Surrounded By Readers

I wrote my first short story when I was in the first grade. It was about a boy playing football. It was not very long; it was not very good. I'm pretty sure it was written phonetically and without grammar, but I'm also pretty sure it was understandable. I don't have a copy, but I remember the gist of it. This boy wanted to play football, the team would not let him, and so he got mad about it.

Not exactly Rudy Ruettiger, who overcame lots of obstacles and persevered to dress with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in 1975. My character, Johnny, walked off kicking a can.

I was never confused with the academically gifted. I was not a prodigy in the first grade. I was able to write that story - on ruled tablet-style paper - because I was surrounded by a family of readers, who loved reading to me and my brothers.

I bet I spent a hundred hours sitting on a sofa next to my granny, while she read books like "The Little Engine That Could" or read the notes inside Christmas cards sent to her by friends and relatives. (She may have started reading The Little Engine That Could after my rather dark tale of the sulking football player.) In my book, Brookwood Road, I write about Granny helping me pound out a letter to my mother, who was in the Forsyth County Hospital giving birth to my brother, Russ. That was June 1964. I was a few weeks short of being five years old. Granny was investing in me, and looking for every opportunity to do so.

My parents invested, too. They bought us a subscription to Dr. Seuss books, and a book arrived each month by mail. The first one in that series was Hop On Pop. My favorite was Look Out For Pirates! Early on, before we could read really well, Mama and Daddy tag-teamed every night, reading books to us. As we got a little older, we started receiving a subscription to Scholastic's Weekly Reader. Because book stores were not readily available to us, Scholastic made paperback books available for mail order through elementary schools. My parents bought 3-4 books every time and we read them.

(Here's a photograph of Piper's 1961 edition of The Little Engine That Could and a 1964 edition of Iris Vinton's Look Out For Pirates! I have both of these displayed in my office).

My Mema was a school teacher. You can only imagine. She bought us books by the set.

When you add my Papa R.C.'s story-telling over all of this reading, well, it wasn't a big jump for me to become a story-teller and to enjoy seeing those words on paper. As reading helped my vocabulary and sentence structure, my stories began to come easily. They weren't necessarily better quality, but they were legible and made my friends laugh. (I know some of them were laughing at me, but Papa R.C. used to say, 'Better they laugh at something than not laugh at anything.')

Then I discovered the school library under the direction of Mrs. Frances Mize, and later the Forsyth County Public Library. Mrs. Mize had me and my friend Lynn Raines (now McClure) reading 3-4 books every week. Mrs. Jean Potts, at the public library, encouraged me to read and write, read and write, and read and write. I spent hours at the library each summer with Mrs. Potts while my parents worked.

Then it happened. One day in the fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Carolyn Hicks asked to read one of my stories (which I was probably writing during math). She asked me to read it during class. I did. And, she encouraged me to write and read my stories aloud all the way through seventh grade, when I became editor of the school's newspaper, FOCUS. My seventh-grade English teacher, Mrs.Teresa Day caught me drawing / designing / writing a one-page school newspaper. She encouraged me to make copies and sell them for a dime. I did that. Then, she encouraged me to pull together friends and put together a real school newspaper. We made enough profit that year to buy Mrs. Day a $20 wall clock.

The success of the newspaper led me to serve as editor of the school yearbook in eighth grade. Our yearbook sponsor, Mrs. Mary Daniel, pushed me to write and contribute to the local newspaper, The Forsyth County News. I ended up working there throughout high school; graduated and studied journalism at the University of Georgia. (I learned to type in the eighth grade, taking a summer school class at Forsyth County High School. Mrs. Wanda Bruce and Mrs. Gayle Martin (now Haight) taught me to type. I could not wait to type my stories, and I still have some of them.)

Fast-forward . . .

When our son Andrew was born in 1988, the late Bobby Gilbert was the Forsyth County tax commissioner. I ran into Bobby one day at the court house, and he congratulated me on being a new daddy. Then he said, "Never refuse to read a book to your children. Always make time to read to them."

I have never forgotten that. Every time my boys came to me with a book, I stopped whatever I was doing to read to them. And, I told them bedtime stories every night. I know that's what many people did for me. I was surrounded by readers . . . and a lot of encouragers, too.

Chapter 24: A Fish Story

Of all the book's stories, one of the most unblemished (or completely true) is the story of the Sunday afternoon Tim and I (Jack and Frank) were allowed to go fishing by ourselves. My grandfather's old lake had long been ignored by fishermen, and the catfish therein were apparently starving. Of all my childhood tales, when I think of what brotherhood means, I think of me and Tim on an independent mission together . . . enjoying success and celebrating proudly with one another. On many levels, it was a great Sunday afternoon. Somewhere there is a photograph of me and Tim with all the fish we caught. I hope to find it this summer.

