The Mitford Bedside Companion

by Jan Karon

  “Feller said, ‘We might be crazy, but we put whipped cream on our’n.’”

  Uncle Billy grinned at the cackle of laughter he heard.

  “Keep goin’!” someone said.

  “Wellsir, this old feller an’ ’is wife was settin’ on th’ porch, an’ she said, ‘Guess what I’d like t’ have?’

  “He said, ‘What’s that?’

  “She said, ‘A great big bowl of vaniller ice cream with choc’late sauce and nuts on top!’

  “He says, ‘Boys howdy, that’d be good. I’ll go down to th’ store and git us some.’

  “Wife said, ‘Now, that’s vaniller ice cream with choc’late sauce and nuts. Better write it down.’

  “He said, ‘Don’t need t’ write it down, I can remember.’

  “Little while later, he come back. Had two ham san’wiches. Give one t’ her. She looked at that san’wich, lifted th’ top off, said, ‘You mulehead, I told you t’ write it down, I wanted mustard on mine!’”

  Loving the sound of laughter in the cavernous room, Uncle Billy nodded to the left, then to the right.

  “One more,” he said, trembling a little from the excitement of the evening.

  “Hit it!” crowed the mayor, hoping to remember the punch line to the vanilla ice-cream story.

  “Wellsir, this census taker, he went to a house an’ knocked, don’t you know. A woman come out, ’e said, ‘How many children you got, an’ what’re their ages?’

  “She said, ‘Let’s see, there’s th’ twins Sally and Billy, they’re eighteen. And th’ twins Seth an’ Beth, they’re sixteen. And th’ twins Penny an’ Jenny, they’re fourteen—’

  “Feller said, ‘Hold on! Did you git twins ever’ time?’

  “Woman said, ‘Law, no, they was hundreds of times we didn’t git nothin’.’”

  The old man heard the sound of applause overtaking the laughter, and leaned forward slightly, cupping his hand to his left ear to better take it in. The applause was giving him courage, somehow, to keep on in life, to get out of bed in the mornings and see what was what.

  A New Song, Ch. 2

  UNCLE BILLY STRAIGHTENED his tie and coughed, then got down to business.

  “Wellsir! They was two fellers a-workin’ on th’ sawmill, don’t you know, an’ th’ first ’un got too close to th’ saw an’ cut ’is ear off. Well, it fell in th’ sawdust pit an’ he was down there a-tryin’ t’ find it, don’t you know. Th’ other feller said, ‘What’re you a-doin’ down there?’ First ’un said, ‘I cut m’ ear off an’ I’m a-lookin’ f’r it!’

  “Th’ other feller jumped in th’ pit, said, ‘I’ll he’p you!’ Got down on ’is hands an’ knees, went to lookin’ aroun’, hollered, ‘Here it is, I done found it!’

  “First feller, he took it an’ give it th’ once-over, don’t you know, said, ‘Keep a-lookin’, mine had a pencil behind it!’”

  In This Mountain, Ch. 9

  “LET ME SAY that last ’un back t’ make sure I learned it right.”

  “Take your time,” said the trucker, who had just ordered apple pie à la mode. “This is a easy run, nothin’ perishable like last week when I was haulin’ cantaloupes to Pennsylvania.”

  Uncle Billy cleared his throat. “Woman went to th’ new doc, don’t you know, he was s’ young he was hardly a-shavin’. Wellsir, she was in there a couple of minutes when all at once’t she busted out a-hollerin’ an’ run down th’ hall.”

  Uncle Billy paused.

  “You got it,” said the trucker. “Keep goin’.”

  “Wellsir, a doc that was a good bit older took off after ’er, said, ‘What’s th’ problem?’ an’ she told ’im. Th’ ol’ doc went back to th’ young doc, said, ‘What’s th’ dadjing matter with you? Miz Perry is sixty-five a-goin’ on sixty-six with four growed chil’ren and seven grans—an’ you told ’er she was a-goin’ t’ have a young ’un?”

  “New doc grinned, don’t you know, said, ‘Cured ’er hiccups, didn’t it?’”

  Uncle Billy knew when a joke hadn’t gone over, and this one hadn’t gone over—not even with the person he’d gotten it from in the first place.

