Tag: small town

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Celebrating Life, Observing Thanksgiving

On this day last year, we were waking up in Plymouth, Massachusetts and heading to Plimoth-Patuxet Museum to have Thanksgiving Dinner in the spot where the Pilgrims and Native Americans had it for the first time all those years ago. It was a highlight of our trip through New England on the heels of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Convention, which was held in Boston in 2024.

After the end of the conference, when Ada Limon had delivered the final keynote speech, we’d taken the ferry back across Boston Harbor to the airport and rented a car. We headed up to Kennebunkport, Maine for a night, then across New Hampshire to Woodstock, Vermont for a night, then to West Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and finally to Plymouth each for a night before completing the loop back to Boston, turning in the car, and flying home. We still talk about the fun we had on that trip, just the two of us, seeing New England by car.

Yesterday, true to small town living, we were out at our local Ace Hardware Store buying ten bales of pine straw to go by the shrubs in the front bed when we saw Briar’s brother standing in front of the only grocery store in town, holding his bag of heavy whipping cream and a Coca Cola in a bottle and talking with a friend. He ambled over to the car, where we sat reminiscing on the trip we’d taken down Route 66 a few summers ago. Along with his wife, the four of us had rented a car at Midway Airport just below Chicago and embarked on the journey, completing half of Route 66, which runs from Illinois to California, and flying home from Albuquerque after one full week of a carefully-segmented trip that allowed time for taking in the main sights we’d wanted to see.

We need to finish that trip, his brother said, and we both agreed.

This Thanksgiving is different. We were supposed to be camping on our favorite campground in one of our favorite sites, but vertigo got in the way of being able to pack the camper and keep the reservation. It got in the way of shopping and doing anything other than being still all week. We cancelled our camping plans, and I took to my favorite chair with Audible as the great world spun all week. At least when I’m down and out, I can have some sense of normalcy through story – – and travel, vicariously. This week, I’m at the Maple Sugar Inn spending time with the ladies in the Book Club Hotel. They haven’t read a single page in their book club yet, but these characters do have some interesting lives.

I’ll hit pause on my book around 10:00 to shower and dress, and to meet my husband’s brother and his wife at a Cracker Barrel an hour away from our home deep in rural Georgia. None of us felt like cooking – and even the thought of all the bending involved in cooking and baking sends me spinning in orbit. It’s simply not the year for that.

It’s a year for being home and taking it easy – going nowhere that involves a suitcase, letting others cook, and savoring the simple pleasures of home. A day for sitting next to the fire under the flannel blanket we bought last year at The Vermont Flannel Company in Woodstock, all warm and comfortable, counting my blessings. It’s a day to reflect on the week we spent in October in the mountains of Tennessee with our children and grandchildren, and a day to call and wish them a Happy Thanksgiving as they celebrate this day with other family members.

And it’s a day to remember those who are no longer with us. Mom left us in 2015, but this will be our first Thanksgiving without Dad. It’s a game changer when both parents are gone. I miss all those who taught me how to observe holidays and to be able to appreciate them without the rigid anchors of tradition making them feel any less special. Today’s quiet stillness and Cracker Barrel dinner is every bit as meaningful as last year’s dinner in Plymouth.

and so I sit in

my green chair, reflecting on

Thanksgivings past while

counting my blessings ~

browsing Kindle, Audible

for my next great trip

because over rolls

turkey and cranberry sauce

and pecan pie, we’ll

talk books, and that’s a

festive way to celebrate

~ turning the pages ~

Last Year’s Table Setting

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2025 Book Club Picks

If you’re ever in the small rural county in Georgia where I live, you might find yourself at one of the two traffic lights we have, right along the courthouse square. You’d look at the historic buildings lining the square and wonder about the curious little shops and what all goes on inside once you stood back long enough to take note of the intricate patterns in the old brick facades. There’s a bank, a couple of hair salons, a coffee shop, a donut shop, a few boutiques, a couple of restaurants (every small town in Georgia must have a good barbecue joint), a dentist and an optician’s office, a realty office, a mercantile, a Chamber of Commerce office, and…….{drumroll, please}………my favorite: a bookstore, A Novel Experience. Click here to check it out.

