dlpedit
Author of Confederate Cabinet Departments and Secretaries
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dlpedit
Well, school has begun again. It seems as though we entered summer only yesterday. Nannie Summers was right when she told me, a doubting Thomas then, that time goes faster the older one gets.

But the start of a new school year always brings memories back to mind. Memories of starting a new year as a student myself. Memories of starting a new year later as a teacher. (I’ve been on both sides of the desk.)

Not all of those memories are good. Some (one in particular) are downright embarrassing. My first memory of school is of my initial experience with it–my very first day in first grade. (We didn’t have kindergarten in those days.) I cried before the bus came. I cried on the bus. I cried as I went into the school building and found my classroom. I think I finally dried up after the day started, but I repeated that routine every morning for at least the first week of school. And my parents never let me forget it.

After a few days, I apparently ran out of tears and actually began to like school. Among my most vivid memories are of the big, fat pencils we used until our manual dexterity had developed enough that we could “graduate” to normal-sized pencils, the old No. 2s, and of the lined paper on which we learned to write, complete with slivers of wood imbedded in it. (The photo here must be of more modern paper because it lacks the wood chips, but otherwise it looks the same.) Eventually, I began to look forward to going to school, reconnecting with friends after a long summer, and learning new things.

Shortly after school began, we usually had picture day. From the time my older brother Dale and I were old enough to cause trouble at home, our daddy, a self-employed brick mason, required us to go to work with him anytime school was out, so we worked with him in broiling heat throughout the summer. By the resumption of school in the fall, we were the darkest-tanned boys in the school. We hardly recognized our own photos in the school yearbook when it came out near the end of the year. (Apparently, I was not yet a troublemaker when my first-grade picture was taken because I lacked that burnt-to-a-crisp look that year.)

I can remember infinite details about Halls Elementary School. The look of the building. The creak of the wooden floors and stairways. The distinctive smell of the oils (or whatever it was) that Mr. Baker, the janitor, used on the floors. The eerie feeling I always got whenever I passed Mr. Lakin’s (the principal’s) office.

I have generally fond memories of each of my elementary school teachers. My brother and I had most of the same teachers. And our parents seemed to know all of them well, so we knew better than to misbehave in school. At least I did. “If you get into trouble at school,” our parents warned, “you’ll really be in trouble when you get home!” I didn’t want to risk finding out what that would have involved, but I learned vicariously from watching my brother suffer the penalty.

There was Mrs. Zachary in first grade, the patient, longsuffering lady who, after a year of great toil, finally succeeded in teaching me to tie my shoes. In second, it was Mrs. Kirkpatrick. Then, in third, Mrs. Bailey, who regularly sent me down two flights of stairs to the lunch room, where my grandmother worked, to fetch her a steaming-hot cup of coffee every mid-morning.

Mrs. Porter, my fourth-grade teacher, had suffered a heart attack the year before and wasn’t allowed to climb stairs, so our classroom was on the ground level near Mrs. Smelser’s music room, where I never quite learned to carry a tune but could whop sticks together in time with those who did know how.

In fifth grade, Mrs. George taught me to enjoy reading, especially history, forever blessing (or cursing?) me with an addiction to collecting and reading books. And in sixth, it was Mrs. McMillan. That year, I won the DAR Good Citizenship Award and was chosen to be a member of the Safety Patrol–a “patrol boy.”

(Many of my elementary and high school memories are included in my book Look Unto the Hills, available on Amazon).

The excitement I experienced at the start of a new school year when I became a teacher was of a different sort. And I certainly didn’t cry. (That usually came later in the year!)

As is so often the case for teachers who are sure of their calling, school was never really far from my mind, even when I was “on vacation.” I had spent much of my summers thinking about, planning for, and anticipating the next school year. Shopping, browsing, and reading always seemed to reveal ideas for use in my classes. I’ve seen the same characteristic in my wife–only amplified several times over. Even after she “retired” two years ago, she still is gathering things she might use in school. And no wonder–she is in high demand as a regular substitute teacher for two schools.

You can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can’t take the classroom out of the teacher!

I’m not quite as bad (or good?) as my wife in that regard. I just channel that tendency into my writing.

But since leaving the classroom, I’ve found myself for the last seven years helping out with the teacher in-service training program of our church’s Christian school. Some of the teachers sitting before me as I present have taught more years than I did, so I’m more than a little intimidated, knowing they could certainly teach me a thing or two. But the rest of the teachers seem to be getting younger and younger–just like my doctors seem to be.

