“They’re not changing anything are they?”

“Don’t know.”

“I can’t see what they’re doing in there with all that brown paper in the windows. Why are they hiding what they’re doing in there? Must be changing things.  I’m not going in there if they change anything.”

“Guess they don’t want our advice.”

“Shoot, I been in there every day for the past 20 years. You’d think they’d want to know what I think. I’d tell ‘em if they asked. Yes, sir. I’d tell ‘em not to change a thing. This place is an institution. Can’t just go changing everything, you know.”

“Nothing?”

“Well, they could update the bathrooms. Those need some work.”

“That’s all?”

“And some light upstairs. Can’t see a thing up there. And the awning. It’s seen better days. And I’d keep a good baker in there. I like the cinnamon rolls. You don’t think they’ll get rid of the cinnamon rolls, do you?”

“Don’t know…”

“And they could do some repainting. And it’d be nice if they got rid of the yelling—that ‘Jack of Spades’ stuff. Hurts my ears. And menus would be good. They better keep spaghetti night. I’m not going in there if they get rid of spaghetti night.”

“I heard they’re not doing spaghetti.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. They’re gonna change everything and ruin the place. There ought to be a law or something.”

Don wandered off down the sidewalk, shaking his fist in the air and muttering to himself.  Sylvie stopped to talk.

“What’s his problem?” she asked.

“Don’s worried they gonna change this place.”

“What’s going on in there?”

“Don’t know. Can’t see through the brown paper.”

“What’s it gonna be? Another coffee shop? Or a wine place?”

“Don’t know.”

“Lord knows we don’t need another coffee shop around here. How much coffee can one town drink? Silliness if you ask me. I drink my Folger’s every morning. Make a cup in the microwave. It’s good. And it doesn’t cost $20.00 a cup. Don’t know what folks are thinking, might as well drive down the street throwing their money out the window.  And wine? Gracious sakes. I’m telling you, wine is taking this place over. I liked this town way better before wine.”

“I heard a lot of downtown was boarded up before wine got going.”

“Well, sure it was, but you never had any trouble parking. Can’t find a parking spot anywhere in this town now. Had to park three blocks up the street this morning. Walked all the way down here. Didn’t used to have to walk.”

“Guess we have to roll with the punches,” I said. “Things change. No way to stop it. I read that in a book.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Guess not.”

I walked back to my office. Going up the stairs, I dodged a bunch of paint buckets and ladders.

“What’s going on?” I asked the painter when I got to the top of the stairs.

“Repainting the walls.”

“That color? What’s wrong with the old color?”

“Don’t know. Guess the boss wanted to change it.”

“Change it? Why in the world would he change it? I liked it the way it was.”

Several folks have asked me recently whether I’m writing a new book.

Yes, I am. It’s a book about women.

“What?” Annie chirped. “Are you nuts?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve lived with women for almost sixty years. Write what you know, they say.”

“But you don’t know a thing about women. Believe me. I know. I’m your wife.”

“That used to be the case,” I admitted. “But not any more. I had an estrogenous epiphany this morning while standing in the shower. I’ve got women all figured out now.”

“Fat chance,” Annie said. “You’re not writing about me are you?”

“Yep.”

“And our daughters, and your mother, and my mother, and my sister, and Gretchen…”

“Yep, all of them. It’s a book about all of the women who’ve graced my life.”

“And old girlfriends? You’re not writing about them are you? Surely you’re smarter than that.”

“Yep, my old girlfriends, too. Full disclosure, so to speak.”

“Lordy, Lordy, Lordy,” Annie said. “This is going to be a disaster. I can’t watch.”

That little exchange got me thinking that if a fellow is going to write about old girlfriends, he’d better do some careful and judicious thinking before putting pen to paper. Well, I did the careful part—but messed up on judicious—and remembered Candy Jenkins, the most beautiful girl in junior high.

I’d asked Candy—twice—to be my girlfriend. She never said no, but she never said yes, either. She looked at me occasionally and smiled as we passed in the hallway at school. She always whispered something to her girlfriends. She had a devoted entourage. They giggled and twittered and shook their heads.

