Bum Phillips, Snickerdoodles, and Manure

Louise here.
Bum Phillips (former Houston Oilers coach, and more importantly, former football coach at my alma mater, Amarillo High School) said Amarillo, Texas was the coldest place he ever lived. As you know from Trish's previous post, this is where we met. Where the ghost of Bum Phillips walks. Where the land is brown eight months of the year and flatter than a penny left on a train track. Where the sky goes on forever and the road never ends. Where the wind goes howling down the plain. Where the leaves swirl, the blast of cold air from the north can knock you over (think fire hose), and where there is none of that annoying scenery to worry about.

So I'm up there in the land of barbed wire last weekend for my book signing. And it happens that my high school buddy Jimmy Gleason is the community relations manager at the Barnes & Noble where my event is. He played the French horn in high school and used to empty his spit valve on me. I pay him back now by invading his store once a year and bringing my own cookies. More on that later.
Here's Jimmy and me:

Note that I am leaning down. This is another way I repay Jimmy for all that spit. I am now, like, forever tall. He should never have watered me. My brother gave me that sweatshirt for Christmas, by the way, on the theory that it is not possible to have too many big, grey sweatshirts. It says, "Careful, or you'll end up in my novel."

So. Here's what happened in Amarillo. First of all, Trish wasn't there. So that was a big fat drag, because we always have a grand time when we go to the panhandle together. Plus, she's a great tour manager/roadie. But she was unavailable, tragically. Lucky for me, though, my best friend from childhood, Karen Stewart Grantham (Stewey to me) was there to pick up the slack. We met in Brownies in 2nd grade. She went all the way through Girl Scouts to whatever the highest thing is. The Eagle Scout of Girl Scouts. I got kicked out in 5th grade for beating up another little Girl Scout. But that's another post. Anyway, Stewey still lives in Amarillo, four blocks from the house I grew up in. Her little girl looks JUST LIKE ME! Which is why I insist on calling her "Little Mel." She has adopted this as her identity, even though her real name is Jennifer. Here are the two Mels:

I spent much of the evening (when I was not signing books) teaching Little Mel the proper use of the phrase tough beans. By the end of the evening, the whole crowd was into it. Someone would say something like, "What happened to all the cookies? I asked you to save me one!" And we'd all cue Little Mel and she'd say, Tough beans! with all the authority of a veteran. I did explain carefully, though, that this is a phrase you never, ever say to your parents, especially your father. There are times and places for things.

I had asked Stewey if she'd order some snickerdoodles (those of you who have read my latest book, My Soul to Keep, will understand the significance of my cookie choice) from Belmar Bakery. Belmar Bakery is the bomb. Everything they make is delicious. I have a particular fondness for their chocolate/cinnamon cake, which I just found out you can order and have shipped to you. I will be availing myself of this service forthwith. I called Stew when I arrived to see if she got the cookies (as though she was the one who needed managing) and she said, "I got 'em, but I thought they were a little bit hard. I know some people like 'em that way, but I don't, really, and I don't think many people do, so I sliced up some apples and put them in a container with the snickerdoodles. They'll be soft by the time the book signing starts." This is Stew. This is Amarillo. People up there know how to soften the cookies. Plus, they bother to think that sort of thing in the first place.

By the way, the reason there are no pictures of Stewey in this post is that she, of course, was the one who was taking the pictures. She's hyper-competent. Otherwise, I probably would never have made it out of childhood alive.

Throughout the evening, I greeted friends I'd known since I was a kid. Some who are friends of my parents:

(I did not break this man's nose, by the way. I hung up my gloves in fifth grade. Someone else is responsible for this). And some who were friends of mine since the days when I used to judge how cold my hands were by checking the color of my mood ring. We all ate snickerdoodles, helped Little Mel hone her tough beans timing, and laughed and visited for three hours. A two hour book signing (7-9) ended at almost 11:00 when the store was about to close. We had a ball. Plus, I sold a ton of books. And not just to my friends. Lots of people had come in response to an article in the paper that morning.

Which is what you hope for if you're a writer. Strangers who want to read your words.

I'm a Dallas girl now. I admit it. I have the Uptown office, a couple of expensive handbags. Lots of shoes with three inch heels.

