Some Mother's Bird

The baby bluebirds are eating on their own today, not perched on the feeder helplessly waiting for mother or father to place food in their mouths – though if a parent shows up they will suspiciously open needy beaks to let out infantile squeals of helplessness as though they’d been left to starve – it’s easier that way, they might think. Their mother must be watching them from high branches, observing as they feed themselves like grown-ups, before she comes down to share the feeder with them as equals – for she is hungry too. That’s when her babies remind her, we shall never be equals; you shall always be our mother.

I saw her, the mother, look at one of these splotchy blue fledglings at the birdfeeder the other day – the same old response came from the baby – that is, an open, begging beak – and she perched herself face to face against this fledgling as though sitting him down for a lesson. She braced her body – and how can I say I saw this, a bracing? She looked stiff, astute, statue-like, and she stared straight into the open beak of the bird. She leaned slightly forward as though readying herself to make an attack – and against her own baby! She held the most statue-like presence of an angry bird that I had ever seen. The baby, clueless and impervious – for this mother had always been kind – kept opening its beak and squealing – didn’t you hear me, mother? Won’t you feed me? Why are you acting that way? But mother remained resolute . . .

This is the same mother who, along with her mate, had worked tirelessly to hatch and feed babies all through June. Each morning mother and father seemed to anticipate my emergence from the front door to put out a few tablespoons of store-bought worms to supplement the diet of their growing family in the birdhouse out back. She must have been watching me from above, for before I could get back into the house to look out the kitchen window, she and her mate would be working in tandem to peck up as many wiggly things into their beaks as possible for delivery to their little house out back. They’d work one at the feeder, one at the birdhouse, back and forth, till all the harvesting was done – and I would run from kitchen window to back room window, trying to keep pace with each, but sometimes missing one or the other along the way. Humorously, I’d catch the male bird lingering at the feeder to sample a few tasty treats for himself before filling his beak for the family – why not? – while mother bird never showed anything but drive in her eyes – the drive to satisfy the hunger of noisy babies. I’ve seen that look before. I understand now why Disney chose merry bluebirds to ready Cinderella for the ball – to sew her dress, tie her bows, and carry her train – for they are active, hardworking, vigilant, and driven birds.

Once I saw a noisome squirrel – they’re all noisome – get too close to the hatchlings’ house, and out of nowhere came diving a sapphire male bluebird toward the squirrel’s head. As soon as the squirrel went running, this furious bluebird chased him across the backyard while flying not four inches from the ground.

Flying lessons began over Fourth of July weekend – watchful parents sat perched in high branches while their twin fledglings made awkward hops and leaps into the unknown, at one time landing like dropped eggs onto this back doorstep where they looked up to me for guidance as to what should be done next. I had already seen what happened to that noisome squirrel, so I kept my distance other than to click a few photos – they grow up so fast . . .

But that was June . . . then the Holiday . . . and now, mid-July, this mother holds firm at feeding time. Unmoved by the gaping mouth, I saw her make one straight pecking attack at her baby’s open beak. She did not touch the young bird, but I think had calculated the move only to make her point – I will not be feeding you again.

The baby bird did not pull back, was not afraid of the simulated attack, and did not flinch a feather. Then the mother flew away, having stated her purpose firmly. She didn’t feed her baby – but interestingly, she also didn’t partake of the worms I had put out to feed the whole family. She had shown her fledglings this easy hunting ground; she would find her own food elsewhere.

I saw her come back later after the babies had had their fill and flown away to some higher branches. She came up to the feeder alone, hopped around to look full circle for her fledglings – realizing, I think, that she was alone at last – then poked around half-heartedly into the leftover meal to see if any worms had been left for her. None!  I think that made her happy. She stayed perched there a few minutes longer – her stature relaxed now, the drive gone from her eyes, the readiness gone from her wings. She looked out over a world still waiting for her. In all of June, I had never seen her rest upon the feeder so contentedly.

Dreams of our mothers
Lived in younger hosts;
A safe passage, is all for now
She prays.