  The trucker gazed thoughtfully at his reflection in the chrome napkin dispenser. “Seem like it was funny when I heard it th’ first time, but now it might be what you call…” He shrugged.

  “Flat,” said Uncle Billy, feeling the same way himself.

  “I’d advise you to axe it,” said the trucker, digging into his apple pie. “Start off with your two guys on a bench, slide in with your cabdriver joke, and land you a one-two punch with th’ ol’ maids.”

  Uncle Billy wished he had some kind of guarantee this particular lineup would work.

  In This Mountain, Ch. 13

  “A PREACHER DIED, don’t you know, an’ was a-waitin’ in line at th’ Pearly Gates. Ahead of ’im is a feller in blue jeans, a leather jacket, an’ a tattoo on ’is arm. Saint Pete says to th’ feller with th’ tattoo, says, ‘Who are you, so I’ll know whether t’ let you in th’ Kingdom of Heaven?’

  “Feller says, ‘I’m Tom Such an’ Such, I drove a taxicab in New York City.’

  “Saint Pete looks at th’ list, says, ‘Take this silk robe an’ gold staff an’ enter th’ Kingdom of Heaven!’ Then he hollers, ‘Next!’

  “Th’ preacher steps up, sticks out ’is chest, says, ‘I’m th’ Rev’rend Jimmy Lee Tapscott, pastor of First Baptist Church f’r forty-three years.’

  “Saint Pete looks at ’is list, don’t you know, says, ‘Take this flour-sack robe an’ hick’ry stick an’ enter th’ Kingdom of Heaven.’

  “Preacher says, ‘Wait a dadjing minute! That man was a taxicab driver an’ he gits a silk robe an’ a gold staff?’

  “Saint Pete says, ‘When you preached, people slept. When he drove, people prayed.’”

  Father Tim threw back his head and hooted with laughter. Then he clapped his hands and slapped his leg a few times, still laughing. Uncle Billy had never seen such carrying on. Why didn’t the preacher save something back for the last joke?

  “Hold on!” he said. “I got another’n t’ go.”

  “Right,” said Father Tim. “That was a keeper.”

  “You can use that’n in church, won’t cost you a red cent.”

  Uncle Billy felt his heart pumping, which was, in his opinion, a good sign. He straightened up a moment and rested his back, then leaned again on his cane as if hunkering into a strong wind. This was the big one and he wanted it to go as slick as grease.

  “Wellsir, three ol’ sisters was a-livin’ together, don’t you know. Th’ least ’un was eighty-two, th’ middle ’un was ninety-some, an’ th’ oldest ’un was way on up in age. One day th’ oldest ’un run a tub of water. She put one foot in th’ water, started a-thinkin’, hollered downstairs to ’er sisters, said, ‘Am I a-gittin’ in th’ tub or out of th’ tub?’

  “Th’ middle sister, she started up th’ stairs t’ he’p out, don’t you know, then thought a minute. Yelled to ’er baby sister, said, ‘Was I a-goin’ up th’ stairs or a-comin’ down?’

  “Th’ baby sister, she was settin’ in th’ kitchen havin’ a cup of coffee, said, ‘Guess I’ll have t’ go up yonder an’ he’p out…boys, I hope I never git that forgetful, knock on wood!’

  “Went t’ knockin’ on th’ table, don’t you know, then jumped up an’ hollered, ‘I’ll be there soon as I see who’s at th’ door!’”

  Uncle Billy couldn’t help but grin at the preacher, who was not only laughing, but wiping his eyes into the bargain. The old man took it to be his proudest moment. He’d had laughs before; he reckoned anybody could get a laugh now and again if he worked hard enough, but crying…that was another deal, it was what every joke teller hoped for. His heart was hammering and his knees were weak. He sat down, hard, in the preacher’s leather chair and heard something he hadn’t heard in a good while—

  It was the sound of his own self laughing.

  In This Mountain, Ch. 14

&nbs
p; A Useful Tool: The Seasons

  Ifind weather one of the most useful tools ever made available to an author, not to mention poets, whose work absolutely thrives on it. The Mitford novels are full of weather, and would be intolerably weak tea without it.

  First of all, the books are set in western North Carolina, which is characterized by its sometimes violent, often lovely, always unpredictable weather patterns.

