A Day Off from Church and School

January 26, 1966

Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky. It snowed on Saturday. The roads were too slick for us to have church at Mount Pleasant. Dad says it's better to be safe and cancel church rather than have some of the older members maybe slide off the road and get hurt or sick trying to get their cars out of the ditch. Besides, the parking area is all gravel. It's hard to shovel snow off gravel. Dad told everybody to just read their Bibles and say their prayers at home and make one of the prayers that the roads will be clear next Sunday. 

I like going to church okay, but it's fun having a day off too. Especially when the day off keeps going and school is canceled on Monday the way it was this week. A few inches of snow slows things down in Hollyhill. Dad and I still make it to the newspaper office and so does Zella but she does complain mightily about the people who don't shovel their sidewalks in front of their houses in town. I don'r know why she gets so upset. It's not like she doesn't have boots. And of course, Wes lives in the apartment over the newspaper office, so all he has to do is come downstairs to work. Dad says the news is like the mail - neither rain nor snow nor dark of night will keep it from making it out to the people of Hollyhill. Or something like that anyway. 

On Sunday, I walked over in Mr. Crutcher's field next door to our house and took some snow pictures. I love taking pictures. I'd take hundreds if film wasn't so expensive. Do you like taking pictures of snow? Dad says snow scenes are okay but the pictures that get the most attention in the paper have people or animals in them. Monday, he told me to walk around town and find some kids making snowmen. That's always good to put in the paper. 

I made a snowman myself, but I didn't take a picture of mine. It wasn't that good. A little lumpy and sideways, but fun anyway.  

No church and no school gave me extra time to work on Bailey's Bug. Last week you remember Bailey was shutting his eyes and thinking about his boy, Reid, while he was walking along with Skelley and Lucinda. Then Skelley yelled a warning. So what happened then? Read on to find out. And remember, the whole story is under Bailey's Bug up top.

BAILEY'S BUG by Jocie Brooke
  (continued from last week)

Bailey opened his eyes, but not quick enough to keep from banging into a tree. He bounced back on his haunches.
   "Be ye all right, lad?" Skelley looked at him with worried eyes.
   "What happened?" Bailey's head was spinning.
   "You ran into a tree." Lucinda jumped up on a branch above him. She had no sympathy for his head at all.
   Bailey looked up and saw two black cats on limbs that wavered and shook. He tried to stand up, but that made everything shimmer and shake even more. He sank back on his haunches and shook his head until his ears flapped.
   Skelley leaned over to sniff Bailey. Bailey saw two noses and four black eyes. It was too much. He lay down and put his paw over his eyes.
   "I think the lad has hurt himself." Skelley touched Bailey's back with his nose.
   "He's knocked himself silly," Lucinda said. "And what are we supposed to do now? Out here heaven only knows where."
   "Could be the lad merely needs a minute or so to come to his senses."
   "He does't have a lot of sense to come to." Lucinda let out a sigh. "I guess I don't either or I wouldn't be out here with him in the middle of nowhere."
   "Now, now, Miss Lucinda. Ye did what any true friend would do. The lad needed you along. He needs the both of us."
   "And I need a saucer of milk. And you need a truckload of food."
   "I've always been on the lean side." Skelley sat down beside Bailey. "That's how I got me name, you know. Skeleton, it is, but me master shortened it to Skelley. I always favored that name best."
   "Being bony doesn't mean you don't get hungry," Lucinda said.
   Bailey wished she wouldn't talk about being hungry. It was making his stomach rumble and he was having enough trouble trying to keep his head from floating clear away. Even with his eyes tight shut, the ground was rocking under him. Not only that, but Lucinda and Skelley sounded faraway even though he knew they were right beside him.
   Skelley was still trying to reassure Lucinda. "Don't be worrying, Miss Lucinda. I mind the time I fell off old Asaph one night. Knocked me out cold for a bit, and then it was some time before I could think straight again. We'll just rest here a spell until the lad comes around."
   They quit talking and Bailey thought he should open his eyes and tell them he was okay. He was okay. His head wasn't spinning now and felt attached to his body again. When he peeked out past his paw, the trees were no longer dividing into twos. Everything looked the way it was supposed to look. But he didn't sit up.
   He kept his paw over his eyes and tried not to think about why he didn't want to open his eyes. Instead he thought about food, but that made his stomach growl. He thought about how the thorn in his foot hurt even when he wasn't walking on it. He wanted to lick his foot again to see if he could get rid of the thorn, but he didn't. Then his ear started to itch, but he didn't sit up to scratch it.
   Finally he thought about Lucinda in the tree over his head. She was why he didn't want to open his eyes. The hum wasn't sounding in his ear anymore. It was gone. He couldn't hear it at all no matter how hard he listened. 
   How could he tell Lucinda that? 