That was as close as I got to Candy Jenkins, until one day in late September of my seventh grade year when she stopped me in the hall, sent her minions on to class, told me I should run for president of the seventh grade, win, and then she’d be my girlfriend. She offered to be my campaign manager. We’d be a team, she said.

She developed this slogan: GIVE A DARN!  VOTE FOR SAM!  SAM! SAM! SAM!

Pretty good, huh?

The day before the election I stood at the podium on the gymnasium stage and promised my classmates radical changes in the cafeteria-free butter brickle ice cream on Mondays, cheeseburgers every day, chocolate milk in pint-sized cartons. I promised shorter class times, an extra recess period, and half days on Fridays.

The next day I won the election in a landslide and Candy said yes, she’d be girlfriend. It was a good day.

Serving as president of my seventh grade class was a big responsibility.  My first stop after winning the election was Mr. Hicks’ office. He was the principal. I laid out the promises I’d made. We talked about leadership, personal freedoms, empowering young people to explore their passions, and ice cream. I made my demands.

“Those are some interesting changes you’re suggesting, Mr. McLeod. Let’s start with the ice cream. Am I to understand that you’ve promised your classmates free ice cream?”

“Yes, sir. Only on Mondays. Just butter brickle. Not vanilla or chocolate or strawberry. Butter brickle is my favorite.”

“And you’ve promised cheeseburgers, and chocolate milk, and shorter classes, and half days on Fridays?”

“Yes, sir. And an extra recess period.”

“What was it that led you to make those promises, Mr. McLeod?”

“I wanted to win the election, sir.”

“I see,” he said. ” Well, perhaps…”

“And Candy Jenkins.”

“What did Candy Jenkins have to do with this?”

“She thought up the promises and told me to make them. She said it was the only way to win.”

“Mr. McLeod, are you in the habit of doing whatever Miss Jenkins tells you to do?”

“She said she’d be my girlfriend.”

“She’d be your girlfriend if you made those promises?”

“No. She said she’d be my girlfriend if I won. But she was pretty sure I’d win if I made the promises.”

“Did it ever occur to you that you couldn’t deliver on those promises without getting my approval, Mr. McLeod?”

“Sure,” I said. “But Candy said not to worry about it. She said we’d figure that out later.”

Mr. Hicks smiled. “Well Mr. McLeod, I’m afraid we won’t be making any of those changes. You’ll have to face your constituents and tell them you made promises you couldn’t keep.”

“That’s what Candy said you’d say. But that’s okay, she says, because I’ve already won and she’s my girlfriend. She says folks will get over it.”

She was right. They did.

Annie’s really into the bread-baking these days. Take a look at this!

Annie’s dad died several years ago. We called him PaPa. Everybody loved PaPa, but like all of us, he had his quirks.

PaPa loved working on his boat—an old trawler that required constant attention. He kept it at “the river.” Folks in Richmond, Virginia, are always talking about “the river.”

“The river?” I said, shortly after I met Annie. “What river?”

“It’s just ‘the river’,” Annie said. “Nobody ever says which one.”

“Well then, how are outsiders like me supposed to know which river somebody’s talking about?”

“You’re not,” she said.

“What?” I said.

“Don’t fret about it. If I decide to keep you, we’ll go to my family’s place at the river one of these days. You’ll catch on.”

Well, Annie decided to keep me and we went to “the river” with her family pretty regularly. Their version of “the river” was actually a creek—Carter’s Creek. It flowed into the Rappahannock River.

While at “the river,” I spent a lot of time on PaPa’s boat—not going anywhere, just scrubbing it and helping him fix it.

“Sam, you need yourself a boat,” he said.

“I’d rather go to work,” I said.

After working on the boat all day, we’d sit on the deck at their cottage and watch boats tootling up and down the creek. Sometimes we’d drink a beer. One time I drank two.

“So who are your neighbors?” I asked one evening, pointing to the cottage just up the creek.

“That’s a sad story,” PaPa said. “Those folks live in Baltimore. They moved down here to retire a year or so ago. Hadn’t been here a month when the guy’s wife had a stroke. They had to move her back to Baltimore. I never see them anymore. Made me worry I might be due for a stroke.”

