From Here To There
From Here
To There
From Here To There
My life is a history of mobility…from the restless spirit nestled somewhere in my mystifying DNA, transported there from two young restless parents searching for themselves in the confusion and poverty of their lives. Divorce would be inevitable and moves hither and yon would become commonplace…
No, this post is not to be a self-indulgent recant of my youth and how I came to be who I am. Well, perhaps it will seem enough so to allow for that conclusion. Everyone has been somewhere! Everyone has their ‘raison d’etre’.
There are two reasons for this post: 1) to provide some reasons for my social network inactivity – for those who might care; 2) to share the hectic two weeks that have passed.
Number one is easily handled by by the frenetic bustle of my life and my wife’s life the past two weeks.
Over a year ago Julie Anne and I moved from the Sea of Cortez in Mexico to my home state of Tennessee…wanted to test the essence of Thomas Wolfe’s book, You Can’t Go Home Again. We settled into a huge 6000 square feet log cabin on the Cumberland Plateau…we’ve always liked a lot of space in our homes but this was somewhat ridiculous at our ages. Still, the magnificent views across the canyon to another bluff was the clincher. There for over a year I finished one novel, The Reluctant Savage, and wrote two more books, Joe Public’s Political Perspective and my sixth ‘Bailey Crane Mystery’ novel, A Common Evil. It was a lovely period, but an ‘itch’ began – that ‘restless spirit’ thing! The bluff view was awesome but there were woods surrounding us…turns out I don’t like the feeling of being enclosed or ‘treed in’.
In some manner of happenstance we found Springfield, Kentucky – the land of Lincoln, rich in history. We visited, found the small town wonderful and the people likewise. With the right portions of chance and luck we found a restored 1871 home on one of the gorgeous rolling hills and bought it – selling the Tennessee house at the same time. We have been here two weeks and absolutely love it. The local paper, The Springfield Sun (local newspaper), and Ken Begley (Columnist) has already written a wonderful article about our arrival…we knew nothing about the genesis of the article but suspect our great real estate broker, Steve Hale, of spreading the word. On Saturday, tomorrow, there is a ‘Sorghum Festival’ in town, with Main Street closed down, and that super broker Hale has arranged a book signing event for me and my twelve books.
It’s been a hectic two weeks shopping for furniture to fill a 7,000 square foot house (yep, we like ‘huge’!). Our beautiful daughter, Shelley Jean, traveled from Las Vegas, Nevada, to help Mom Julie with the shopping and decorating…we’re trying to get her and her lovely family to move here (keeping our fingers crossed!). I’ve had little time to communicate with friends and followers on the Social Network sites and to write more in my new book. Hopefully, next week, I shall be at full strength again and back to tweeting (ad naseum) and facebooking and linkedin and blogging and…
It’s my hope you will forgive my self-indulgence here…although I wrote there would be none. It is about ‘now’ and not about my ‘past’. It has truly been a tiring but fantastic two weeks!
I plan on being here for the duration, but, who knows! That infernal ‘itch’ has been part of my life for so long…
Billy Ray Chitwood – Friday – 10/03/14
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