Years ago, I was driving down LBJ Freeway in Dallas on a fine spring day with the top down on my car when I was suddenly overcome by a stunning wave of homesickness for Amarillo. It came out of nowhere. My parents had moved away years before. At that point (this was before I was writing books), it had probably been 10 years since I'd been up there. But there I was, longing for my hometown. My very brown, flat, windy hometown. What was triggering this madness? A song on the radio? The breeze swirling through the convertible? I pondered for a while before I realized what it was. I was following a cattle truck. It was the smell of manure.

And now that I'm old enough, I understand why. Bum Phillips was wrong. The air up there is cold. No denying that. But nothing else is.

At heart, I am and always will be from corn-fed panhandle stock. Amarillo is softened snickerdoodles and uncomplicated friendships and the sheer simplicity of being loved, thoroughly and forever, by people who have known you since before you were anything. People who will not dump you just because you get kicked out of Girl Scouts. People who are not in competition with you. Who will not undermine you. Who will not lie, cheat or steal. And who can make an entire evening of fun out of teaching a six year old when to say tough beans.

Amarillo by Suppertime

Melanie (she's Louise, the decisive one with the gun) has a book signing this weekend in Amarillo. Amarillo, Texas. Reportedly now one of the top 5 places to live and work, according to some smartass friend of mine who is, of course, from Amarillo and who of course doesn't live there, although he of course has bought some property there anyway.

Melly and I met in Amarillo, when we were juniors at Amarillo High School. I was the new girl with the super-long hair. She played violin in the orchestra and had lots of cute guy friends, including the gay guys. (I know - gay in Amarillo - they all live elsewhere now though there was a super-cool gay bar there, Mary's.) We didn't have a class together until senior year, though, when we both were assigned to Mr. Huber's AP English class, which forthwith changed both of our lives. Mr. Huber, it turns out, was the kind of "o captain my captain" teacher who could engage you in reading things you were too young to understand by tapping things in your brain that HE could understand. Several of us in that class were on the verge of teenage implosion, on a daily basis, and he helped us by treating us like adults. Most of us ended up as writers - probably because we already were that in his class, in some proto-intellectual form. Heh.

He'd already have given me a B minus on this entry for bad grammar, but he might have bonused me for some of the bigger words. He also taught vocabulary. I'm now editing my erroneous commas. &%$@!

Anyway Melly and I became pals in that class. My first memory is of her snapping her pencil in two and throwing it across the room in Mr. Huber's class. He took it well, and I was impressed with her pluck. I was too much of a rule-follower and people-pleaser to do anything like that. That's why I get to be Thelma.

We weren't in touch after graduation much. My family moved away (again), we went off to our separate in-state colleges and maybe saw each other at the lame 5-year reunion at somebody's apartment complex in Arlington. Years after that we finally reconnected - at a concert. I was the low act on the totem pole at a Colorado festival billing Julian Lennon and Soul Asylum. I'm up there in my Tommy Hilfiger swag, trying to rock at 4 pm, and I hear this "Trishy-baby!" from somewhere up front. I look out. "It's swell Mel Wells!" I hoot from the microphone.

Somehow somebody with some sense hauled her backstage afterward (which was a large asphalt parking lot), and we sat on the floor between the bunks of my rented tour bus and caught up. She was married, had finished a novel and was looking for a publisher. I was married, had finished my second record and was happily surviving the chaos of constant touring. A week later I had a copy of her first manuscript, and a week after THAT we'd booked our first writers' trip. "Don't come up here to goof off," she'd warned me. "This is WORK."

After that, the story takes some pretty providential turns. If you're in Amarillo this Saturday and you happen to wander in to Barnes and Noble, you can catch the latest chapter from Melanie herself, live and in person. By the way, I love the word "suppertime." I learned it from Melly. She never says "dinner."

Melanie Wells My Soul to Keep Book Signing

Barnes & Noble

Westgate Mall

2415 Soncy Road

Amarillo, TX

(806)352-2300

Saturday, February 23, 2008

7:00 p.m.