“I’m sure you’re fine,” I said.

“Don’t be so sure. Sometimes I feel little twitches in my brain.”

“We all feel those, PaPa.”

“Not like these. These are different.”

“So what about the folks who live in that house?” I asked, pointing to the house just down the creek.

“Another sad story,” he started. “That couple bought the place as a weekend getaway. I saw them here three or four times before I heard he’d had a bad heart attack. Haven’t seen them here in months. Makes me think I might be due for a heart attack.”

” I doubt that,” I said.

“Well, I don’t discount the possibility. I get pains sometimes in my chest. Mostly it’s gas, but who knows what’s really going on in there?”

“What about that house up on the hill?” I asked, trying to find a happier subject.

“That is a really sad story,” PaPa said. “That poor lady started having some pain in her elbow, so she went to the doctor. He said it was tennis elbow, but it wasn’t. Two week later she was dead from cancer.”

“Jeez, that is really sad,” I said.

“But that’s not the saddest part,” he said. “The saddest part is I’ve been having some pain in my elbow, too.”

“Do you think you might be suffering from hypochondria?” I asked.

“Maybe so,” he said. “I seem to have everything else.”

Several years later, PaPa did develop cancer. He knew he was going to die, but he was in surprisingly good spirits. “I can relax now. Don’t have to worry about getting something that’s going to kill me because I’ve already got it.”

I think he meant it.

I asked him if there was something he’d learned from living his seventy-plus years. “If you had to give a younger person one bit of advice, what would it be?” I asked.

“That’s a tough one,” he said. “I’ve got lots of advice to dole out. Let me think.” He looked out across the creek watching another trawler heading toward the river.

“I’d tell a younger person to pay more attention to family and close friends,” he said. “We tend to take them for granted, you know. We spend too much time trying to please folks that don’t play all that big a part in our lives-clients and customers and whatnot. I’d pay less attention to the bit players and pay more attention to the main characters.”

“Good advice,” I said.

“Hearing it is one thing,” he said. “Living it is another.”

Ham is a tradition in our family, a tradition we restarted this past year. Actually, I should say a tradition I restarted. Annie wasn’t too wild about it.

Back in Nashville where I grew up, we McLeods ate Tennessee country ham and biscuits for breakfast on Christmas morning, just one day each year. My dad, the doctor, said we were eating enough fat and salt to last a whole year. He may have been right.

So the salt-cured ham was a special treat reserved for the holidays—generally a gift from one of Dad’s patients who couldn’t pay his doctor bill. It came wrapped in heavy brown paper covered in grease stains. Unwrapped, the ham sported a healthy carpeting of green-blue mold.

My brothers and I stared wide-eyed at the green slime and little pig hairs still sticking out of the greasy pigskin.

“Yuk!” we said.

(The only ham we’d seen to that point came sliced in a plastic bag.)

Undeterred, my mother scraped the mold off the ham, soaked it in water in a gigantic lard tin for a couple of days to remove some of the saltiness, then simmered the ham in the tin on the stovetop starting late on Christmas Eve, letting it slow-cook all night long so we’d have a ham ready to slice on Christmas morning.

We loved it. Even my father, the doctor, loved it.

After Annie and I married, we spent Christmas with her family in Virginia every other year until we had kids of our own. Virginia ham and rolls were part of their Christmas dinner tradition. Annie’s mom never soaked her ham and baked it instead of simmering it in water. She liked her ham incredibly salty, and it was. To compensate, she sliced the ham paper-thin. A little bit went a long way on a homemade yeasty roll.

When Annie and I moved west, we lost touch with the Christmas ham tradition. I don’t know why. I guess we were trying too hard to be Pacific Northwest people. We ate smoked salmon on toast points instead of ham biscuits, until this past year when I happened to see a familiar-looking ham recipe in a magazine. The memories came streaming back. I decided to give it a try.

So I ordered a Virginia ham, not a Tennessee ham. Annie doesn’t like Tennessee country ham.

“It’s not right,” she says.