I don’t think it has anything to do with my getting older, does it? At least in my memories I’m young, too.

As much as I enjoy researching and writing books and articles, there are a few aspects of the publishing process that, though necessary, I dislike. At the top of the list are adding final reference numbers, indexing, and marketing.

The first distasteful task of adding final reference numbers comes into play only for my “academic” writings. Although I don’t intentionally write for an academic audience, preferring instead to see my main readership as being somewhat like myself, average readers who are merely interested in the content, not the back matter of the works.

I assume that most people don’t really care where I get my information. But there might be a few who want to know or some who would like to get more information on some aspect of what I’ve written and think they can get it by reading my sources. More power to them, as Mr. Darling of Mayberry infamy would say.

And there might be a rare doubter who just can’t believe a statistic I’ve cited or a quotation I’ve stated and who wants to take issue with it. Such a person can then check my references to have their doubts removed.

As I’m writing my early drafts, I put my sources in parentheses after the fact or quotation and highlight them in bright yellow without any reference number.

In revisions, I often will move blocks of text around for better, more logical presentation. Not having reference numbers prevents the risk of having to renumber everything. I add numbers only after everything in the text is set in stone, finalized, and I know that nothing will be moved. But sometimes errors still manage to creep in. And it seems that one error corrected reveals other problems as everything after the point where the error was corrected must be renumbered. I’ve found that it’s much easier to get everything set and only then to add the reference numbers, removing the in-text source information as I do so.

The second publishing task I dislike is indexing. Again, this aspect is generally necessary only in my academic writing.

Indexing is usually done near the very end of the publishing process, when the galleys have been set, pagination is in stone, and no more changes will be made to the body text. When final deadlines are looming and the pressure is on to get the book out, adding to the intensity.

When I worked for an educational publisher, writing history textbooks, I was able to foist the indexing chore onto a graduate assistant who worked with me. (Somehow, he managed to get all the tasks no one else wanted to do.) As a freelancer, I no longer have that luxury.

Indexing is a thankless, tedious task. Amazingly, however, some people actually choose to do it for a living. Not me! And I’m too cheap to hire someone to do it for me.

Right up there with adding references and indexing is the actual marketing of the book. By nature, I’m not a salesman. (When I was trying to sell my car, I found myself–in the spirit of honesty and transparency–telling the prospective buyer all the things that were wrong with the car!)

By upbringing, I loathe self-promotion, and that’s what I feel as though I’m doing when I’m trying to market my books. It just goes against my grain. It rubs me the wrong way.

So let me research. Loose me to write about my favorite subjects. As shy as I am, I’ll even venture to address groups to talk about my subjects or my writing process and challenges. But spare me the reference numbering, indexing, and especially the selling!

What aspect(s) of the publishing process do you find distasteful? How do you deal with it?

The germ of an idea surfaced. I was intrigued by it and was eager to begin the journey it would involve. But life happens, and the idea was moved to the back burner, where it simmered for years. Once I finally began researching the idea, it proved to be a long, sometimes frustrating, and often interrupted journey to completion.

After years of searching, researching, writing, revising, and editing, I finally completed the manuscript, and it was accepted by a publisher. It slowly began winding its way through “the process.” It sailed through the editorial steps and entered the labyrinthine tunnels leading to the final steps of the journey.

But then it seemed to disappear, as though it had never existed. I received no galleys to proof, no cover design to approve, no marketing plan to follow. Not even any royalties or royalty statements from books previously published by the company. Most distressing, I received no answers to my repeated email queries about the status of the manuscript.

The preferred release date for the book came and passed. Still nothing. I heard rumblings of discontent from other authors facing similar frustrations with the publisher. They were getting no responses to either emails or snail mail. The publisher had seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth.

I tried to be patient and to think positively toward the publisher. There had to be a legitimate reason for the delays. My contract stipulated that publication would occur within 18 months of the signing of the contract. I knew that it had been longer, but still I waited, hoping without basis that my book would soon reappear, brought back to life from the catacombs of the mysterious publishing world.

Meanwhile, interested family members, blog followers, and friends who knew I was working on the book were clamoring to know when it would be released. I didn’t know. Some of them might have even begun to suspect that I really didn’t have a manuscript–only empty talk.