Thelma and Louise increase their famosity

One of the very grand things about the Pulpwood Queen Girlfriend Weekend is that we got to meet lots of cool, interesting people. The Galleycat, for instance. A man of mystery and influence. And Will Clarke, THE dude with a clue. I've been two weeks behind Will on book tour three years in a row. Check him out at www.willclarke.com (note that he provided some of the video in our previous post). And the Galleycat (aka Ron Hogan), it turns out, gets around, as most cool cats do. Check us out at www.beatrice.com - a little encouragement for you writers out there.

And remember... Don't take any crap from anyone today. Especially yourself.

Rock on! T&L

Day 2: Of Hairspray and Loaded Weapons

Thelma: We retire -- though not from our writing/music careers -- to the McKay House. Melanie reports that the ghost is nigh.

Louise: So here's that creepy story: We walk in our room and there's a long white cotton nightgown, like from Little House on the Prairie, hanging on the wardrobe. There's other stuff there, too. A coat, some old shoes, a few old hats. I took one look at the nightgown and said, "That thing has to go." Trish looks at me like I'm nuts, but I'm used to that, so I don't mind. I stick the gown in the closet. The entire night, I can just feel something lurking. Next morning, I'm talking to our B&B owner and ask him if anyone's ever seen ghosts in the place. He said, "Well, there's the one lady... she wears a white gown. People see her a lot." I look down my nose at Trish in a superior way. I KNEW it!!

Thelma: Melanie's got a radar for that sort of thing. I'm a little envious of her gift for the supernatural, but she assures me it's a big fat pain in the ass. Apparently ghosts are like roaches, or rodents, maybe. They look for chinks in your constitutional armor, then they get in there and set up a base camp. Melanie's insomnia, for example, is probably a chink. I sleep like Norma Jean on pills, so I guess I'm less available to the spirits who might want to stop by. I'm also less sensitive in a lot of ways than Louise is. Less trigger-happy, you might say, but therefore easily caught unarmed. And as the song says, I wear my gun wrong anyway. I get myself into scrapes that she sees coming a mile off and has the right buckshot for, and I just stand there whimpering. So her chinks do have their advantages. She can stomp the roaches. I can't.

Louise: She's right about the chinks and that the radar thing is a big fat drag. But it did get me a book contract, so there IS that. She is also correct that I'm fully armed at all times. Locked and loaded. You can't tell by looking at me, though. I seem like such a nice girl...

Thelma: Anyway after a night's sleep we're back in the saddle, and we lucky-out on breakfast even though we weren't up in time. Darla saves us some egg casserole, which is so good that even Louise eats it, and she hates eggs. We meet Atticus, the resident toddler named after every character AND actor in the famed movie, and he's unimpressed with us. Clearly the B&B life has lost its luster for Atticus, so he trots upstairs with his mother following him, clutching a plastic violin. We're due to present on a panel of Texas writers, so we high-tail it to the high school after breakfast.

Louise: We were last in line on our panel, so we got the leftover time, which wasn't much. But that turned out great, because 1) we didn't have that much to say; and 2) there was no way we could overstay our welcome. So I visit with the audience for a bit about writing and what a drag it is (year-long brain constipation...) and that our consolation prize for being writers is that we get to share the misery with one another. We talk about our writing trips. I talk about my books for a second (When the Day of Evil Comes; The Soul Hunter; My Soul to Keep - just out from Waterbrook/Multnomah, which is a division of Random House -- woo hoo!) And then I read and Trishy does a snippet of one of her songs:



Louise: I thought we were a hit, didn't you?

Thelma: As much of a hit as you can be at 5:00 on Saturday when everyone's itching to get their beehive on for the Ball of Hair.

Louise: So while we were packing up, we got to meet some really terrific folks. Ron Hogan of www.galleycat.com, who is the BOMB in the publishing world. And I finally got to meet Will Clarke, who lives here in Dallas, and who is always two weeks in front of me on book tour. Check him out at www.willclarke.com. And River Jordan. We got to be on her radio show, Backstory on the Radio (www.backstoryontheradio.com).

Thelma: We have the Galleycat to thank for recording our panel session.

Louise: And the very gracious Will Clarke to thank for the pitches below:

Louise: So, aside from the fact that we both could have used some lipstick and a little fluff in our hair at that piont, I thought the weekend was a smashing success.

Thelma: And loads of fun. We're going back next year. You should come, readers. Bring your Final Net.