Going to the Poor House in an Automobile

Dolled Up

Track Changes

"Instead of retrieving memories, we may now speak of navigating memory files, concurrently changing the emphasis from static sources to mutant items and from a closed mental space to an endless, open reservoir of (private and public) dossiers. Indeed, accepting the mutability and connectivity of memory items entails we recognize the ability of the mind and our navigational instruments to change and be changed, and this in turn affects the content and status of memories. Memories are never a simple inheritance from the past; people make media to shape memories, and memories shape people to make media." -- Jose van Dijck, Mediated Memories in the Digital Age.

Virgil

"My dad's younger brother was Virgil Latham. Uncle Virgil was very much into politics. He'd always have that newspaper spread out all over the floor. He was always, as quick as the mailman went by, he'd go to the mailbox and get his paper. And he'd spread that thing out all over the porch. He'd have it scattered everywhere. And he had a pair of those little bitty reading glasses, he'd have those things way down on his nose, there. He'd look over his glasses at you, up over the paper, in that way. He got passionate about the news. He had strong opinions. He got into fights a lot, with the Kirks especially. He had a temper.
"Virgil fought in World War I. He was gassed, and he got trench sores, and his feet and legs never did heal up right. He had them bandaged and had sores all over his legs. I think his time in the Army, as young as he was, did him more harm than anything. They taught him to kill. Not just to shoot, but to shoot to kill. And that never did leave him. Boy, I'm telling you, you just cross him, and he was ready to knock the top of your head off.
"Hoover, a Republican, was running against Democrat Al Smith for President. It was 1929 or so. Uncle Virgil and old man Elijah Rice got in a bet or quarrel or something or other. And they got into a fight over that election. And you know Uncle Virgil hated that man for the longest day he lived. And I couldn't find nothing wrong with Old Man Elijah Rice. He attended church. He raised his children right. I always thought a lot of Old Man Elijah Rice. I never had any problems with him. But Uncle Virgil couldn't speak to him without snapping him off. Looked like Uncle Virgil was saying, 'I'm daring you to say something to me to cause me to hit you.'
"Of course, it wasn't just Elijah Rice. He made a bet with somebody there in Buchanan about the election. He bet Al smith was going to beat Herbert Hoover. Uncle Virgil had a T-Model Ford. And I think he bet the Ford car against some amount of money. And when Al smith got beat, why, Uncle Virgil had to turn the car over, of course. There was a fight.
"Sheriff Richards said, 'You know, Virgil's going to get himself killed. He ain't got no sense. You can't argue with that man. You can't talk to him. If he says something you don't like, you'd better just forget about it - walk off and leave him. Otherwise, you'll get in a fight. Somebody's going to kill him.'
"But he is the one who managed to make it. He died a natural death. I don't know how he did." -- T.J. Latham
Be the first to the mailbox. Order A Cold Coming today.

Little Mary Phagan

A cold death, A Cold Coming.

Turtles All the Way Down

"We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map; and as you push the question back, what you find is an infinite regress, an infinite series of maps. The territory never gets in at all. ...Always, the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps, ad infinitum." --Gregory Bateson, "Form, Substance and Difference", Steps to an Ecology of Mind.
A Cold Coming -- one of an infinite series of incomplete or inaccurate representations. Buy it, anyhow.

'The Lord Was Dealing With Me'

"I didn't go to church, no, not till I was, uh ... well, I was young, you know.
"When I was about 16 years old, 'bout it was 19 and 34, my first experience with the Lord came. Clarence Campbell was running a revival up there. That was about the time the whiskey was going on. Just after we’d quit. We was going up there to revival in August. Fourth week of August. I got under conviction.
"And that week, that Sunday, after the revival was over, they baptized 44 down there in the river. But I didn't baptize, because I'd decided I was about to turn loose the girl that I was with. She went to get baptized. I said, 'I'm not goin' because they'll say I went because she did.'
"But the Lord was dealing with me. And I knew it. But I didn't go.
"I was miserable. Real miserable, from then until January. God, there wasn't nothing going right. Wouldn't nothing suit me.
"So one morning I got up. I got to the place where I'd just mighta shoulda been dead as alive. Smothering again.
"So I told myself, 'Well, I'm going hunting this morning.' I went and got the gun. I took my old dog, a redbone / blue tick mix. We went down across the cotton patch. Went down across the creek. Went up there just about where we was making whiskey. Wasn't too far from it. Had my gun on my shoulder. Every time I'd look back, that old dog was right behind me. He was a good dog, too. A good hunter.
"I just got so heavy. I didn't know which way I was going, hardly. After a while, I come up to an old chestnut log. You don't see them now. Wasn't no bark or nothing on it. Just a plain white log. It was just as far as I could go.
"I says, 'I got to do something.'
"I set the old gun over the log and I kneeled down, and I began to call upon my God. And boy I tell you, there for a little while I just left this world.
"I got up. I looked to Red. That old dog was laying right there with me, just looking at me. So we went hunting. I killed two or three rabbits out there that day.
"But then I still didn't join the church. And that was a miserable life. I guess that was my worst life, from then until about the time right after I married. 16 to 21 years old. For those four years, I just couldn't get nothing to satisfy me.
"Meantime, I done a lot of drinking. A lot of running around. A lot of ever-thang." -- Carl Bishop
W. Jeff Bishop's new novel, A Cold Coming: 'A lot of ever-thang.'