The View from My Ridge

By Charles E. Rice

The View from My Ridge is a collection of finely crafted micro-essays offering a unique perspective on the spirit and personality of the mid-twentieth century American South—an era marked by the Great Depression, World War II and Korea, the "innocent" fifties and the turbulent sixties. The voice is that of an author in the midst of his own evolution from naïve mill-town boy to highly educated Episcopal priest and ever-questioning theologian.

Written in 1977 and originally published in 2003, this Revised 2nd Edition includes only the original manuscript. The selected essays and short stories that made up the second half of the first Canopic edition have been left out in order to accentuate the author's original intent. The photos were added from the author's personal collection and other sources, including photos developed in his backyard shed-turned-darkroom in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Rossville, Georgia, circa 1944-50.

• Language: English
• Publisher: canopic
• Release date: Apr 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463045602

Charles E. Rice

Born in the John Ross House in Rossville, Georgia, Charles Rice lived most of his boyhood at the foot of Missionary Ridge on the Tennessee-Georgia state line. (For two years during World War II, he lived in the then-secret town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where his father was employed as a laborer at the Y-12 nuclear plant.) He served as both an ordained Methodist minister (1951-1958) and Episcopal Priest (1959-1986) during his storied career as a clergyman, theologian, writer, and teacher. His academic trail includes degrees from the University of Chattanooga, Emory University, Drew University, and the University of the South. He has had numerous essays and articles published in regional and national publications.

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Publisher’s Preface to the Second Edition

In 1995, my brother Hal and I had twenty-five handmade, leather-bound replicas of the original handwritten manuscript of The View from My Ridge by Charles E. Rice privately published. As it was later assigned an ISBN, technically that was the first edition. The handful of people who had read either the original manuscript or the leather-bound special edition were unanimous in the opinion that this was a work that should reach a wider audience.

While I agreed, I was hesitant for two primary reasons. One, such a project was neither a simple nor an inexpensive matter in the days before print on demand. And two, my dad had told me he did not write the manuscript for publication. But, he didn’t specifically tell me not to publish it, and before he died in 1986, he gave me responsibility for his library and his writings—a responsibility I did not take lightly then nor do I take lightly now.

As my own career in writing and publishing began to take shape, I decided to start an independent book publishing venture in 2003. The imprint was named Canopic Publishing as a nod to Canopic Jar, an arts journal that I had been publishing on and off since 1985. Choosing the debut title was easy; turning it into a book was not.

At that time the original manuscript was in my mom’s possession. She lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee and I was living in Jacksonville, Florida. Step one was to convert the handwritten pages into a word processing file. My mom was not adept at using the computer beyond sending email—but she was adept at typing and at reading my dad’s handwriting. So she typed each handwritten page into an individual email and sent them to me one by one. I then used my slightly advanced computer skills to copy and paste the text from the emails into a Word file.

I had not yet mastered book design, but my writing and book production career had put me in regular contact with folk who were quite familiar with the process. My friends Doug and Lynn Welch—collectively known as The Word Shop—took the edited word file and turned it into a PageMaker file, which I then sent a printer along with a sizable check. A few weeks later a UPS truck stopped in front of my apartment and filled my living room with boxes of softcover books. The View from My Ridge was thus published, and Canopic Publishing had become an actual entity.

The back cover text included a blurb by Will D. Campbell that turned out to be prophetic (not an uncommon occurrence for Brother Will):

Those who knew Charles Rice as friend and priest give thanks for this renewal of old times not forgotten. Those who knew him not at all will exult in the wit and wisdom of a new associate, teacher and playmate.

And that’s what happened. Initially there was a flurry of interest from the hundreds of people whose lives had been touched by my father and his work (thanks almost entirely to my mom’s tireless letter writing and phone call campaign). I have a folder of correspondence received from an amazing assortment of folks thanking me for allowing them to spend more time with their long-passed teacher and friend. That was beyond gratifying. But there was also a slowly building interest from those who had previously known him not at all. An excerpt from the book even made it into Writing Strategies, a college textbook by Mary Sue Koeppel.

The world of social media allowed for an even wider audience to be reached, so much so that eventually the book achieved out of print status. As Will had predicted, there were indeed people exulting in the wit and wisdom of a new associate, teacher and playmate.

Many of my dad’s closest friends have left us since that first softcover edition was published, including my mother and Will Campbell. As a result I have found myself in possession of photographs and slides from many sources that coincide with the stories in The View from My Ridge. Over the years I kept thinking that a new edition was in order, one that included photographs. But as Canopic Publishing began to grow, the resources were being devoted to the next new book—as Dad would have wanted. I was in a bit of a quandary.