Canful of Pens

I have so many stray pens strewn through the house and in my purse from places I have been, businesses I have frequented – some I have not . . . there is one which recurrently comes into my hand from a place I have not been – “Studley Chiropractic Clinic.” That’s the inscription on just one of a can full of pens I poured into a box of miscellanea to bring home with me when my sister and I cleaned out my mother’s house after her death. The can of pens was on the hutch cabinet near the phone – a large soup can that she had covered with a yellow-and-orange floral design contact paper. She began to stand pens in the can, one at a time – I imagine – as she was given them over many years from such places as the chiropractor’s or dentist’s or doctor’s offices where she went; from the hardware store, bank, pharmacy, or hearing aid center – the trail left by a widow who had learned to take care of herself.


Some of the pens must have been mailed to my mother from Medicare, for they tout advertisements for drugs that I’m sure she never took – Lexipro, Namenda, Maxalt-MLT. She was noted for curing all ills with an aspirin and a good nap, though in later years I suspect she let a prescription-trigger-happy doctor make those choices for her – this will help, he most likely said too often. Maybe her pharmacist put one such pen in each bag of refilled prescription – another pen – and she placed the pen upright in the tin can by the phone.

It’s been more than a year since I spilled the can of pens into the box and brought them home with me and placed them in a small clay pot near my own phone. And in this past year many of those pens have been pitched, one by one, into the large trash can – that is, if they didn’t work when I needed them to. I’m always careful to read the pen just one last time to see what piece of the trail just ended.

That’s why most of my mother’s pens are gone now. Only a dozen or 15 remain, like this one that keeps coming into my hand from Studley Chiropractic Clinic. She must have gone there a lot – and he often gave her a pen – for I think I have 5 or 6 of these pens in various colors. I don’t remember ever tossing out a pen from Studley Chiropractic – and my mother quit going to him at least 10 years ago because she thought he had cracked a bone in her osteoporotic spine – and I think she was right – for she was in so much pain after a visit – and an x-ray showed there was a hairline fracture in the lumbar spine.  Looking back, I would say that was the beginning of her slow decline, for she stopped her decades-long daily walking routine after that – a hairline crack that would become the great divide between a healthy lifestyle without drugs and – the other side – though of course no one could see it at the time. I’ll bet that’s when the town’s prescription-zealous doctor began saying things like, this will help – and so a pain medication began, and then the refills cycled in – and maybe that’s how the pens advertising odd drugs got into her home.

Before the hairline crack in her spine, she would joke to us about her chiropractor and dentist sharing the same small office building on Main Street – only one dentist in town and one chiropractor in town – an unlikely partnership of two diverse professions, but one that made sense with so few professionals in town. The partnership was called “Studley and Dickie” – for the dentist’s name was Dr. Dickie.

She thought that was so funny – as did all the women, mostly widows, in her quilting group.

“I’ve got my appointments with Drs. Studley and Dickie today,” one woman might say.

“Two in one day?” another might be obliged to say before the whole quilting group cackled at the old joke. We – her children and grandchildren – never got tired of the joke, the way she said it anyway. It’s funny to me how Fate (another word for Humor, I suspect at times), has an easier time of creating such odd bedfellows in small towns than in the biggest of cities. I wonder if either of these dignified older men ever suspected how much fun the town’s elderly women were having with their names . . .

So my mother would schedule her dentist appointment . . . and since she was going into the building anyway, she would make a chiropractic appointment . . . and the quilting group would have met the day before or the day after – all as I imagine.

I suppose she picked up one pen from each appointment, for I have several of each that stand upright and alongside each other in the clay pot – and they have been the most humorous reminder of the trail she left.

Between the Lines

A short article buried in section/page B-5 of our local newspaper caught my attention to a greater degree than any newspaper editor might have imagined. This was news out of Philadelphia – stating that one of only seven executives to know all three parts of the secret to making Thomas’ English muffins is leaving his post to take a lesser-paying job with Hostess, maker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies.

This is not bread – the English muffin – it is a product defined and given signature by its presence of nooks and crannies – those empty places within the structure of toasted gluten where butter and jam might be cradled and crunched.