It’s not just another familiar bookstore. This one is magical, with its historic interior brick walls with rustic plaster repairs, a creaky wooden floor, a refrigerator where you can have a free water if you need one (there is wine in there, too, and a coffee bar), a circle of eccentric mismatched comfy chairs by the back door so you can sit and talk or write or knit or….just sit, and the most amazing lineup of books for the monthly book clubs. They have a few different clubs, too, which meet at different times and focus on different interests so that there is a club for everyone.

I got there on their first day of business in 2025, and I saw that they had their books already chosen from their last meeting of 2024. They’ll create cards that readers can take to put on their refrigerators to remind them of which book is scheduled for which club for which month, but I took a snapshot or two of the “rough draft” of the lineup with the cards that tell what the books will be. Some of them have not even come in yet.

This is the place I go when I need the calm reassurance that there is still peace to be found in a place other than my own home. I swear, I think they have some kind of essential oil that is called stress-free small-town down-home-rooted belonging or something. Every bit of hurried pace disappears right when you walk in. Of course, I’ve lived here long enough to know all who work there, and this shop is one of several places that still greet customers by first name. It thrills me when I walk in and Karen throws her hands up and says, “Hi, Kim!” Chris does, too, and they stop to talk to their customers with sincere interest in what is happening in our busy lives.

What are you reading this year? I’ve started the year with Rosamunde Pilcher’s book Winter Solstice, but I’ve already cheated and delved into the movie. I finished The Beautiful and the Wild over the break just as the year turned, and we’ll have our office book club to discuss that one January 21. I started James, and I’m halfway finished. If you have any recommendations, please share. I tend to prefer nonfiction that reads like fiction or that spotlights travel or nature in some fresh and unexpected way. Sy Montgomery is always, always a favorite. I’m looking for a few readers who can recommend some amazing reads, and I hope you’ll be one of them!

If you’re ever here, call me and I’ll run right down to the shop and meet you for coffee or wine and book talk, ’cause that’s how we do things in small towns here in Georgia.

our local bookstore

announced its monthly choices

for each reading club

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They Came Three to a Mule

I was in the local grocery store yesterday to buy four cans of pumpkin puree to make our holiday pumpkin bread. A purchase in this particular store is rare, since prices are tremendously inflated in our small rural town. We often go to the next city over to buy a full week’s worth of groceries, but if I only need an item or two, I’ll justify the cost of the items using the cost of gas and time. 

The gas is a sure’nuff savings, but the time is questionable when you don’t know the layout of the store. With an item like pumpkin, it might be on the holiday baking display, the canned fruit, or the baking aisle. In this tiny store where two carts barely fit side by side on any aisle, I’d scoured the shelves, finally stopping for a breath on the pasta aisle, where I remembered we needed macaroni and cheese for Christmas Eve to go with our ham. 

As I reached for the dark blue Kraft Deluxe box I usually buy, I saw the price and it might as well have been a snake striking. There was no way I was paying $5.89 for a box of macaroni and cheese. No way my mama’s memory would let me even think about it. I studied every other brand, including the store brand, and it was the same. Too much. We’d do without. 

About that time, a man wearing denim overalls, work boots, and a flannel shirt ambled up with his hand basket up to his elbow, about to purchase the same box I’d wanted. He retracted his hand like that box was a hot potato when he saw the price. He did a double-take.

“It’s a sad day when a man can’t afford no macaroni and cheese, ain’t it?” 

“Yes, sir,” I confirmed. ”I’m going to be mac-and-cheeseless, too,” I assured him, nodding toward my empty cart that I didn’t really need – – a hand basket like his would have sufficed.  

He sucked his teeth and pursed his lips. ”Well, I ain’t buyin’ none,” he muttered, walking on.