  Thus, in the nine novels of the series, Mitford endures the effects of a hurricane that blows inland by several hundred miles; gully-washing downpours; hail; ice; a Hundred Years snow; minor drought; and, of course, wind.

  If there’s one thing you can count on in these mountains, it is high wind. It keens around the house, sounding like the sound track for a horror film. It blows your garden bench down the hill, and sends your hanging baskets crashing onto the neighbor’s porch. It sets rocking chairs in the street, uproots trees, upends the doghouse, and whips your pillowcases off the line and delivers them into the next county.

  For my money, you can have the milder forms of mountain weather such as the occasional twelve inches of snow. For sheer turbulence and general aggravation, give me a windstorm—but only in fiction, please.

  Perhaps you recall the blizzard that arrived in Mitford during Chapter Five of A Light in the Window. The day after Father Tim and Dooley trimmed the Christmas tree, the snow began, looking innocent enough.

  As he turned the corner toward the office, he saw that Mitford was fast becoming one of those miniature villages in a glass globe, which, when shaken and set on its base, literally teemed with falling flakes.

  Soon, the snow picks up, the wind roars in, and the power goes out, casting the village into darkness.

  The houses of Mitford were frozen like so many ice cubes in a tray…. The high winds did not cease…. Cars that been abandoned on the street appeared to be the humps of a vast white caterpillar, inching up the hill toward Fernbank.

  Before it’s over, he and Dooley are breaking up the old chairs stored in the garage and burning them in the rectory fireplace—not only for warmth, but to roast their supper of hot dogs, which they threaded onto coat hangers.

  I remember going to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to do research for A New Song, set on the fictional island of Whitecap. While we were driving back to the mountains, a monumental rain came upon us. It was so instant, so hard, and so furious that afterward, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. So I put its facsimile in the novel.

  (We won’t talk about chapter 13 of that same book, in which weather also played a huge role. I get seasick just thinking about it.)

  To put a fine point on the whole thing, what Mark Twain said about New England weather applies equally to weather in the Mitford books:

  “The weather is always doing something…always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go…I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of twenty-four hours.”

  When a story cries out for edge and atmosphere, some authors favor blue language, murder, or mayhem. As for me, I’ll take a strong dose of weather, any day.

  AUTUMN DREW ON in Mitford, and one after another, the golden days were illumined with changing light. New wildflowers appeared in the hedges and fields. Whole acres were massed with goldenrod and fleabane. Wild phlox, long escaped from neat gardens, perfumed every roadside. And here and there, milkweed put forth its fat pods, laden with a filament as fine as silk. There were those who were ecstatic with the crisp new days of autumn and the occasional scent of wood smoke on the air. And there were those who were loath to let summer go, saying it had been “the sweetest summer out of heaven,” or “the best in many years.”

  But no one could hold on to summer once the stately row of Lilac Road maples began to turn scarlet and gold. The row began its march across the front of the old Porter place, skipped over Main Street and the war monument to the town hall, paraded in front of First Baptist, lined up along the rear of Winnie Ivey’s small cottage, and ended in a vibrant blaze of color at Little Mitford Creek. When this show began, even the summer diehards, who were by then few enough in number to be counted on the fingers of one hand, gave up and welcomed the great spectacle of a mountain autumn.

  At Home in Mitford, Ch. 8

  THE WEATHER WAS turning colder, the flame of autumn had torched the red maples along Lilac Road, and now and again he caught the scent of wood smoke. It was his favorite perfume, right up there with horse manure and new-mown hay.

  A Light in the Window, Ch. 2

  THE HOUSES OF Mitford were frozen like so many ice cubes in a tray. Lights shone from windows onto the drifting snow, as leaden skies made even the daylight seem one long dusk. Everywhere, spirals of chimney smoke were violently snatched by the wind and blown through the streets, so that the stinging drafts of arctic air contained a reassuring myrrh of wood smoke.

  The high winds did not cease. In some places, snowdrifts covered doors and windows so completely that people had to be dug out by more fortunate neighbors. Cars that had been abandoned on the street appeared to be the humps of a vast white caterpillar, inching up the hill toward Fernbank.