I know about the English muffin – which is to say I have not succeeded in producing these hallmark repositories for butter and jam. The unobtrusive English muffin seems to me the pinnacle of bread baker’s art – not even sourdoughs have daunted me as much, for at least the sourdough is glad to be alive and will tell me what it needs. But the English muffin is stalwart and guarded of its clues. I have all the equipment and many recipes that promise to yield the authentic result – but this persistent baker/writer has met her match. The English muffin is the place where smooth texture and consistent crumb are not the advents of success. As they say in many forms of martial arts or Eastern practices, the true Master leaves behind all rules. During my very brief teaching career, when challenged by students who wanted to know why they had to follow the “five paragraph rule” of writing an essay, I would say, “So you can throw it out once you’ve mastered it.” So it is with the English muffin – one must know the rules of bread baking so well that one can break them and thus produce a superior product. Paradoxically, the rules do apply – only they are no longer written rules – they are unspoken, as those seven masters at Thomas’ know. The secret is transferred via one great mind to another.

The company that makes Thomas’ English muffins has successfully protected their secret for more than 75 years. According to the article, there are three parts to the winning formulae – and this is more than I’ve heretofore known about the English muffin. Every recipe I have admits there is a secret, and then proceeds to tell you the secret: use of carbonated water in the dough, a bit of baking soda to the yeast, a bit of baking powder to the yeast, baking soda to the carbonated water, a pinch of pure ascorbic acid to the water . . . definitely no milk . . . and none of those secrets is the real thing.

The owners of the Thomas’ English muffin brand are suing back-stabber Chris Botticella because they say they have “good reason” to believe he will expose the secrets to Hostess who doesn’t make an English muffin at this time. Botticella says that his confidentiality agreement is valid “only during his employment” – and does not bar him from working elsewhere. But there are only four biggies in the English muffin industry – and this possible fifth could have major impacts on profits, makers of Thomas’ brand say. Plus, there are other secrets – for new products – which he knows. That said, I think "Bays" brand makes a far superior English muffin to Thomas’ – those Bays’ repositories will accommodate a swallow of good tea along with butter and jam.

The nook and cranny is really just empty space. This reminds me of the pinnacle of writing in which the most important words are really those that exist between the lines – open space for the reader to say for himself. I think of all those great writers of literature who have devoted their lives to lining the bookshelves of libraries for generations to come so that silent parties might walk the aisles with their own thoughts – and that aisle is a cranny.

Author John Gardner has said that the best writing  leaves much un- said so that the reader has to come up with connections and conclusions that make him or her feel smarter than the writer. And when a reader feels smarter than the writer, it makes that reader want to sit down with the writer in order to share dialogue – sitting and talking together. The nook is an open space formed by two adjoining walls; a place larger, at least wider, than the cranny. It’s a place large enough for two people to sit and talk.

The hardest thing to put in writing is the thing you can’t put there at all. You have to create the structure – that is, glutenous strands – then provide temperature, time, and humidity – and a good dose of patience – till the reader sees between the lines.

Nooks and crannies must come of themselves, and in their own time – that’s what I’ve learned about writing – I mean, about English muffins . . .

The Long and Short of it

While reading an article recently about the 10 best book stores in the nation, I wasn’t surprised to see these supersized descriptions – “20,000 square feet and more than 500,000 books;” “One entire city block and 650,000 used books;” “1.5 million books in stock;” “1 million volumes in 3 convenient locations.”  My favorite description is the slogan from Strand Bookstore in NYC: “18 miles of books!”

My first memory of too many books to fathom comes from my student days at UNC-Chapel Hill where the Wilson Library famously housed 10 stories of books – five stories above ground and five underground. The collectible and rare books were housed underground, and I would often descend to the bottommost floor on a Sunday afternoon where I would stroll through the cramped, dark aisles, and smell the books. This was before the time of super security and hidden cameras – and so I truly felt alone with all those centuries of knowledge and my own private thoughts.

A more recent exper- ience came last year when my family and I went to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. for the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. They say that a copy of every book that has ever been copyrighted is housed there and at various undisclosed sites in Maryland. The architecture and feeling of the building is worth the trip, but you can’t actually see all those books – nor can you check them out.  But we must believe they are there.