Finally, my patience ran out. I checked the date on my signed contract and counted the months to the current date: 28 months, 10 months beyond the contracted release date. (Do you think I was patient enough?)

On the first of this month, I emailed the publisher again, this time announcing the withdrawal of my book and the resumption of all rights to it. Enough was enough, and I had waited patiently for more than enough time.

I’m happy to announce that the book, Dillon’s War, is now in the marketplace, available in both paperback and e-book formats from Amazon. That’s not exactly how I wanted, expected, or hoped it would be published, but that’s how it is.

From the process, I learned a lot about my Uncle Dillon and the war as he experienced it, and it was fun. I learned a lot about Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing process, much of it different than their former CreateSpace process, but it was, in its own way, interesting. But I also learned a lot about a publisher, and that wasn’t so good. Caveat emptor!

I’m by no stretch of the imagination a salesman, but I do hope the book sells. I know I have a small group of “boosters,” people who have encouraged me along the long, lonely, frustrating journey. People like Joy Neal Kidney and Anne Claire (not her real name), my beta readers; my daughter Stacy, who designed the cover and marketing materials and handles my website; and my wife Connie. She has put up with a lot during the whole course of the journey.

Perhaps I can include some of you, my blog readers, in that group if you should be led to purchase a copy. If you do, I’d appreciate your writing a brief review of it. And tell others about it, especially those with an interest in World War II, perhaps even museums or veterans organizations that might consider selling it to their clientele and members.

The journey has been long. It’s often been lonely and frustrating. But it’s now over. All that remains to be done is for YOU to read it! If you do, I offer you my sincere thank you.

Last week I wrote about visiting the “soft opening” of the Halls Crossroads Historical Museum (https://hchmmuseum.org/)and discovering there a couple more relatives who had fought during World War II. I knew then and there that I had to learn more about them and their experiences.

So while going through some boxes looking for something totally unrelated this week, I came across photos of one of those relatives as well as his father. And mixed up among those photos were others of one of the houses my father had bricked, reminding me of some important life lessons he taught me on the job.

The relative was Charles A. Peterson. I learned while visiting the museum that he had been a member of Company I, 86th Mountain Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, and had fought in Italy in the Northern Apennines and the Po River Valley of Italy. I now have some basic information with which to begin my search for his story.

The photos I discovered of him in that box were one showing him standing with a distant mountain in the background, possibly during the war for he is wearing khakis, and the other of him walking down Gay Street in Knoxville. Was that a practice of photographers of the day, taking photos of random strangers and then selling them the developed photo?

Also with those photos was one that included Charles’s father, Uncle Bob, or Robert Peterson. (He’s second from the left in the group photo.) Charles and Bob lived together on their farm, which sat where Peterson Place now is on McCloud Road. The only thing I remember about Uncle Bob was that whenever we visited him, he would grab me and chew on my ear, and I’d finally escape his clutches and run off, wiping slobbers from my ears. That was almost as bad as Momma Graybeal’s hugging on me with snuff running from the corners of her mouth!

Suddenly, another photo that demands research fell from the stack. It was a formal portrait of another uncle, Wallace Farmer who lived only about half a mile from our house. It shows him in an army uniform and a garrison cap and is labeled “Camp Gruber, Okla.” I vaguely seem to remember his saying one time that he had served in the Pacific theater during the war (but I might be wrong).

Uncle Wallace was a quiet man, but he teased us kids silently, pretending to “steal our nose” and holding up his fist with his thumb sticking between his index and middle fingers, and it looked ever so much like a nose and made us instinctively reach to our noses to see if they were still there. He sometimes stopped to pick me up as I walked home from track practice, asking, “Need a lift?” And that was all he’d say until he pulled into his driveway on Hill Road, when he’d say, “Well, l’ll see you later.” That was it, and I walked the remaining half mile home. I have to find his military unit before I can begin researching his war experiences.

But then there were the photos that reminded me of Daddy. He was a brick mason who bricked a good many of the homes in Halls and surrounding communities. Anyone who ever lived in Murphy Hills, Halls Heights, Freeway Subdivision, Gracemont, Temple Acres, or dozens of other subdivisions in the area more than likely lived in one of his homes. His work was seldom slow, unless it was due to inclement weather, because he worked for a number of contractors over the years: Joe Ridenour, Clyde Helton, Wayne Hill, Steve McMahan, Hubert Waller, and several others.

