at any of my old columns any more than I want to look at pictures of myself in braces and big eighties glasses, I know that being “The Watts Line” girl helped shape me into the writer I am today.
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