At the other end of the spectrum, I can’t stop thinking about the tiny bookshop which opened about 18 months ago in the old auto repair shop on Main Street in my hometown in North Carolina – what might be considered one of the 10 smallest bookstores in the nation. I spent many-a-morning, a few weeks ago, perusing the “Local Literature” section which occupies about four feet of space on each of three shelves beside the checkout desk. I recognized many of the authors’ names – my high school English teacher, a guy who played football with my older brothers in high school, a woman who attended church with my mother, and a “stranger” who wrote a book about terrorist Eric Rudolph who was captured in a dumpster behind the local Sav-A-Lot store where my mother often shopped. There were other books about Cherokee Indian folklore and medicine, maps and guides for hiking the local trails, that sort of thing. But why two books about Abraham Lincoln?

“Those are because of Lincoln’s real father being buried here – you never heard that?”  That came from Linda who is the bookstore owner and former schoolmate of my older brothers.

After a few questions to reorient my mind to – and against – everything I had learned in elementary school about Abraham Lincoln, Linda proceeded to explain that no local person ever believed that Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky. I was 10 years old when my family moved south from Upstate New York, so I guess that’s why I hadn’t been made privy to what everyone knew . . . and so Linda proceeded to tell me the “real story” of Abraham Lincoln:

His real father was Abraham Enloe, a wealthy Western North Carolina plantation owner. Our future President was born, not in Kentucky as the history books tell us, but illegitimately in Rutherford County of Western North Carolina. He was moved to Kentucky in a wagon when he was about one month old by his mother, Nancy Hanks, and a man named Thomas Lincoln who had been hired by the real father to marry her . . .

I'll back up.  As legend goes, Mr. Abraham Enloe’s wife was visiting relatives in South Carolina when Nancy Hanks, a maidservant at the Enloe family estate, became pregnant. Upon her return, Mrs. Enloe promptly fired Nancy for being pregnant out of wedlock – she didn’t know who the father was – but then, once the baby was born, Nancy had the nerve to bring little Abraham Enloe Junior – yes, she named him that on the birth certificate – to the Enloe household to show him off. They say Mrs. Enloe took one look at the baby and went into a screaming fit because he looked just like all her other babies. Reportedly, Mr. Enloe gave a local kid, Thomas Lincoln, $500 in gold and a wagon to take Nancy and the baby to Kentucky and to marry her there. That’s how our future President came to be in Kentucky and came to be named Abraham Lincoln instead of Abraham Enloe. They say Mr. Enloe visited Kentucky – and Nancy – until Abe was six years old. That’s when Thomas Lincoln “found them together,” and decided to move his family to Indiana.

A man in Eastern North Carolina has written a persuasive and well documented book about the local legend that flies in the face of history: “Abraham Enloe of Western North Carolina.” Linda said the author, Don Norris, has come to her store for book signings on several occasions.

“I’ve got three signed copies at home. I’ll bring you one tomorrow,” she promised.

In the meantime, Linda gave me directions to the old gravesite where Lincoln’s supposed natural father is buried. But she warned me that the grave was marked “Abram” Enloe because people wrote things as they sounded back then – Abram.

This one Abraham Enloe had sired 16 children by his own wife – all tall and lanky like himself – and it is believed he has sired many others through the Carolinas and Georgia.

Linda told me that a man drove up from Atlanta last summer and went into the local Chamber of Commerce by the rail tracks and said he needed some help finding the gravesite of a possible relative of his. The woman in charge of the Chamber said to him, “And I know just where he’s buried” – and the man said, “How did you know?” And the woman replied, “Because you look like all the rest of the Enloes.” Linda said the man was tall, lanky, and dark featured.

Unlike today, no one during Abe’s lifetime would have written a book or tabloid article about such a “shameful” past. The locals of the time knew all about it, according to Linda – and that was shame enough. The Enloes were good people, and Enloe is still a good family name in the region; they were landowners and they employed a lot of people in Western North Carolina. No one would have been fool enough to bite the hand that feeds them.  But everyone knew . . . and Mildred verified this.