(To be continued.) 

Jocie Shares a Scene from Summer of Joy

February 17, 1965

Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky three days after Valentine's Day. It's been snowing and snowing. That's given me lots of time to think about all the different kinds of love and back to some of the things that happened in those Heart of Hollyhill books I'm in. 
 
You know it's funny that last Hollyhill book is named Summer of Joy because most of it happened in the winter time. We had a bunch of snow then too. And during one of those snows, Robert showed up out of nowhere. I didn't like him much. You know how I love Wes. I mean, Wes is my best friend and my grandfather all wrapped up in one. But he's not really my grandfather, not in any kind of real family kin. He's from Jupiter. I know. He's not really from Jupiter. I've known that forever, but that's what he's always told me. Then Robert shows up - his real grandson in the family kin way. That sort of worried me. I was afraid Wes wouldn't love me the same if he had Robert to love. Here's the scene out of the book where I go out to walk in the snow to think that through, and Robert hunts me down to talk about Wes.

    We walked along without talking for a little ways. I was thinking about claiming I was cold and saying we needed to go back to the house when Robert said, "Your father told me you and my grandfather are real close."
    I wasn't sure what he wanted me to say to that, so I just nodded a little and kept walking. We were almost to the end of the apple orchard, but Mr. Crutcher doesn't mind me walking in his pasture fields next door. Dad walks there all the time when he's praying through something for a sermon or whatever. 
    I thought maybe I should be praying through something. I just wasn't sure what. I wasn't sure why I had that spider crawly feeling inside and tears in my eyes that weren't there just because of the cold wind blowing in my face. Just because proof that Wes wasn't from Jupiter was walking along beside me didn't mean Wes had to stop telling me Jupiter stories. And even if he did, so what? I was too old for Jupiter stories anyway.
     "Tell me about him," Robert said.
     "What about him?"
     "I don't know. Tell me why you love him."
    "Why do you want to know that?"
    "So I can love him the way you do. Like a real grandson would."
    It seemed only fair, so I told him about the spaceship from Jupiter. And about the motorcycle and how Wes talked to the press to keep it running. I told him about the tornado and the tree falling on Wes. I didn't tell him why we were out in the tornado. I figured that would just confuse things. Last I told him about Wes being baptized in the river even though it almost made his ears freeze and fall off. We both laughed about that.
    By the time we walked back to the house, I'd passed some of my love for Wes over to Robert, but the funny thing was I didn't have a bit less inside me. Maybe love really is like a candle flame that keeps burning just as brightly no matter how many other candles are lit from the flame.

Is that how you think love is? 


By the way, I've heard there are some giveaways going on. You can check it out here. And there's a Goodreads giveaway too. Leave a comment here and be in a special drawing for a copy of one of the Heart of Hollyhill books. That sounds like fun, doesn't it?

  

Snow in Hollyhill's Summer of Joy

January 6, 1965

Jocie Brooke reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky. It's snowing! It's snowing! No school in Hollyhill tomorrow. I shouldn't be happy about that since we just went back to school from Christmas break last week, but when you get a snow day, you have to be happy. Aren't you happy when you get a snow day? I love snow. I do. 

In that book about Hollyhill, Summer of Joy, there are a lot of snow scenes. That sounds sort of strange for a book named Summer of something, but the story starts out before Christmas and ends in June. I guess when the summer started it was pretty  joyful in Hollyhill, but the snowstorm in that book was something. 

The weathermen had said flurries and so Dad and Leigh figured it would be fine for them to drive to Grundy so Dad could meet Leigh's parents. Leigh wasn't too excited about that. She said her parents were "different." She made quotes around the word when she said it. They wanted her to move back home with them instead of being her own person, but Leigh says sometimes a girl has to grow up and be a person on her own and not just somebody's daughter. Especially when she falls in love. You did know that Leigh has majorly fallen for Dad, didn't you? Majorly.

