“This is Kathryn Tucker Windham…”

 ”The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

– Psalm 90:10

This is the reason Kathryn Tucker Windham’s coffin was in her garden shed for almost twenty-three years. When she turned seventy she went to the funeral home to make arrangements for her eventual demise. When she was lead through the casket showroom, she looked at the prices and asked, “Do you have the boxes these were shipped in?” 

Kathryn had a deep understanding (and a life-long impatience) with absurdity. 

She delighted in telling the story of, later that year, going to the community college to have herself measured by the woodworking instructor so he could make her a traditional six-sided burial box. He had said to the class, “Y’all keep working, I’m just measuring this lady for her coffin.”

A lot of us in the storytelling, Southern literature, and quilt making worlds will be writing remembrances of Kathryn. We have to; she is our true heroine. We all wish we had the courage to be like her.  As a tough-as-nails police reporter, she understood the worst of us. As a wax-paper & comb concert master, she brought out the best in us. 

The first time I met Kathryn was at the storytellers’ gathering dinner (sorry, Kathryn. Supper!) at the 2005 National Storytelling Festival in Tennessee.  All of that year’s Featured Tellers were gathering in the basement of the Presbyterian Church the evening before the festival began.  It was my first year and I was feeling very much like the new kid. Somebody (probably Carmen) had put her up to coming over to me, tapping me on the shoulder with a force that some would call, hitting, and saying, “I hear you make fun of old ladies.”

I had no choice but to say, “Yes, ma’am. I make fun of folks like you.” I knew at that moment we would be friends.

•  •  •

Kathryn was skilled at being a bossy old lady. When we were doing a sound check for a show at the Tivoli Theatre in Chattanooga, she saw me walking on stage with my guitar. She asked, “Where are you going with that thing?”

I said, “They’ve got to sound check my guitar, Kathryn.”

“No they don’t. You’re not playing it tonight. You’re doing “Marguerite.”

I did not play my guitar that night. 

•  •  •

Once Bil Lepp and I were walking Kathryn through the tent to her seat at the Athens Alabama Storytelling Festival. The emcee was reading the list of thank-yous of the various sponsors and volunteers. Charter Communications was mentioned. Kathryn jerked on our arms and said, “Did he say, ‘Charter?’ Charter took over my cable company and got my bill messed up. I called them and got a damn answering machine and they told me I had to send them an email. I don’t do email. I can’t get a person on the phone. I’m so sick of Charter!..”

I said, “Kathryn, Charter is the primary sponsor of this festival. They’re paying your fee.”

Without missing a beat: “I love Charter.”

•  •  •

Kathryn was ever the snazzy dresser. A couple of years ago, Wayne Kuykendall, the director of the Athens festival had the brilliant idea of doing a Kathryn Tucker Windham Roast. Kathryn showed up in a fuzzy coat and a wide-brimmed homburg. Bil said, “Kathryn, somewhere in Selma, there’s a pimp saying, ‘where’s my hat?’”  Kathryn laughed like a child. She could dish it out and she could take it.

She was a lady. She was a curmudgeon.  She was a goofball. The last time I saw her was  October at the end of the National Festival.  She was in the hallway of the hotel toting a pair of those rolling eyeballs that look up no matter how you hold them. She couldn’t wait to show them to storytellers’ kids, Liam Irwin and Noah Lepp. She was in a state of pure delight.

Kathryn was a lover of life.

I join a host of others when I say, I miss her.

Yesterday, I’m sure Saint Peter stuck to the line all of us have been forced to stick to.

“This is Kathryn Tucker Windham.
She’s from Selma, Alabama,
and she tells stories.”

THE TRACKS BEHIND MY HOUSE

COURTESY OF THE COVINGTON NEWS, COVINGTON, GA from their “guest columnist” Andy Offutt Irwin

The tracks behind my house

Andy Irwin
Guest Columnist
POSTED  May 7, 2010 12:30 a.m.

When I was a kid, the fence that separated the black section of the Covington City Cemetery from the white section was directly behind my house. In the 1970s the city paved a new road from the end of the black section, and connected it to where the white folks are buried. That created a great deal of new foot traffic, and a little automobile traffic, that had never existed before, directly behind the house. I recall coming home from college and hearing people walk and drive by. It was new and remarkable.

My family and I live in that house now. The family plot — 80 feet behind the house — is where my mother, uncles and sons are buried and is, indeed, where I will be laid to rest. I am a fifth-generation Newton Countian.

Along with a lot of other people, we walk, jog, and ride bikes in the cemetery for pleasure and exercise. Everyday, when I am home from the road, I “cut through” the cemetery on my bike on my way to the bank and the post office. As with other parks in Covington, the cemetery is maintained by well-supervised men who dress as sticks of orange-flavored Fruit Stripe Gum.

It is part of my profession to point out absurdities and incongruities. So here’s one: nobody is going to put a train behind my house. It would be disturbing indeed for the happy sounds of children and families walking or cycling six feet from my yard to be replaced by the rumble of industrial transportation at any hour of the day or night.

I know; this is silly.

So now, for 14.9 miles through our county, the rumble of industrial transportation — the train — is gone. The city and the county can do any number of things with that property, or we can let the tracks remain there, vacant. (Uh-oh).