  Percy Mosely lived too far from town to make it to the Grill and open up, but Mule Skinner, who lived only a block away, managed to open the doors at seven on Tuesday morning, brew the coffee extra-strong, and fry every piece of bacon on hand. J. C. Hogan, who was waiting out the storm in his upstairs newspaper office, came down at once. The weary town crew, unable to start the frozen diesel engines of their snowplows, were the only other customers.

  Unlike most snows, this one did not bring the children to Baxter Park. The sleds stayed in garages, the biscuit pans shut away in cupboards. This was a different snow, an ominous snow.

  A Light in the Window, Ch. 5

  SPRINGTIME WAS ON its way, no doubt about it.

  Hessie Mayhew’s gardening column made its annual appearance in the Muse, under a photograph of the author taken thirty years ago. The first column of the season always disclosed Lady Spring’s current whereabouts.

  It seemed she was tarrying on a bed of moss and violets down the mountain, where the temperature was a full ten degrees warmer.

  Do not look for her, Hessie cautioned, for she never arrives until we’ve given up hope. Once you’ve sunk into despair over yet another snowfall in April or a hard freeze after planting your beans, she will suddenly appear in a glorious display of Miss Baxter’s apple blossoms—not to mention lilacs along south Main Street and wild hyacinths on the creek bank near Winnie Ivey’s dear cottage.

  Lest anyone forget what a wild hyacinth looked like, Hessie had done a drawing from memory that J.C. reproduced with startling clarity.

  A Light in the Window, Ch. 13

  AUTUMN HAD COME to the mountains, at last.

  Here, it set red maples on fire; there, it turned oaks russet and yellow. Fat persimmons became the color of melted gold, waiting for frost to turn their bitter flesh to honey. Sassafras, dogwoods, poplars, redbud—all were torched by autumn’s brazen fire, displaying their colorful tapestry along every ridge and hogback, in every cove and gorge.

  The line of maples that marched by First Baptist to Winnie Ivey’s cottage on Little Mitford Creek was fully ablaze by the eleventh of October.

  “The best ever!” said several villagers, who ran with their cameras to document the show.

  The local newspaper editor, J. C. Hogan, shot an extravagant total of six rolls of film. For the first time since the nation’s bicentennial, readers saw a four-color photograph on the front page of the Mitford Muse.

  Everywhere, the pace was quickened by the dazzling light that now slanted from the direction of Gabriel Mountain, and the sounds of football practice in the schoolyard.

  Avis Packard put a banner over the green awning of The Local: Fresh Valley Hams Now, Collards Coming.

  Dora Pugh laid on a new window at the hardware store featuring leaf rakes, bi
cycle pumps, live rabbits, and iron skillets. “What’s th’ theme of your window?” someone asked. “Life,” replied Dora.

  The library introduced its fall reading program and invited the author of the Violet books to talk about where she got her ideas. “I have no idea where I get my ideas,” she told Avette Harris, the librarian. “They just come.” “Well, then,” said Avette, “do you have any ideas for another topic?”

  The village churches agreed to have this year’s All-Church Thanksgiving Feast with the Episcopalians, and to get their youth choirs together for a Christmas performance at First Presbyterian.

  At Lord’s Chapel, the arrangements on the altar became gourds and pumpkins, accented by branches of the fiery red maple. At this time of year, the rector himself liked doing the floral offerings. He admitted it was a favorite season, and his preaching, someone remarked, grew as electrified as the sharp, clean air.

  These High, Green Hills, Ch. 1

  HE LOVED THE soft shine of the streetlamps in their first hour of winter dark. And now, Christmas lights added to the glow. Up and down Main Street the tiny lights burned, looping around every streetlamp with its necklace of fresh balsam and holly. If he never left Mitford at all, it would suit him. He had been happier here than in any parish of his career. To tell the truth, there wasn’t even a close second, except, perhaps, for the little mission of fifty souls where he had served at the age of twenty-seven. They had taken him under their wing and loved him, but refused to protect him from sorrow and hardship. Indeed, there had been plenty of both, and that little Arkansas handful had made a man and a priest of him, all at once.

  He looked up to see clouds racing across the moon, as Barnabus lifted his leg on a fire hydrant.

  A line came to him, written by a fellow named Burns, who put out the newspaper in a neighboring village.

  Big cities never sleep, but little towns do.

  These High, Green Hills, Ch. 5