*******

The old lake was built in 1955, and opened to the public for fishing on Saturday, June 15, 1957. (Daddy was 18, almost 19; I was born in 1959). The opening was chronicled by Bill Allen a staff writer for The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. Mr. Allen wrote a regular column titled, "Outdoor Georgia." (Above is a photograph of an original copy of the story that I have. Papa R.C. is pictured holding his own catch). On Saturday, June 1, Mr. Allen visited the lake and went fishing with my Papa R.C. and my daddy, Doug. In the newspaper story, Mr. Allen claims their fishing party caught 200 fish in five hours. He also applauds my Papa R.C. this way:

"R.C. Vaughan and his son, Doug, both enthusiastic fishermen, for a long time wanted a pond. This one is about eight acres large, and now it is in such powerfully wonderful health that they must open it to the public to (ensure) its future and continued productivity.

"After two years of watchful management and invaluable aid from state fisheries' biologists, the water now produces pound-plus bass and 1 1/2 pound bream wherever you pitch a book."

Of course, throughout the story, he spelled our last name incorrectly. You spell it Vaughan - not Vaughn. Darn newspaper people.

Papa R.C. opened a pier and a bait shack / concession stand at the lake. I barely remember it. In collaborating with daddy for the book, he said they got tired of the traffic and watching out for the safety of people. But, I do remember - later as a boy - going with Papa R.C. to visit fishing hatcheries in northwest Georgia and Alabama. He took me, Tim and our cousin Jeff on some of those trips, and I'm sure that's how the catfish came to be in the lake during our childhood.

Today, the old lake (pictured top in 1981 during my senior year at the University of Georgia) is the last landmark remaining from our life on the farm. All of the farm's buildings and roads were destroyed in recent years, giving way to a monstrous subdivision as Atlanta's sprawl continues its northward march. Today, the lake is located at the end of Raskarity Lane, which is the formal name given to what we called the unpaved lake road. The road was formally named after my Papa R.C. sold the property. Homes now surround the lake's shores. Here's a screen shot, right, from Google Maps that shows the lake today as Vaughan Lake. That's Google's formal name for it - not ours, necessarily. I am pleased with the extended courtesy, however. I put a star on the map where our home used to be.

In next week's post I will tell you about Stozier's Woods, which lined the lake road and was one of our favorite places to play.

Second Chances: Morning Exercise

Most of my research pointed me to a 100,000 word writing goal for a Memoir.

I wrote 103,000 words.

The editors - sifters - were kind, but would not let it slide. They pulled things back to 95,000.

During rewrites, I was able to ease back toward 100,000 words.

It's a struggle: What to keep and what to take out.

My son William said, "Look, dad, every writer I know understands that you might have to lose some of your babies." Don't wig out. It's a metaphor. Some stories, some tangents and some anecdotes just need to be left on the sifting table. It was painful.

But, I kept everything that I cut in a separate file. So, we'll call these periodic posts - Second Chances. They won't be presented in full chapter form, but as simple little tangents.

Morning Exercise

My Papa R.C. used to laugh and say, "We are genetically lazy people. And, we are really good at what we do." That was his way of saying, "Work smart and don't work hard," which you've probably heard from more reputable sources.

As boys, I can tell you that we weren't lazy. We had a huge yard to mow - one that took three little boys all day to cut working in shifts. We also had household chores to do. As we got older, we were asked to help out around the family meat house.

I don't know what caused my daddy to think that we three boys were becoming slothful, lazy bums. I think he was manipulated by the media (that's our go-to excuse for everything, right?) into believing - in 1968ish - that all young people were becoming drug-crazed hippies. We were in Atlanta one Saturday, at the Fox Theatre, and driving down Peachtree Street, daddy slowed and said, "Look at those damn worthless hippies."

I think he probably decided then and there that we were not going to become hippies. Not under his watch. Mind you - none of us had even reached puberty much less considered running off to California with Jefferson Airplane. I was in third grade before he let me have anything but a buzzed haircut. He buzzed it himself. (More about this in the 2016 sequel to Brookwood Road).

"We are going to start getting up every morning at 6 a.m. and running down the road," he announced one night. "I think it will be good for you to exercise and stay healthy." We thought he was crazy. I actually thought he was trying to run some pre-adolescent weight off me, and disguising his motive by forcing my brothers to run, too.

So, the next morning, no kidding, he rousted us out of bed, marched us out in the cold and dark to Brookwood Road. We began a forced jog up the road toward our grandparents' house and back. Daddy ran with us.

The next morning, he overslept and forgot to get us up.

The morning after that, he said we would just run in the late afternoon. I remember that it rained. We wanted to run in the rain. He said no. Dang.

And, I don't remember ever running more than that one morning.

In fact, honestly, the word exercise never came up again.

"Are we going to run anymore?" I asked him.

"Don't you have recess in school?" he shot back.

- Scott