We in our community have an amazing opportunity, even “with the economy as it is.” From what I learned at the meeting at Covington City Hall on April 29, this project could almost (possibly) pay for itself through the leases of telecommunication and technology service providers that the new owners would hold. Only we don’t know what that amount is. Decisions have been made without this information.

Without a non-binding Letter of Interest to the current owners of the tracks, the Norfolk Southern Corporation, we simply cannot know what revenues can be obtained from owning the railroad corridor.

The meeting at City Hall on April 29 was — as we say in my business — “S.R.O.” (standing room only). There is obviously a great deal of interest in this from all kinds of people, came-heres and been-heres alike. I feel it behooves the Covington City Council and the County Commissioners to revisit this issue by creating the Letter of Interest. Only then can they make a fully informed decision.

Everyone who knows me knows I love my community. They also know I am a braggart. And, selfishly put, I would love to go throughout the United States and say, “Y’all, we did the coolest thing with the train tracks in my town!”

Andy Irwin is a resident of Covington and a professional storyteller, arts educator, singer-songwriter and humorist

Futsal and Tetherball

A facebook friend of mine was discussing her son playing Futsal, which she calls, “a funny little game.” It’s similar to soccer.  She and her family live in Nebraska, where it’s stupid-cold, so in the winter, the game is played inside … sort of.  She reports: “…six tiny fields under this gi-normous inflated dome – your ears pop when you enter.”

Each team has only four players and a goalie on the field.  There are no refs, and there are no time-outs. The game is quick, it only lasts forty minutes. And the ball is different – heavier with less bounce.

After describing the ball, she asks, “What’s that about?”

Uh-oh.

I have always thought it one of my jobs to answer all rhetorical questions, even if the questions are not necessarily addressed specifically to me. The less I know of a subject, the more verbose I become. So here goes:

It’s all physics: inertia and momentum.  The heavier, less bouncy ball used in Futsal slows the game down and allows for the smaller playing space – there’s less REaction to the action (thank you Sir Isaac Newton County). A golf ball goes farther than the less bouncy, wooden croquet ball. A baseball goes farther than the softer softball. A basketball goes farther than a medicine ball, the latter of which has no apparent bounce at all. Doctors and physical therapists have concluded that the medicine ball is overweight due to its sedentary lifestyle, and is no longer allowed to play.

A tetherball would go far beyond its playing area, as far, perhaps as a volleyball, but, alas, it is tied to a pole.

Yet, there are many who believe the humble tetherball yearns to be free. There are those from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Athletic-equipment) who shudder at seeing the T.B. so restrained. Many have taken action. In 1986, in a mass act of civil disobedience, balls all over the country were set free in a weekend dubbed, “Untie the Tether!”  Alas, being domesticated to the pole, most tetherballs could no longer function in the wild. Many, perhaps, would be happy to be a sort of volleyball, but the little corner tab with the grommet where the rope was attached, got in the way.

Some tetherballs were successfully rehabilitated and turned into advanced kickballs – advanced because the pitcher (or “bowler”) would roll the ball to the kicker by slinging it in a variety of “serves” by the corner tab, thus putting “English” on the ball. This however became problematic on school playgrounds as it came clear that ESL (English Second Language) students were often left out of the game.

One would hope that it was more than just good public relations when a few kind employees from Voit volunteered to remove the rope-tabs and create volleyballs, but in so doing, many balls were punctured, deflated, and destroyed in the process. One such worker was quoted as saying, “This is stupid.  i’m going home.”

Also, counter-protesters and vandals reacted violently to PETA‘s Untie the Tether! campaign. And playground bullies in a fierce show of strength, grasped the balls by the tabs and slammed them against the poles (and each other), until the balls burst and split. I’ve seen actual film footage of this. It’s horrible.

A FEW WORDS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CD

Compact Discs (or CDs for short) were developed primarily for 2 reasons. First, to allow a sound recording to last for 74 minutes, thus making it possible for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to run nonstop without the bothersome and often damaging stacking and flipping of phonograph records. Secondly, with the increasing popularity of giving and receiving sound recordings, Santa Claus requested that the people at Sony and Phillips laboratories develop a smaller, lighter, and more stocking-stuffable format.

At a press conference with Santa Claus, Sony president, Norio Ohga reported: “Our development people consulted with St. Nick, and we found that the average Christmas stocking has an opening of 11 cm, stretchable to 13-14 cm. Thus, the 12 cm Compact Disc was born. We are all very pleased.”

Santa concurred: “Yes, this is just so much better; these things are not just easier to stuff into stockings, but they are lighter and easier to transport. In flight tests, the reindeer and I have decreased rooftop-takeoff-and-landing times up to thirty percent.”

Andy’s discs, and for Santa, infinitely lighter MP3s are available at CDBaby.

Neurotically Sentimental

Andy’s Blog, “Neurotically Sentimental” begins with a sentimental painting of Costley’s Mill, which was built in the late 1800′s in what was then Newton County, Georgia.  Andy’s family ties go back to Mrs. Costley.  And his stories often go back to those Newton County beginnings where his family has lived for 6 generations now.

Andy’s posts will begin soon, when he’s in a sentimental mood.