Our Virginia ham arrived three days before Christmas. I unwrapped it and scraped the mold off the ham with a stiff (previously unused) dog brush.

“Yuk!” Annie said.

I put the ham in a huge canning pot, covered it in cold water, and shoved the thing into the refrigerator after removing two shelves, two gallons of Eggnog, and a lot of other stuff Annie had prepared for other Christmas dishes.

“What the heck are you doing?” Annie asked.

“Making some room for the Christmas ham,” I said.

“Well, why don’t you make some room for it in the refrigerator out in the barn?”

“Too late,” I said. “No worries. I’ll put your stuff out there.”

“Oh, brother,” Annie said.

I changed the soaking water twice over the next 24 hours, then brewed a barrelful of black tea and soaked the ham in the tea for another 24 hours.

Annie thought I’d lost it.

“Why are you wasting all that tea?” she wanted to know.

“Part of the recipe,” I said.

On Christmas Eve I toted my pot out of the refrigerator, poured off the tea, emptied six bottles of beer into the pot, and filled it the rest of the way with cold water to cover the ham. I put it on our stovetop and let it simmer there all night, just like my mom used to do.

On Christmas morning I made a glaze out of blackstrap molasses, brown sugar, and mustard. I slathered the thick glaze all over the ham and put it in a hot oven long enough to set the glaze. By breakfast that ham was ready to slice. Annie made the dinner rolls my Aunt Wiese used to make, and we had a feast.

“Yum!” the family said.

“But next year that thing goes in the barn,” Annie said.

It’s a Christmas tradition reborn. Makes me proud.

I walked into the coffee shop yesterday, a little later than usual. Annie and her friend, Gretchen, were there—solving some of the world’s pressing problems.

“Sam,” Gretchen called, motioning for me to join them before I got in line.

I started to sit down at the table with them, but…

“No,” Annie said. “No need to sit down. We just wanted to tell you there was a guy sitting right over there, next to the window. He just left. He was impersonating you.”

“What?” I said.

“It’s true,” Gretchen said. “The guy was sitting there in that big green chair. He had a cowboy hat on and he was wearing sunglasses. And he had a beard. And he was writing something. He looked just like you. I started talking to him, but he wasn’t you.”

“That’s right,” Annie said. “I thought he was you and I’m married to you.”

“Well, why would somebody do something like that?” I asked, puffing up with self-importance.

“Because you’re a writer and come in here all the time and people like you…well, some do. I think the guy must be lonely or a little off,” Gretchen said. “He looked a little off. And when he took his hat off, his hair was a mess like yours…”

“What?”

“Oh, I don’t mean anything by it, you know. Just that sometimes…occasionally…you know…well your hair is sort of a mess.”

Annie nodded. “See. I told you,” she said.

“Other than the hat and sunglasses, what was he wearing?” I asked.

“A ratty old fleece and dirty blue jeans and some nasty white tennis shoes. Just like the stuff you’re always wearing,” Gretchen said.

Annie nodded again, rolling her eyes this time.

“And he was sort of big-boned like you,” Gretchen said.

“Fat,” Annie said.

“Pudgy, not fat,” Gretchen said. “And old. We’ll not really old. Just…you know…older…not elderly.”

“Old,” Annie said. “And he had gray hair and a gray beard.”

“Snow white hair,” Gretchen threw in.

“Sorry I missed him,” I said, not quite so puffed up anymore. “That’s strange.”

“Yeah, it was,” Gretchen said. Annie nodded.

I left the ladies to their problem-solving, stepped up to the counter, and ordered a cup of coffee—tall drip with room for cream.

“A refill?” Eric the Barista asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s my first cup.”

Eric looked at me funny—like he was having a déjà vu moment.  “I could have sworn you were here earlier,” he said.

I came into town again this morning. It was dark and foggy. Holiday lights hung from the trees along Main Street in wind-blown strands. The street was deserted but the coffee shop was well lit, looked warm, and inside the place was buzzing. Nat King Cole was singing “Mona Lisa.” The place smelled of cinnamon.