From the time my brother and I were old enough to get into trouble at home, Daddy made us go to work with him anytime we weren’t in school. We carried bricks, mixed mortar (by hand in a large mixing box or in a wheelbarrow), rodded joints, built and disassembled scaffolding, and did whatever else we were told. If there was nothing else to do, he’d have me clean out his toolbox on the truck.

At first, I was so young that I could carry only three bricks at a time and so childish that I spent a lot of time calculating how much candy and bubble gum I could buy with what he paid me. As I got older, I learned to apply that income to school clothes and, eventually, college.

On the job, Daddy taught us a lot of important lessons that were applicable not only while working for him but also later in life.

He taught us to do our best and to take pride in our work because the quality of the work we boys did reflected on the quality of his work, too. He taught us not to rod joints too soon after he had laid them because the tool would dig into the wet joint and leave deep gouges that we’d have to fill in. Neither should we wait too long before rodding the joints because then the mortar would be dry and the tool would leave dark, unsightly marks. All bed joints had to be straight, and we should never leave tags below the head joints. And we were not to loaf around but to give a day’s work for a day’s pay, no matter how little or how much that was.

The accompanying photos of one of Daddy’s houses shows the quality of work he did. This particular house was built by Steve McMahan and was featured in the Knoxville Parade of Homes. The intricate brickwork on the gable vent and around the windows in one end of the house, the herring bone design on the chimney, and the retaining wall all took a long time for Daddy to do, and he was paid by piecework rather than by the hour, so it was a sacrifice for such time-consuming work. But he took his time and did his best.

I guess we, too, eventually began to take pride in our work because after Daddy would finish topping off, or capping, a chimney he’d just laid and had moved on to another part of the job, he would leave us boys on the roof to rod the joints and clean off the roof. It was then that we would take a nail and scratch into the soft mortar on the cap Daddy’s initials and the date. That memory brings to mind the adage “Do a job that you’d be proud to sign your name to.”

I don’t think either of us boys really enjoyed working during summer vacations and on school holidays (I know I didn’t), but it taught us a lot of good lessons that we’ve carried with us ever since.

Last week, I took a couple of days to travel and enjoy three Ms: a medal ceremony, the opening of a new historical museum, and sharing memories with my sister and brother-in-law in Knoxville, Tennessee.

First, I traveled to Brevard, North Carolina, a not-so-small “small town” nestled at the entrance to the Pisgah National Forest. (For a small town, traffic was more like that of a mid-sized town that is experiencing the problems of too rapid growth!) What drew me there was the awarding of the Legion of Merit medal to 102-year-old World War II veteran Ed Cottrell by the French consul general. No thanks to traffic delays, we arrived barely in time to find the last available seats along the wall near the speaker’s dais before the ceremony began.

Cottrell piloted a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter in the European theater of the war, flying 65 missions. On one mission, his squadron was attacked by Messerschmitt Bf 109s, and 8 of his plane’s 18 cylinders were shot up. During Cottrell’s attempt to coax his damaged plane back to his base in Belgium, two 109 pilots refused to make the easy kill and instead escorted him back, allowing him to live. A representative of Pratt & Whitney, the manufacturer of the P-47 engines, was in the audience and presented Cottrell with a P-47 piston.

After receiving the Legion of Honor medal from French Consul General Anne-Laure Desjouqueres (second from right in photo), Cottrell (far right in photo) reciprocated by giving her a framed print of an artist’s depiction of German pilots’ memorable humanitarian gesture to Cottrell. (The object held aloft is the P-47 Pratt & Whitney piston.)

The ceremony was attended by a packed house (I estimated about 300 were there), including five other World War II veterans, one of whom was said to be 107 years old.

Leaving the ceremony, we traveled next to Knoxville, Tennessee, where we spent the night with my sister and brother-in-law, Gina and Allan King. Contrary to my usual routine of going fairly early to bed, I stayed up talking with them until midnight, and going to bed then only because Sis had to get up at 5:45 to go to work. It’s always enjoyable to get together and talk and laugh about our growing-up and growing-old days. (Recalling the former alleviates, at least temporarily, the realities of the latter.)