Anyway, Leigh says her parents aren't all that much in favor of her being crazy for Dad. He is a lot older than her since she's not all that much older than Tabitha. But she says age doesn't matter and maybe it doesn't because Dad has been really happy lately. I think he liked almost getting stuck with Leigh in the snow. 

Maybe you'll think it's fun to read a bit from that Summer of Joy book when the snow if falling fast and furious.

     And then they were out the door, stepping through snow over their shoe tops to the car. The snow crunched under the car's wheels as David backed carefully out of the driveway. He didn't want to have to pray himself out of the ditch right in front of their house. Once they were back on the main highway, the roads were still fairly clear. There wasn't much traffic. Just a car now and again. Some other idiot trying to escape his future in-laws' house.

     David was concentrating on driving, feeling every slip of the wheels, but at the same time, he was keenly aware of Leigh's silence in the dark beside him. He glanced over at her, "You okay?"

     "I'm sorry, David. They were even worse than I thought they would be."

     "Your mother wasn't too happy about our news, but you know, I'm not marrying your mother. I'm marrying you and you're happy about our news."

     "I am." Suddenly Leigh started laughing.

     "What's so funny?" David asked.

     "I don't know. Us. Them. The snow. Everything. I always have to laugh when I leave their house. All that laughter that I couldn't spill there gets piled up inside me and I have to let it out."

     And so they laughed and prayed their way through the snow back to Hollyhill.

Hope you liked reading that. Lots more happened during that snowstorm in Hollyhill. Dad had some surprises when he got home. We all did - thanks to Zella's meddling. You won't believe what Zella did. Well, maybe you will. After all, we're talking about Zella now.

Pretty soon Summer of Joy (March) will be back on the shelves and you will have a chance to read all about that snow storm and those surprises.

  

    

      

Barefoot Ben Wilson on Main Street

Ben Wilson

February 3, 1964

 Jocie Brooke here reporting from Main Street, Hollyhill. Snow fell yesterday. At least three inches. Plenty to make the county roads slick and so no school. Yaaayy! It's always especially cool when snow happens on a Monday. 


Everybody hates getting up on Monday morning even if they have their homework done already. And I did. I had that science report all written with a carefully drawn illustration of pistils. But why in the world are we studying plant pistils in the middle of winter? We should be studying snowflakes. Do you really believe that no two snowflakes look alike? There are millions of snowflakes. Nobody has looked at them all. Somewhere in the hundreds of years that those millions of flakes have fallen, two could be alike. Don't you think?

Okay, back to Main Street reporting. It turns out that strange does happen in Hollyhill. But sometimes you're so used to that strange you don't pay it much attention. That's how Ben Wilson is. Definitely strange. Or maybe it would be nicer to say different. Dad says Mr. Wilson marches to a different drummer than the ordinary Hollyhiller. But most of us average Hollyhillers are so used to seeing Ben that we just think of him as - well, as Ben.

But I've been trying to do what Wes said and be on the lookout for strange. So when I spotted Ben walking up the street barefoot in the snow, it hit me as to how that might be a little strange. I don't know how old he is. He's not much of a talker at least to kids like me. They say he has a way with horses. And Dad says he went off and had an important job once. I guess he didn't like it because he came home to Holly County and put on his bib overalls and took off his shoes. I've seen him wear rubber boots in the summertime, but never in the snow or cold. His feet bleed sometimes and you can hear him grumbling at them when that happens. "Bleed, darn you, bleed." Well, he doesn't say darn, but Dad would take my pen and notebook away if I wrote what he really said. 

Old Ben carries a walking stick almost as tall as he is and lets his beard and hair grow however they want to. He walks everywhere and takes off to Louisville every year when it's State Fair time. He's made some friends down there among the newspaper folks. Guess you have to get away from home for people to properly appreciate your oddness. Around Hollyhill, we just say there's goes Ben and think he ought to put on boots and a coat when it's snowy and cold like today. 

When I showed this to Wes, he laughed and said he didn't know what planet Mr. Wilson might be from, but that it's one he wouldn't mind visiting. But he doesn't plan to go barefoot in the snow to get there.

So I guess I've found something strange for my Hollyhill Book of the Strange afer all. If I get started on the people here in Hollyhill, then I might have to write two books of the strange. 

Thanks for stopping by, and remember if you leave a comment, you might win Scent of Lilacs. Then you'll know all our secrets, the ordinary ones and strange ones too.