Mildred was the 93-year old woman who walked into the book shop the next morning while I was there to pick up my signed copy of “Abraham Enloe of Western North Carolina” and to report on the gravesite I had visited. Mildred said her grandparents owned much land in the area and they also kept indentured servants.  Oh, honey, everyone knew . . . and she shook my arm in earnest.

And I can’t stop thinking:  There’s no bookstore in this nation big enough to hold the kind of thing that everyone knows . . .

A Time for Prose

I read something noteworthy last night in the WWII-era travel memoir, Seven Years in Tibet – two starving,  frostbitten, coinless, and tired men take a look at the splendorous beauty of the Forbidden City of Lhasa, Tibet which has taken them 18 months of death defying ordeals and prison escapes to reach – a vision and height which no European before them had ever attained – and one says to the other, “After poetry, prose!”  That’s all he said.  And what he meant by that was, that’s beautiful – but so much for poetry, what can we eat and drink and where can we bathe and sleep – the prose of life.

When it comes down to it, the prose of life takes priority over “poetry “no matter how much, or for how long, we have waited to see the Forbidden City.  I can see an outline of the "Forbidden City" in my own writing these past months, and I know the trials it has taken to get this far – and how much further I have to go – but the prose of life is upon me as my college-age children arrive home for the summer.  Due to varying schedules, it will be a miracle to find a few quiet hours to myself.

Once finally admitted to the Forbidden City of Lhasa, the author and his comrade stayed for seven years – keeping journals, befriending the current Dalai Lama who was only a teenager at the time, and generally soaking up the atmosphere of Tibet. The author, Heinrich Harrer, returned to Austria as the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950, and so wrote this memoir from his journal recollections.  But first he had to live it.  He wrote many other books, but none had the impact or success of the one he actually lived through.

When my children return to their respective lives next August 24th (or so), and the house is clean and quiet once again, and my own belly is full, and the body is exercised and rested – the conditions necessary to appreciate the beauty of the "Forbidden City" – that is when my mind can return to writing my book. In the meantime, I’ll keep the journal, pen some notes, and perhaps finish an occasional blog . . .

“The once-longed-for sight could not shake us out of our apathy. The climb through the rarified air had left us breathless, and the prospect of an ascent to nearly 20,000 feet was paralyzing.”   (Seven Years in Tibet)

One Good Turn

I completed a four-day trip to my hometown in North Carolina, and back – and, as usual, there is so much material to write about that I mysteriously can write nothing at all. Just as when a tree bears more fruit than a busy, satiated person can consume – I feel glutted by the incidents and want to turn away from writing for a while. The most insignificant of them, however, is the thing that elbows me . . .

It’s the Waffle House experience. There was a retired sort of fellow who had been hired to be a “greeter” there; he was thin and dark around the gills, but full of energy and the seriousness of his job – he jumped to open the door for me in salutations of Good Morning! and Welcome to Waffle House! as I approached the door with my newspaper before the last 100-mile run of a 500-mile journey. He hurried to the only remaining table – a booth – where he cleared away plates and wiped the table clean, beckoned me to sit down while placing the plastic menu on the wet Formica top. I knew what I wanted as soon as the buxom woman with the raspy voice came over with the coffee pot and the honey moniker which she gave to everyone. She yelled out the well-rehearsed codes and equations that represented my order to the cook – and though he never acknowledged hearing her, she never doubted that he did.

I felt my kingdom undeservedly rally round me as I spread out the newspaper and she placed my drinks of coffee on one side and orange juice on the other – and I noticed the 6 people crammed into the 4-person booth in back of me and the 5 people crowded into the other booth in front of me. It was later, when my food was almost ready, that she apologetically leaned over and said, “Honey, now don’t feel ye need to do this, but would ye mind if we moved ye to a spot at the table o’er yonder so those four men might have a seat – but now honey, ye don’t need to 'cause it’s yer booth and ye was here b’for ‘em – don’t feel ye need to, honey.” And I saw four burly men standing outside the Waffle House talking to the friendly greeter because there wasn’t room for four such big men to stand inside the doorway while waiting for a seat . . .