The next day, we attended the “soft opening” (I still haven’t figured out what that means) of the Halls Crossroads Historical Museum in the community where I grew up. Not knowing quite what to expect going in, I was blown away by all that the board members and volunteers had done.

In four rooms, they had amassed thousands of photographs (most taken by the museum’s founder, the late Hubert LaRue), documents, and artifacts of the people and events of the community’s past. Volumes of records were neatly shelved and indexed for research, including two volumes labeled “Peterson Family.” (Unfortunately, none of the contents dealt with my immediate branch of the family.)

Three kiosks featured endless video loops of collections of historic photos of individuals, families, schools, and churches, each labeled with the names of the people and places and the dates. I found numerous relatives among the people shown, including several who had served in World War II and whose experiences I’ll now have to research.

For example, there was Ross Peterson, who was killed in action during a bombing mission over Germany. The files included the telegram of his being Missing in Action and another confirming that he had been killed in action. And then there was Ross’s brother, Charles Peterson, whom I remember from when I was a child, and the citations for medals he was awarded. I’m sure there’s more to both of those men’s stories than meets the eye. More digging!

Numerous cabinets and display cases also shared artifacts of various types, reminders of the tools, utensils, and toys used by community residents over time. One bookcase and display contained yearbooks from my alma mater, Halls High School, including the first one ever published by the students.

But perhaps the most exciting thing was the opportunity to visit with numerous relatives and friends of my family whom I did not know personally or whom I had not seen in many years.

At one point, my conversation with one such person was interrupted when an elderly man entered the room and announced, “Somebody said I have a relative back here.” I was that relative, but I didn’t know the man, who had retired from the Tennessee National Guard as a brigadier general. (I’m still trying to determine just how we’re related. Once I get past the first-cousin level, I’m lost!)

Then the icing on the cake was the museum’s inclusion of me in a display of “Our Local Authors,” which included my book “A Goodly Heritage,” a book I had self-published and intended only for the benefit of my immediate family, not the general public. Before leaving to return home, I gave the museum a copy of another of my books, Look Unto the Hills, in which I share stories of my growing-up years in Halls. (None of my traditionally published works deals with the local history, so none of those were featured.) I’m deeply honored to be included in the museum this way.

Being worn out as I was from the two days’ activities and loss of sleep, the return home seemed long. (We did manage to stir up enough strength to stop at the new Buc-ee’s at the Sevierville exit, though.)

It’s happened yet again! I, like the man in Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” must have the cursed albatross around my neck!

What can I say? I was hijacked, my work interrupted by yet another must-read book! This time, the interruption was sparked by a post on the Facebook group “Knoxville, Tennessee, History and Memories” about how a road in that city got its name. And that led to the life and work of a daughter of the man for whom the road was named.

Merchants Drive (it’s the first exit you come to after you merge onto I-75 N from I-640) was named for C. L. Merchant, a Methodist dairy farmer who lived nearby. He had a daughter named Jane, who became quite famous as a poet, having her work published in Good Housekeeping, The Saturday Evening Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and many other national magazines and newspapers. She also had a number of books published.

The Facebook post featured photos of several newspaper clippings about Merchant, her writings, and her unusual circumstances. It also mentioned a biography that had been written about her.

My interest was immediately piqued for a couple of reasons. First, she was yet another once-renowned writer from my hometown of whom I, amazingly, had never heard. [Merchant thereby joined Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden) and Anne Armstrong (This Day and Time) in my Knoxville-writers-never-heard-of-till-now club.] Merchant had been at the apex of her career at the same time I was growing up there; yet, I had never heard of her. Neither she nor her works were mentioned in any English classes I had.

Second, being a writer myself, I’m always looking for exemplars whose lives and writings might offer lessons I can use to improve my own writing. Merchant’s unique circumstances and how she wrote in spite of (or was it because of?) them offered potential inspiration for me.

So I ordered the book: A Window on Eternity: The Life and Poetry of Jane Hess Merchant by Sarah Jorunn Oftedal Ricketts. When it arrived, I immediately set aside my work in progress to read it.

Jane Hess Merchant was born on November 1, 1919, in Inskip, at the time a suburb of Knoxville. She was a frail baby, and the doctor was afraid she might not live long.

When the child was 18 months old and still learning to walk, she fell and broke her right leg. When the break healed and Jane tried again to walk, her left leg broke. Attending doctors termed her condition “brittle bones,” and they knew of no cure. (The term for the condition today is Osteogenesis imperfecta.) For fear that she might suffer more broken bones, Jane was confined to her bed from the age of four.

