No Knitting; Just Fiction

No knitting content today; just a little piece I wrote as a descriptive writing exercise a year or two ago.

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Jack & Slim

This fiction piece has been deleted because it will soon be published in an issue of No Umbrella - Maine's Offbeat Outdoor Paper". Please visit their website or subscribe to their paper!

Comments

[Helen in NH]

I could use that moment on the curb right about now Beth. Thank you for ANOTHER wonderful gift of a good story worth reading.

Helen

[Beth Collins]

Hey, Helen! Love ya! Tell you what.... even though you're doing whatever you're doing, & I'm knitting on the knitting machine today, let's both "virtually" be sitting on that sunny curb together, eating peanuts and orange soda. And we'll bring our knitting, too, of course. Sounds like a great way to spend the day; I'm enjoying it already. Who knows, maybe some others will join us, and we can all make fun of Ol' Man McKay together. :)

[Ellen]

Beth, you described exactly my grandfather's store -- Gilliam's Grocery and Esso Station -- in Gibsonville, NC...My father took it over when we were small and ran it for a long time. The same soda case filled with icy water sat under the front window of Papa Gilliam's store, filled with squat, "hoopskirt" shaped 6 1/2 Coke bottles, Cheerwine, Dr. Pepper, Nehi orange and grape soda, old fashioned quilted Pepsi bottles, Yoohoo chocolate soda... Right across the aisle was the penny candy display, three rows of glass fishbowls filled with an assortment of sweet treats -- banana and chocolate BB Bats, Mary Janes,candy buttons and cigarette bubblegum, Nip-L-Nip wax soda bottles, Teaberry and Clove gum, red and black licorice whips, Necco wafers, Good-n-Plenty, bubblegum cigars and candy necklaces, Tom's peanut butter logs and Pixy Stix, Sugar Daddy lollipops and rootbeer barrels... It's amazing we have any teeth left after a childhood of eating that stuff!!! But it certainly has nostalgia value.

Good story!

[Beth Collins]

Hi Ellen! We must be related: the store in the story is based on my Uncle Ray's store, in Portage, Maine. It sounds pretty much identical to your father's store, right down to the layout. :) Funny, I never knew until I became a store owner myself, that no fewer than five of my relatives had had stores in the region where I grew up. And here I thought we were all a family of teachers! Weird how no one thought to mention it, the whole time I was growing up.

[Milinda]

Thank you for the trip down memory lane and an excellant bit of writing. May I suggest more of same? A book in the making, perhaps.

[Beth Collins]

Thanks, Milinda!
Heh heh, I'd love to write a book. I wish publishers were as interested in publishing my work as my friends & fans are. :)

[Helen]

I loved the story Beth! So descriptive and I felt like I was there. You really have a gift for the written word. :)

[Og]

I love that piece. Glad you put it up for all to see.

I know you think publishers may not be as interested in your fiction as all us little people out here, but a book of stories like that would feed the soul. I know it would feed mine to read it, and I'm betting it would feed yours to write it.

I've been nagging Beth, y'all, to write a volume of Maine Stories. Feel free to join in the naggin'. She's got a lot of great stories to tell, and even if it could only be a slim volume, I think it'd be a real nice read.

Of course, you may be too busy to write currently, and I completely understand that. But just so you know, you can take the girl out of Writing, but... well, you know the rest.

Thanks for posting the story.