So I said that I already felt guilty for having so much space to myself and that it would be fine to move – “Honey, ye don’t hafta . . . “ she repeated.  I want to, and I was already trying to manage the coffee and newspaper when the friendly greeter came inside to help me with my orange juice and to escort me to my new, made-for-one, cozy seat in the back – and he gave me his profuse thanks all the while we walked – my generosity and such . . . No, not at all, I’m happy to . . . that sort of thing, back and forth.

My kind waitress brought the food and continued to care for me, even though this wasn’t her station, and she gave me thanks each time so that my new neighbors began to understand the story. That’s when I took notice of the corner where I was sitting – which had at one time been the "smoker’s section" of Waffle House, I presume – that is, before the laws in NC were changed last year to prohibit all that smoking indoors.  But the smokers still remained – but without their "fix" – for they all had the eyes of withdrawal and trauma and reproof – eyes that had settled into sockets like sludge in a pond – suspended – eyes that reposed and fixed upon me – perhaps because of the animation I gave to eating and turning pages while they sat with fingers rendered motionless by the Law.

My waitress came back frequently to refill coffee and ask how I was doing. One of those times she swooped up the check and said, “Honey, ye don’t hafta pay this – they insist – now don’t ye say a word about’t ‘cause they insist” – and she was gone with my check and the coffee pot before I comprehended what she had meant by “they” and “insist” – that the four men had insisted on paying for my breakfast because I had given up my spacious booth for them . . . and what would I have said anyway?

I sat finishing my meal and drinking my coffee, all the while contemplating what I ought to do next – and all the while sensing that the smokers without their smokes were thinking the same thing – what’ll she do next? And then I came up with the plan to leave a nice tip for the friendly waitress since I felt the need to pass it on – this generosity of spirit. But I was not sitting in her station but rather in the smokers’ waitress’s station – and she had not yet acknowledged me. I think she had somehow taken on the demeanor or outlook of the smokers in her care – for she had large, dark pools around her eyes and a fishlike emptiness in her mouth, and she moved very slowly too. And so, after much thought, and as my perpetual onlookers waited in anticipation, I decided that when I left I would thank the table of four men and give them the tip large enough to cover the cost of my meal so they could “add it to the tip” for our waitress – and so I did, thanked them, and left the tip for our waitress with them – and of course they said they were more grateful than I was for having the booth to sit in, and that they would gratefully give her the tip – but then she passed by to refill their cups, and then she became grateful – and the booths full of people to either side noticed the exchange and, like ripples spreading in a pond, they too began to smile. I was feeling in the center of things too much, and so I began to back out of the door, but ran into the friendly greeter who in turn began the gratefulness cycle once again – and I said, No, you are the one who started this whole wheel turning with your friendliness at the door – and he just smiled as though already understanding the seriousness of his job – and it seemed the whole place became abuzz with gratefulness. When I looked over to the smoking section, I saw a different kind of trans-fixation in the eyes – they were still transfixed, but it was almost like someone had budged them loose from their orbit just a little bit and they had been able to move their eyes to a place outside their own realm for just that instant.

I emerged from the magical Waffle House and got into my car, feeling that I had just left some swirling tunnel of light – a kaleidoscope where various colors will mix and match, one upon another, to form patterns of hearts or clovers, stars, rings or golden links – the more you turn it . . .

It seems like such a small experience – and I really have more important ones to write about, ones that could add to the book I’m working on but can’t settle into this morning. I felt a curiosity as to whether the place really existed or was just a figment of my imagination – and so I got online to find it – and there it is – The Waffle House at 164 Tunnel Road – really – in Asheville, North Carolina.

Willa Cather Comes Home

If it were possible, I would buy the Willa Cather birthplace – and I would renovate it – but . . . then, what would I do? Would it be possible to live and write in the birth home of my favorite American author? That is an unbelievable thought – and one I imagined as I stood outside the Cather homestead in Gore, Virginia last week and watched as the high-powered, 18-wheel trucks roared past the property. I looked across the street at the old motel with the “day traders” coming and going from parking lot to doorway – and saw them look back at me as though I, the one taking pictures of an author’s birthplace, were the one out of place in that picture. Something has to be done, but I don’t know what . . .