As I ordered my coffee, Eric the Barista pointed to the green chair at the window.  Then he shrugged his shoulders. “That guy looks just like you. Even ordered a tall drip with room for cream just like you,” he said.

The fellow sitting in the big green chair did sort of look like me.  He had on a cowboy hat and sunglasses.

“Odd,” I thought. “Wearing sunglasses when it’s dark outside.”

He had a white beard and white hair that could have used a comb. He was wearing a worn-out fleece and dirty blue jeans. And really dirty white sneakers. He was sort of paunchy and well past his middle years—way older than me.

Before I could walk over and say anything to him, Bob, a coffee shop regular, walked up to him and said, “Hey, Sam.”

“What?” the guy said. “Sam?”

“Sam McLeod,” Bob said, laughing like the guy was joking.

“Never heard of him,” the guy said.

“Lousy impersonator,” I thought. “Guy doesn’t even know who he’s impersonating.”

Then the guy looked at me and nearly jumped through the ceiling, like he was seeing a ghost.

An old neighborhood favorite!

Soaked in black tea for two days to remove some of the salt, steeped in stout 6 hours, glazed with blackstrap molasses…YUM!

My new book is a memoir of sorts. I say “of sorts” because it’s part true and part made up. It’s a book about growing up in The South—the childhood I had, the childhood I remember, and the childhood I wish I’d had.

Many of my Northwest friends think of “The South” as an exotic place.

That’s understandable. It’s a long ways from here. They’ve never been “down there.” They know only what they’ve heard, or what they’ve read about the Civil War or slavery or racial integration, or what they saw on Hee Haw as a kid.

They ask a lot of questions about plantation life and grits. And now that I’ve written the definitive work on southern life, I get even more questions.

“Do all southern cops wear those mirrored sunglasses?” Jim wanted to know. “Like on Dukes of Hazard?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “You don’t think TV folks would make up something like that do you?”

“Did you have alligators where you lived?”

“Sure,” I said. “All us southerners have alligators in our swamps. But they’re no big deal. Gators don’t mess with people much. Eat a lot of cats and yippy little dogs. Only ate one kid in my neighborhood…I think…I can only remember one.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

Being from Nashville, I also get the hillbilly questions. Folks want to know whether I grew up with indoor plumbing, whether I play a banjo, whether I wear shoes.

Yep. Nope. Yep, most of the time.

“Do you know Dolly Parton?” Larry asked.

“Sure. Had dinner with her last week. She’s getting along pretty well. Has a bad case of the sniffles.”

“Did you have catfish?”

“Well, of course. And hushpuppies too. And coleslaw-the kind with mustard in it. And pecan pie for dessert.”

Larry scrunched up his nose like he couldn’t possibly imagine eating any of that stuff.

A couple of days ago, my editor called from New York City.  She wanted some pictures—old family pictures from my fascinating southern upbringing.  She said some of the stuff in my memoir was not very believable.

“Well, there’s a good reason for that,” I said.

“So we need to put some pictures in the book,” she said. “They make it look more real.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I’ll have to call my mom. Coco’s got all the old family pictures.”

So I called Coco and told her I needed some pictures—southern pictures. And I needed them fast to get them into the book before it goes to print.

“Like what?” she wanted to know.

“Got any pictures of watermelon?” I asked.

“Maybe. What else?”

“How about pictures of cotton or tobacco fields?”

“Why would I have any of those?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if you find any they’d be perfect.”

“Do they have to be pictures of our family or will anybody do?”

“Anybody’ll do as long as you can’t identify them.”

“Ooh, fun,” Coco said.

It took mom a while, but she found some doozies. I’m sitting here at my desk with a whole folder full of southern pictures-a picture of a Kudzu-covered junker on cinderblocks in somebody’s front yard, a giant Mississippi River mudcat draped over a boy’s outstretched arms (really slimy, must be five feet long), three guys sitting on a log smoking corncob pipes with a jug on the ground at their feet, and an alligator wearing a Santa Claus hat.

“You know any of these people or places?” I asked.

“Heck no,” Coco said. “But good pictures, huh?”

“Perfect,” I said.

The big guy comes to Walla Walla early…