I finally had to ask directions to the pumpkin aisle. The first worker, a young teenager stocking bread, had no idea what I needed. ”Wait, it’s pumpkin in a can??”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s pureed pumpkin. Any brand will do. I usually buy Libby’s.” I could tell he was hung on both the word pureed and the idea of pumpkin in a can. It seemed to be blowing his mind, this pureed pumpkin in a can. My mind trailed back to my deep discussions with our Curriculum Coordinator about the need for more emphasis on vocabulary instruction in our schools earlier in the week. 

He said he’d have to ask, and off he went – never to return.

I ventured back to the main aisle, looking for a different worker down each aisle the same way wives look for lost husbands, finally finding an older teenage female sitting on the floor stocking cans. She paused. ”Aisle 2,” she said. ”I had to think about that one for a minute,” she confessed. “Look right past the fruit cups on the left at the top.”

Sure enough, on a top shelf, there was the Libby’s I’d missed the first time I’d looked, sitting back at an angle. I reached up, pulled 4 cans forward, and headed to the register to check out.

Two checkers were slammed, so a third opened Register 5. An older gentleman wearing jeans with a huge belt buckle, a pair of shiny cowboy boots, a button down shirt, and a thin jacket stepped over to place my bag in the cart. I wasn’t sure whether he even worked there or not, but as I was wondering, he read my pumpkin label and removed all doubt.

“Ah, Libby’s,” he read, prompting a knowing smile. ”Back in the early days, we had the best price on Libby’s vegetables. 59 cents for a 16-ounce can. Folks came three to a mule for Libby’s vegetables.” His eyes had that reflective sparkle that the older generation gets whenever the memories of simpler times come rushing back. 

And then I made a mistake I regretted when I got to the car. I nodded, smiled, took my bag, and said, “Thank you, sir,” and exited the store. I should have asked about those days. I should have asked about those vegetables. I should have asked for a story that now I’ll never hear.

I learned some things yesterday, because I missed at least two opportunities with the macaroni and cheese man and the Libby’s man to learn some history. 1) Next time, I’ll find the oldest person to ask about where to find things. 2) I’ll take time to talk a little more to those who initiate conversation. 3) I’ll initiate more conversations myself – – because there are so many stories that folks need to tell, and that I need to write.

And I feel their empty space.

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Savoring Saturdays: 1828 Coffee Company on the Zebulon Square

Think of the world which you carry within yourself…pay attention to what arises within you.  – Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

We recently spent another Saturday savoring the morning hours with coffee and conversation in Zebulon, Georgia on our town square. We love the atmosphere of our small town coffee shop, restored from a historic building to the place we love and enjoy today by Dr. Dan Dunnahoo. You can read his story here. Dunnahoo, a retired Pike County art teacher known affectionately as “Dr. Dan” by locals, named the coffee shop 1828 Coffee Company because it was built in 1828 by Samuel Mitchell and still has the same wood floors that creaked under folks’ boots all those years ago, every plank restored and returned to its original position in the floor.

You can step back in time and order a cup of Zebulon Pike or any of their unique blends of coffee or tea and a cinnamon roll, then sit back and wonder about the history of this place and your own indelible time stamp on it, the dust of your own shoes settling somewhere beneath your feet between a crevice in the wood on the very dust brought in by those who used it as a trading post when it was first built. You can also wonder about those who later became proud first-ever owners of automobiles within its walls when it was a car dealership, and all the romance that bloomed here when it was an ice cream shop and young men brought their sweethearts here to share a date night treat – many of whom no doubt brought their own children back years later when it was a restaurant or an office.

Today, you can find a book in one of three Little Free Libraries here in this coffee house, hear live entertainment, or listen to students reciting poetry or performing a dramatic reading. Dr. Dan and his son-in-law Bryan open their doors to welcome a variety of events that shape the culture of this small town.

Next time you’re traveling through Zebulon, Georgia, be sure to stop in and say hello. Order coffee upstairs, admire the art, and then stroll downstairs where you can play a board game or sit outdoors on the brick patio and enjoy the sights of the town. If you happen to see a middle-aged woman huddled in a corner savoring coffee, reading, or writing, come introduce yourself – – it may be me!