When I was twelve, my daddy couldn't speak due to an ulcer on his vocal cords. He carried around one of those small leatherette notebooks you might remember-- with six small silver rings that held lined paper. I kept that notebook, of course, and am using parts of it this morning in a collage.
This fills one page:
"Linda's girl friend was at our house all week. She lives in Jonesboro--I brought her home today. Her name is Patsy Adamson."
On the other side of that page:
"Grant and I went fishing and caught 9--weighed 27 pounds. I caught 6 of them--biggest one 5 1/4 pounds."
Most of Lloyd Harris' loves are hinted at in these two tiny pages: home, hospitality, fishing, and friends. I treasure his handwriting because it captures who he was, what he cared about. To anyone who showed up at the back door (only the Avon Lady used the front door) he'd say, "Come in this house!" as if whoever it was was exactly who he'd hoped it would be.
I fondly remember how when any of us (or anyone at work or church) asked him a question, he'd pull out his little book to respond with his U.S. Government ballpoint pen.
My book of the month in the Handmade Book Club is shaped like a house and made of recycled materials. When I get mine finished, I'll show you.
Its base is cut out to look like a house, gessoed, and folded, and I'm arranging papers and bits of writing to collage on its front and back, windows and doors.
Just choosing the papers is a trip!
It occurs to me that a house book, like a house, is a container of so many memories and treasures with meaning to the maker of the home. Maybe everything we are is embedded in everything we make in this life--though to viewers the pieces we choose may just appear to be squiggles?
After Sunday night church, our parents, or someone else's parents, would say, "Y'all come home with us." Nobody had to get home to watch a program on TV or check emails or anything. Nobody said "no" to spontaneous hospitality.
My parents would make something simple like ham and biscuits. After dinner, my daddy and the other men would ask me to play the piano so they could sing a quartet. Or the adults would talk and the kids would play in the yard, catching "lightning bugs" or listening to music in somebody's carport or playing "Ain't no buggers out tonight, Grandpa killed them all last night."
I'm not sure what a bugger was--but it was dangerous, and we were safe. My daddy called me "Bugger" as a term of endearment--but in that context, it meant something cute and adorable.
He also called me Sugar.
In homage to my daddy and nicknames, I'll sign off for now:
Sugar Bugger
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