But even the safe haven of her bed couldn’t protect her fully. She later became deaf and still later began to lose her eyesight.

Whereas many people would have given up and pined away in unproductive self-pity, resigned to a short, unfulfilled life, Jane adopted a more positive attitude, determined to turn her “handicap” to good use.

Unable to attend school, she was taught at home by her mother, with occasional help from her two sisters and brother. But the bulk of her education was gained through her voracious reading habit. And she began to write.

Her first published piece, “a ‘letter’ from her dog,” appeared in The Portal, a magazine for 12-to-18 year old Methodist girls. She was only 16 when it was accepted. The same year that piece was published, she won a contest sponsored by The Progressive Farmer for her poem “No Other Acres.”

Jane found it impossible NOT to write. Ricketts wrote, “Her survival depended on it, as if, in forming words on a page, she could discover and encounter herself. . . .”

Most of Jane’s writing is religious and inspirational in nature, but some of it focuses attention on nature: birds, trees, flowers, seasons. And some of it is humorous. I found two little ones to be especially funny. “On Reasoning with an Adolescent” consisted of just two words: “Why try?” Another, “Basic Requirements for Rearing the Young,” was a bit longer: “Hope and soap.”

I won’t spoil the narrative of the book by telling more just in case some of my readers want to find and read it. (Besides, I still haven’t finished it myself!) But Merchant went on to write more than 3,000 poems; publish 10 books of poetry, devotional books, mostly for Abingdon Press, and children’s books; and thousands of letters, many of them to lifelong correspondents. Foremost among her books are Halfway Up the Sky, Petals of Light, The Greatest of These, and Think About These Things.

Carl Sandberg read and was impressed by Jane’s works. Jesse Stuart, a poet laureate of Kentucky and one of my favorite authors, wrote to Jane asking to buy an autographed copy of Think About These Things. He even wrote to Abingdon praising her work, describing her as “the writer of some of the finest religious poems that are being written in America today. Her poems remind me of the early religious poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. . . .”

Merchant died on January 3, 1972, at the age of 52.

Broken bones, bedridden, deaf, nearly blind. Yet, she continued to write. And her words continue to inspire 52 years later. I know they have inspired me, and I’m glad I finally learned about her.

With such an exemplar as Jane Merchant, what’s my excuse for not writing more? (Perhaps the interruptions of must-read books?) I’m going to jump right back onto that work in progress–just as soon as I finish the Merchant biography!

One day last week, my wife wanted to stop at our local library for some books, and I went in with her. I wasn’t planning to check out any books myself, of course. As I noted in last week’s post, I was immersed in Engineers of Victory and wanted to finish it without yet another interruption. I was just browsing the stacks, whiling away time while waiting on my wife.

Suddenly, amid the plethora of books before me, one title leapt out: Earl Hamner: From Walton’s Mountain to Tomorrow (Cumberland House, 2005).

My curiosity was piqued. My friend and fellow author Joy Neal Kidney (joynealkidney.com) had mentioned Hamner to me some time ago. I was already familiar with his voice. He was the narrator of the popular The Waltons television series. But I knew nothing about him.

Despite my best intentions not to check out any more books until I had finished Engineers, I came out of the library carrying the Hamner biography. Here was yet another serendipitous interruption of my planned reading!

I flew through the book, each chapter amazing me by its descriptions of Hamner’s versatility as a writer and yet his consistency of theme. The guy was the voice behind The Waltons, of course, but he was much more, both for that program and for many others.

The Waltons was based on a novel Hamner had written, Spencer’s Mountain, and was amazingly autobiographical. As they say, “Only the names have been changed to. . . .”

Everyone has–and needs–a story. Hamner’s writing, whether in novels or screenplays or radio scripts, tells his personal story. “At the heart of Mr. Hamner’s work is hope,” his biographer, James E. Person Jr., wrote. “At a time when modern literature began to look toward the grotesque, the violent, and the cynical side of life, Mr. Hamner’s work hung on to deceptively simple, well-told stories that actually made the reader feel good.”

Wasn’t that exactly how you felt every time after you viewed an episode of The Waltons?

