This weekend we needed a break from the ever-increasing population density of North Texas, so we headed west for a breath of fresh air. Out on the open road, we found ourselves passing through Eden, which, incidentally, was not named after the biblical garden but after a man named Ede. We also rolled through Veribest, Menard, and Lowake and wondered how the name of each town was properly pronounced. Please note that in Texas a mere understanding of ethnic settlement patterns does not translate into an understanding of colloquial pronunciation. After all, a town with a name that is as obviously Spanish as Rio Vista can be pronounced RYE-o Vĭstuh. In other words, nothing can be taken for granted.
Apparently the folks at the San Antonio Express-News have been having pronunciation debates themselves lately. Here is a link to a fun Texas place name quiz created by the good folks at the Express-News for those of us traveling around the state during the holidays.
In Waylon County, several of the stories revolve around characters from immigrant communities that arrived in Texas soon after statehood. "Fields of the New Fatherland," which was originally published online by the Fredericksburg Standard Radio-Post, is the story of a young linguist from Leipzig visiting a Texas-German relative in the Hill Country. This evening I was on youtube and watched an interview with a Texas-German speaker from near Fredericksburg and was pleased to hear that some of her experiences were similar to those discussed in "Fields of the New Fatherland." I found this very encouraging, for it let me know that I am on the right track.
Here is the Texas-German interview. Even if you do not speak German, you should still be able to hear the Texas drawl. For English subtitles, please click "cc."
Hemingway rose at dawn to write. Maya Angelou rose early too. Toni Morrison starts at 4 a.m. and so does Haruki Murakami. Although I am not exactly up with the chickens, the 4 a.m. method does make sense to me. Getting up that early can make the writing take on a dreamlike state because the writer is somewhere between asleep and awake.
Kafka, Nabokov, and Kerouac were my kind of guys. They all wrote at night. Obviously, I am not an inhabitant of the literary firmament, but I do have my druthers. I tend to start around nine at night and work till exhaustion. In order to establish atmosphere, I write with my office door closed and the lights dim. When I am working on a first draft, I listen to old country records on vinyl. It gets me in the zone. But when I am editing and revising, the music stops. Every writer has his or her groove, and this happens to be mine.
Here is Merle Haggard playing "The Way I Am," a song that spins on my home office turntable on occasion. In terms of a Texas connection, I feel very fortunate to have seen Merle Haggard at Willie's Picnic in both Fort Worth and San Antonio as well as at John T. Floore's Country Store in Helotes, Texas. Tunes like this get my fingers tapping along the keyboard.
Tomorrow I will be signing Waylon County at the Restaurant of the Mind book store across the street from the Saginaw studio where Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys recorded "New San Antonio Rose," which sold more than a million copies. In honor of my musical heroes, I will be hauling my guitar. I might just play a song or two.
Here is "New San Antonio Rose," which was a monster hit in the 1940s. Notice that it is on the Okeh label. Okeh specialized in German, Czech, Yiddish, Polish, African-American, and "Hillbilly" records and has one of the most fascinating musical catalogs in existence.
Although many of the characters in Waylon County prefer not to leave town, the book is traveling some miles. Today it landed on a library shelf at the University of Montana-Western. I am elated that my work is reaching library shelves, and I am thrilled to have been given the following call number: 813.54. This particular call number denotes that the book is classified as Literature > American and Canadian > Fiction. If I ever decided to get a tattoo, it would be "813.54" inked right across my spine. Yeehaw!
Speaking of traveling, here's "Miles and Miles of Texas." Even the most cantankerous curmudgeon in Waylon County would enjoy this little musical journey.
Growing up, if my mama summoned me using my first, middle, and last name, I knew things were going south in a hurry. Of course, that probably rings true for most folks. Any time an ol' boy's mama is hollering all of his names like he was an assassin or a serial killer, she probably ain't calling him in for supper.
In Waylon County, plenty of characters are called by all of their names even when their mamas aren't on the warpath. The book also includes plenty of references to songs by people who go by three names, like Jerry Jeff Walker, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Gary P. Nunn. (Yes, I understand that "P." is an initial, but let's not split hairs.)
And here is a song by one of those three named fellas. It is the only song I know of that references the Gillespie County dump, a place I visited on occasion before my mama moved to town and got city garbage service.
If you will be in the North Texas area on Saturday, November 11, stop by the Restaurant of the Mind Book Store in Saginaw for coffee and a discussion of Waylon County from 4 pm to 6 pm.
When I was in second grade, my mother bought my brother and me a set of World Book encyclopedias. From the day the encyclopedias arrived, if I didn't know something, I immediately consulted those glorious brown and black tomes. If a person on television discussed a topic I didn't know, I looked it up. If I was reading a book and there was a reference I did not understand, I looked it up. The habit continues to this day, and as a writer I like to sprinkle amusing encyclopedic facts throughout my work hoping that readers will look up the topics and find them as amusing and fascinating as I do.
For example, in Waylon County I make a passing reference to the Big Bend pterodactyl. A quick google search reveals that the creature was named Quetzalcoatlus after the Aztec god of knowledge and learning. The search also reveals that some scientists believe that Quetzalcoatlus,whose wingspan was that of an F-16, could not actually fly. They say that it jumped from tall hills using all fours and then glided around. What I like about this story is that no one knows for sure what this winged dinosaur could really do. Even though the hypothesis is based on a computer-generated model, like the myth of Quetzalcoatl, it is, at its heart, still a story.
Here is a link to a news article about the Big Bend pterodactyl.