The abandoned birthplace of my favorite American author, Willa Cather, distresses me each time I go there – which has been only twice – but I feel I’ve been there many more times because it weighs so heavily on my mind. The first visit, a year ago, I drove two hours from my home on a sunny spring day, expecting to see a pristine home where a young tour guide might escort me through upstairs bedrooms and provide facts and nuances about the life of a young Willa Cather. Instead, I found a condemned shack that could barely support the little metal plaque declaring it a Virginia Historic Landmark. Thinking there was some mistake, I went to a nearby gas station where the regulars sat along a stoop just inside the door and told me, unofficially, far more than I had asked for. The current owner seemed to be waiting for the termites to finish the job, one man told me while the others concurred – so he could legally clear away the mess and sell the property located on the only highway through town. Since the house is a registered historic landmark, however, the owner’s hands are tied for the time being – until the termites finish their job. He is under no obligation to preserve the home at his expense – and neither is the State of Virginia, I suppose.  For now, the house is in waiting. The men in their overalls thought I had come to buy the house – or write a story about it – or do something to bring attention to their town’s only legacy.  No, I just wanted to visit it. “We sure could use the tourism here, right on the highway like it is,” said one man. “Look on the website and see what they’ve done to her in Nebraska!” shouted a woman from behind the counter. “And we’re only 80 miles from D.C.,” said another.

I, like many others I suppose, have always assumed that Willa Cather came from Nebraska. The subject matter of her most popular books is about German and Czech immigrants who came to settle and tame the unforgiving prairie lands of Nebraska. Many died of starvation. Cather experienced their stories firsthand because her own family had moved there from Virginia in 1883 when she was only nine years old. But she left Nebraska when she was 18 to pursue a college degree and subsequent journalism career in Pittsburg.

The small town of Red Cloud, Nebraska has made a sweeping claim to their author, as noted on the official website of the Willa Cather Foundation – http://www.willacather.org/  Red Cloud is host to house tours, walking tours, parades, annual conferences, and writing contests. Grandaughters of people who knew the Cather family give speeches at various literary functions. There are bed-and-breakfast homes and restaurants in her honor. Willa Cather is big business in Red Cloud.

Cather’s first nine years of life, however – and six generations of Cathers before her – were lived in a tiny town in the Shenandoah Valley called Gore, VA.

I was only 15 years old when I read my first Willa Cather novel, "My Antonia" – soon followed by anything else I could get my hands on. I’ve never forgotten her description of the old Bohemian, Mr. Shimerda, and his violin . . . and what happened to him. It wouldn’t be a far fetch to say that she is a primary reason I came to love literature and to hold high hopes of someday writing even one short story with the impact she gave to writing.

Willa Cather has said this: “Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.”  Why would she have said that if her first nine years in Virginia meant nothing to her? The last book of her life, "Sapphira and the Slave Girl," takes place in Gore,Virginia and was written in 1940 before her sudden death of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 74.  It's as though she had come full circle -- back to Virginia in her writing.

I stood in her front yard thinking that Willa Cather may have returned to this very site before writing her last book. It is said she spent nine years visiting and researching the missions of New Mexico before she sat down to write "Death Comes for the Archbishop" – the actual writing took only three months. That’s how she worked. She would spend many years visiting, thinking, and absorbing a place before putting it to paper. I contend – though the guys at the gas station didn’t tell me this – that she came to her birth home many times before writing her final novel.  She may have stayed in the house – for I was told that Cather family members owned and lived in the house until a few decades ago. Maybe she sketched an outline of her final book in an upstairs bedroom. Perhaps she walked along Back Creek, only a trickle now, and remembered the days when she played or tended her six younger siblings there. She may have planned more books about her birthplace . . .

I’m sorry that the State of Virginia has neglected this landmark and legacy of yours, Ms. Cather. Thank you – your books have meant the world to me. That’s what I said aloud to the spirit of Willa Cather as I stood in her front yard amid the din of a passing truck.

"Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things,” she has said.