When Dad began the handwritten version of The View from My Ridge he scrawled a simple dedication on the second page: For my children and theirs. That provided the final motivation. The book needed to be available for those yet to come, and preserving photos in the process would be a bonus. Unlike the first edition, the majority of the people who will read the second edition will have never seen the author strolling the earth. And so I spent a few months scanning images and redesigning the layout whenever breaks in my work schedule allowed. A true labor of love.

This edition includes only the original manuscript. The selected essays and short stories that made up the second half of the first Canopic edition have been left out in order to accentuate the author’s original focus. But a separate book of theological and ecclesiastical writings is in the works, as is a collection of personal writings. For now, please enjoy what has become the literary legacy of Charles E. Rice: The View from My Ridge.

There have been many people who have provided encouragement and support along the way. My friends Mary Ann Thompson and Janet Helwig Fortney—both of whom met the author through his writing—have been especially supportive of the book over the years, praising the work publicly and distributing copies to their family and friends. Janet also provided rare postcards to help with the illustrations for the second edition. My friend Jennifer Jackson fanned the flames of my initial impulse to update the book—she and I shared quite a bit of heritage, and she provided me with Depression-era newspaper clippings of Dad’s uncle C.L. with the Peerless baseball team (Jennifer’s father played in the same league as a member of the Standard Coosa Thatcher team.) Pati Rice provided some vital photos of Dad with his grandchildren, along with continued support for the project. Truly, there are so many others who expressed their love and appreciation for the man and his book over the years, and the few I just mentioned barely scratch the surface, but please know I send my love and thanks to each and every one.

As publisher, I would like to dedicate this edition to my aunts, Barbara Jean (Rice) Murray and Ruth (Rice) Williams, who shared the Ridge with their big brother; to my aunt Mildred Ivester-Sterchi, who grew up on the other side of the ridge; to my wife Virginia for saying do it and offering editorial and moral support; to all of my father’s children, grandchildren, step-grandchildren—and theirs; and most of all to my mother, Joann Ivester Rice, whose life and love had a profound—if largely unmentioned—impact on the writing of this book.

And to Dad.

Philip Rice, 2017

Publishers Preface for the First Edition

My father, Charles Edward Rice, wrote the bulk of The View from My Ridge in 1977, while living in Nashville, Tennessee. An Episcopal priest, he was appointed diocesan consultant for the Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee, John Vander Horst, in 1968, but with the Bishop's retirement in 1976 came a period of limbo for the consultant. Although still on the payroll, his duties were lessened considerably and it was understood by all that he was seeking a return to parish ministry. The author of a dozen or so articles and theological essays published in various periodicals, he spent much of this transition period at his typewriter compiling a manuscript drawn from his professional experience. The completed work, entitled The Political Shape of the Church, remains enigmatically tucked away in a footlocker. Following the completion of that ecclesiastical study, he began writing a series of essays recounting his childhood in Rossville, Georgia, where he was born in 1929.

Although he normally banged out his ideas on an old typewriter, for this diversion he chose instead to write in longhand, using a hardbound blank book. The pages were 8 x 11 and he decided to confine each essay to a single page. He may have written rough drafts or outlines—given his discipline and preciseness as a writer it's hard to imagine otherwise—but the handwritten quality retains an air of spontaneity while the space limitations highlight his talent for literary brevity, already a lauded hallmark of his oratory style. Initially a memoir of growing up in a small Southern mill town during the depression and World War II, The View from My Ridge evolved into a set of prosaic vignettes, each self-contained yet thematically linked as part of a continuous narrative.

In January of 1978 he moved to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to serve as rector at Trinity Episcopal Church. The first seventy-eight or so installments of The View from My Ridge were finished by that time, and over the next few years he would add only an occasional entry. He was rector of Trinity for considerably longer than any of his previous pastorates, but the composition of the Ridge pieces devoted to parishes and parishioners precedes his tenure there, so such essays as From Steeple to Steeple and Homemade Theologians do not include references to the many people who helped shape the landscape of his final years as a clergyman. The reflections he might have penned on his time in the Smokies, had he lived into retirement, defy speculation, but suffice it to say that some of the most profound and enduring friendships were begat during his years as a preacher in that bustling mountain village.

Readers may note that few of the traditional biographical highlights—such as his marriage, his children, many of his closest relationships, etc.—are given little, if any, ink in The View from My Ridge. But those who have an understanding of the book's author will understand and accept this fact. For better or worse, he pandered to no one, and providing gratuitous affection or attention was not his style. Such omissions also reflect his keen sense of purpose as a writer and as a preacher: