Family Jewell: A Novel in Letters & Sequel to Family Gems

By Jim Browning

Thomas Wolfe may have said that you cant go home again, but nobody told Jewell Mattingly Garrett, who, once more, takes us back to rural Buck Creek, Kentucky, circa 1977, to re-visit the goings-on in her own hectic life (through new personal diary entries), in the lives of her growing family (via more letters to her younger, more sophisticated sister, Ruby JaNelle Mattingly Clarkson, in Falstaff, Arizona), and in the lives of her friends and neighbors and the world at large (in her weekly newspaper column in the local Beattyville Weekly Word).

Catch up with Jewell and the cast of eccentric characters from 2008s Family Gems in this hilarious and heartwarming sequel, Family Jewell, to learn whats new with her tight-knit Kentucky clan--both "in-laws" and "out-laws"--and her close circle of companions and confidants at the Kurl Up and Dye Beauty Salon, including fighting fraternal twin sister beauticians Teensie and Weensie Bottoms and their comical, cross-dressing co-worker and co-hort in crime, "Mr. Jerry" Combs--not to mention a host of memorable new characters introduced in this latest slice of down-home Southern life.

Prepare yourself for the wedding of the social season; a funeral (or two) you wont soon forget; unexpected branches sprouting from the already-tangled family tree; more oddball antics from drug-and-alcohol-addicted eldest sister Opal Ovada Mattingly Skaggs (who refuses to let her idol Elvis go gentle into his own good night); and, last but not least, another treasure trove of time-tested and tasty recipes courtesy of the hands of the good Christian women of the Buck Creek Community Homemakers Club.

So, pour yourself and big cup of coffee, cut yourself a hearty piece of pie, and settle into your easiest chair for a second helping of "authentic . . . Southern rural family ways and foodways" (Bowling Green Daily News) first cooked up in Family Gems and now being served again in Family Jewell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481743730

Jim Browning

Jim Browning is a graduate of Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where he currently teaches English. He has published essays, articles, reviews, and poetry, and Family Jewell is his second novel, a sequel to 2008’s Family Gems, co-authored with Daniel Curry.

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2013 by Jim Browning. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/24/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-4374-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-4373-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013907414

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

Recipes

About the Author

Dedication

for

the real Barbara Lee Gordon

and,

once again,

for

the real Thomas Preston.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank

Daniel Curry,

co-author of Family Gems,

for allowing him to continue

to tell their story in this sequel

and

Charmaine Allmon-Mosby,

Betty Amis, and

Anna Combs,

the first readers of this book,

for their friendship

and encouragement.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—

Success in Circuit lies

—Emily Dickinson

Chapter 1

Jewell Gets Off the Pot

The Diary of Jewell Mattingly Garrett

Saturday, April 23, 1977

It’s time to shit or get off the pot, Jewell! hollered Connie, as he walked through the back door of the kitchen packing the biggest, bluest electric typewriter I’d ever laid eyes on in my life in his outstretched arms. I had just called over to Deborah Ann’s trailer and told her supper would be on the table by the time she and the kids walked across the yard.

Connie had left out from home for the City of Hazard Annual Public Auction before breakfast that morning, and I had no idea what time he would be getting in, much less what he’d be dragging home with him in the back of his pickup truck, and I wasn’t about to wait supper on him forever and have to be in the kitchen cleaning up half the night.

Channel 3 was showing part one of Gone with the Wind with limited commercial interruption at 7 o’clock, and I wanted Tiffany Dawn and Thomas Preston to see it since neither of them ever had and because it was truly an educational story of the old South.

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Oh, Granny, Tiff had groaned at the lunch table earlier in the day when I invited them to come back for supper and to stay for the movie. Who wants to watch that dumb old thing?

I, for one, certainly do, I said real quick like, and so does your Mama and Pappaw and little brother, figuring I needed all the reinforcements I could enlist for this fight. "Rex Reed said in the TV Guide that it’s one of the greatest movies ever made, I added, pulling out the big guns, and you might learn something, too."

With her mouth full of grilled cheese sandwich and Charles Potato Chips, I didn’t get too much of an argument after that, although she pouted almost the whole time she was drying lunch dishes and didn’t have much to say.

Does a whole bunch of people get kilt? Thomas Preston asked, as he sat at the kitchen table coloring the General Lee orange in his Dukes of Hazzard coloring book.

Quite a few people DO get KILLED, I said, quietly correcting him, and General Sherman burns down the whole city of Atlanta. You know, where your Uncle Tommy and Uncle Tony live.

Tiffany Dawn perked up considerably at the mention of her Uncle Tommy’s name. Granny, do you think Uncle Tommy and Tony will be coming home anytime soon, maybe this summer? she asked. They brought me this cool sterling silver charm bracelet from Rich’s Department Store when they were home for Easter. Don’t cha love it? she chirped as she shook the wrist of her hand over the drainer full of wet lunch dishes, charm jangling against charm.

Speaking of silverware, if somebody gets busy with that dish towel, I said slyly, maybe your sweet old Granny might even find an odd silver spoon somewhere around here for your Pappaw to make you a ring out of.

Tiff perked up even more after that and made quick work out of the rest of the dishes, even offering to peel the potatoes for supper before she left. I believe in motivating children, and if it takes a bribe, so be it. Besides, there was no way in H-E double hockey sticks I was missing Gone with the Wind. Clark Gable still melts my butter.

Shit fire, Jewell! Connie huffed, as he looked for a place in the kitchen to set down the typewriter. What the hell do you want me to do with this thing? It’s heavy as all get out.

First of all, I want you to watch your mouth before those children get here, I said, as I turned from the stove, where I was trying to finish frying the last few big pieces of chicken breast without burning myself and having grease pop all over the stove. Just set it on the dining room table. We’re eating in the kitchen tonight.

Yessum, Miz Scarlett, he said with a wink and a nod in my direction as he lumbered into the dining room, shoulders hunched over as if his back were breaking and shuffling his feet.

Lawdy, you sure do make a body work hard for his supper, he said, as he came back in the kitchen grinning, trying to put his arms around my waist from behind. I’m powerful hungry and plum wore out from all that totin’.

I intercepted his pass and handed him the dish towel over my shoulder and told him to wash his hands, just as Deborah Ann and the kids walked through the back door, Preston making a beeline to wrap his arms around his Pappaw’s knees.

Something sure does smell good, Mama, Deborah Ann said, as she put the butterscotch ripple ice cream in the freezer. I had asked her to bring it home from the Food Carnival to go with the pecan pie I had made for dessert. I haven’t had a bite to eat all day, other than a Mr. Pibb and some cheese crackers out of the vending machines at work.

Supper will be ready in a minute, I told her, if you and Tiff will finish setting the table and fix some ice in the glasses. I’ve made tea, and we’ve got R.C., too.

Connie walked back into the dining room, dragging Preston behind him like a leg iron. Look what Pappaw got Granny today, T.P., he announced proudly. Ain’t it a doozy?

Preston held on tight, oblivious to his Pappaw’s preening, happy just to be holding on for dear life.

As I leaned over to take the biscuits out of the oven and finally call everybody to the table with one last smart-alecky remark, a wave of déjà vu blindsided my brain just as the heat from the stove hit me square in the face, and I knew that I had lived this moment before and would live it again, over and over.

These better be some damn good biscuits, I thought to myself, shaking like a leaf on the inside.

It’s like riding a bicycle or swimming or having sex, Jewell. You never forget how, Connie snickered, as I sat in front of that scary IBM Selectric at the dining room table later that night while he shuffled off to bed full of himself and fried chicken.

After giving me a crash course on how to use my new-to-me blue behemoth, Deborah Ann and the kids went home, Thomas Preston asleep in her arms and Tiffany Dawn still not quite sure if she thought Clark Gable was cute or gross, both in an old man sort of way. Atlanta had been burned, and Rhett had left Scarlett weak in the knees from his farewell kiss on the side of the road to Tara, with a sickly Melanie, a wailing baby, and a hysterical Prissy in tow in a rickety wagon drawn by a half-dead horse.

I know just how she feels, I thought to myself, trying to remember everything I could that Mrs. Charlotte Denning had taught me in typing class so many years before on that old Olivetti-Underwood manual typewriter that weighed a ton and broke every fingernail I had tried to grow in high school.

I inserted the first sheet of paper and began to type tensely: It’s time to shit or get off the pot, Jewell! . . .

Beattyville Weekly Word

Buck Creek Community News

Friday, April 29, 1977

By Jewell Mattingly Garrett

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

It gives me great pleasure to officially announce the engagement and upcoming marriage of my youngest daughter, Reba Lynn Garrett, to Mr. Alan Ladd McGuffey, on Saturday, June 25, 1977.

As many of you already know, Reba Lynn teaches P.E. and Health at Oldham County High School, where Mr. McGuffey is also employed as Social Studies teacher and assistant track and field coach.

The announcement came as a surprise to my husband and me only a week or so ago, and we are as pleased as punch, although, speaking of punch, I would have wished for a little more time to prepare for something as special as my daughter’s wedding.

Although final arrangements are still up in the air, Reba Lynn and Alan have expressed their desire for a simple ceremony at home (her Daddy’s and mine), outside in the open air, weather permitting, in the gazebo my husband Connie built for me in the side yard last fall. This is just fine with us because he and I were married at this house many moons ago when my Mama and Daddy still called it home.

I do intend to make a Lady Baltimore cake for the wedding, just like my Mama made for mine; however, we will have real champagne, instead of apple cider. (Mary Pearl Montgomery Mattingly never allowed a drop of liquor other than medicinal whiskey in her house until the day she died, but I’m willing to make an exception in this case. After all, it is 1977!)

Reba Lynn and Alan have requested no gifts from their friends or ours, other than your presence at the ceremony. Both of them have been living on their own for a number of years and have two complete households set up already, so they have everything they need to start homemaking together.

If you feel that you have to do something for them to commemorate their wedding, Reba Lynn and Alan suggest a cash donation to the Commonwealth Rural Conservation Camp in Cadiz, Kentucky, where, unbeknownst to them, they both attended as teenagers, where they met for the first time last summer working as counselors, and where they will be employed again during school summer vacation this year.

When we spoke on the phone last Sunday, I did ask Reba Lynn if she had thought about her something old, new, borrowed, and blue.

She said her something old would be the pearl necklace her Aunt Ruby JaNelle had given her for her college graduation, and her something borrowed would be a pair of pearl earrings her new mother-in-law, Alice Faye Adamson McGuffey, would be loaning her for the ceremony.

Her something blue, she said, will be her husband’s eyes, and her something new will be her husband’s three-year-old son from his first marriage, John Wayne Shane McGuffey. (I puddled up at that.)

This will be Reba Lynn’s first marriage and Alan’s last one. (He said that, not her!)

Please say a prayer for their new life together while you are at church this Sunday, and say one for me, too, that I can throw this whole wedding together in about a month with only one hitch—the important one!

Speaking of love, did any of you happen to watch Gone with the Wind on Channel 3 last weekend? They just don’t make movies like that anymore, do they? Did you ever see an actress any more beautiful than Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara? Has there ever been a more charming scoundrel than Clark Gable as Rhett Butler?

Leslie Howard and Olivia DeHavilland were wonderful, too, as Ashley Wilkes and Melanie Wilkes, and Hattie McDaniel was the first black actress to win an Academy Award as Mammy. Now, sadly, they are all gone with the wind themselves, except for Olivia, of course, who lives in Paris (France, not Kentucky). Au Revoir!

Yours until Niagara Falls,

Jewell Mattingly Garrett

P.S.

You won’t have noticed anything different, but this is my first column that I’ve typed on my new-to-me IBM Selectric typewriter that my husband Connie bought for me at the city auction last week. He says it is a belated part of my birthday present (April 16) and will be a labor-saving device that will make both my life and job easier and more fun. I think he just wants me to spend more time at his favorite household labor-saving device: the kitchen stove!

Sunday, May 1, 1977