But it wasn’t just in that series. It was a characteristic of nearly everything else Hamner wrote. And he wrote a lot, including many of the works you’ve no doubt read or watched and enjoyed without knowing of his involvement. (Who reads the trailing credits anyway?)

Hamner wrote the screenplay for the animated version of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, the work of which Hamner said he was most proud. He also adapted the novel Heidi for the screen. And he wrote eight episodes for The Twilight Zone.

But what impressed me most about Hamner’s biography is not so much his versatility in writing for so many different media but the fact that in everything he wrote is a subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) looking back at one’s roots, to the time-tested values of one’s ancestors.

Although he acknowledged that so many people today are rejecting and discarding the values of the past (e.g., faith and family), “if people can revisit the scenes and places where these values did exist, possibly they can come to believe in them again. . . .”

Throughout Hamner’s biography, one sees glimpses of his life in The Waltons. For example, he grew up during the Depression; The Waltons is set during that period. His father seldom attended church with his family, just as the fictional John Walton attended only “when he thought it would do him some good.”

Hamner’s father sometimes drank moonshine brewed by two neighbors, a widow and her unmarried daughter, eerily similar to the Baldwin sisters in the series. And both Hamner’s acquaintances and the fictional characters called their brews “the recipe.”

Hamner, too, came from a large family, and all the kids did homework at a long kitchen table. And they all called out “Good night” to each other. John-Boy aspired to become a writer, and so did Hamner.

In fact, Hamner eventually wrote scripts for radio programs and continuity for The Andy Williams Show, The Today Show (when Dave Garroway hosted it), and The Kate Smith Hour. Oh, he also wrote for a later TV series called Falcon Crest and, more recently, Snowy River: The McGregor Saga.

Hamner’s novels include Fifty Roads to Town, Spencer’s Mountain (adapted for Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and chosen by President Kennedy for distribution to a hundred world heads of state), You Can’t Get There from Here, and The Homecoming (adapted for TV as a Christmas special).

Hamner was an Appalachian writer through and through. He “deeply admired” Eudora Welty, another Southern writer, and, like her, he became “an inquisitive and observant student of human beings and how action springs from character.” He used simple language and a spare style.

Central to almost everything he wrote is reflection upon his ancestors and the values they lived. He believed, as Edmund Burke did, that “People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.”

Consequently, Hamner was disillusioned by the direction he saw television going. He wanted to inform and lift up his viewers, giving them hope as lived by those who have gone before us. But TV was moving in the opposite direction. To return to those qualities, however, we must go back to the past, not reject it just because it is past.

If you’re tired of how society is going today, perhaps viewing a few reruns of The Waltons will give you some hope. And you have Earl Hamner to thank for it.

Now, where did I put Engineers? I’m determined to finish that book–unless another interesting book interrupts my reading again!

Whenever I visit my grandchildren, I know I’ll be kept busy. I also know that I’ll be tired at night because I’ve been so busy during the day. So I don’t bother taking any work or reading materials with me because I know I won’t have any time–or energy–to do any!

This is in stark contrast to when I visit my 97-year-old father-in-law. I’m an early riser, getting up around 5:00 or 5:30 a.m. against his 8:00 a.m. And he turns in around 7:00 p.m. whereas I’m up until 9:00 or 9:30 p.m. So I always take work–and a book or two plus several magazines–whenever we visit him. And I usually finish them.

So when we visited one set of grandkids last week, I didn’t bother packing any reading material. But once we got there, my daughter almost immediately handed me three books. Two were for me to keep; the third was different.

“Here. I think you’ll enjoy this,” she said as she handed me the third book. “I read it, and it’s really interesting. But read it here. I want it back.”

I took the book from her, wondering silently when I would find time to read it during the next five or six days. I looked at the cover. The Great Desert Escape: How the Flight of 25 German Prisoners of War Sparked One of the Largest Manhunts in American History, its title read.

Having discovered on a 2019 trip “out West” about POW camps throughout the South and Southwest, I was immediately curious. I had learned that one of those POW camps had been in Crossville, Tennessee, not far from where I grew up in Knoxville and later worked as a senior technical editor in the nuclear facilities at Oak Ridge. I had subsequently done extensive research on the murder of one German POW by his hard-core Nazi comrades in the Afrika Korps because they thought he had “cooperated” with their American captors.

Despite being on “vacation,” I arose early each morning and read the book, never really expecting to finish it before we had to return home. But the chapters were short, and the reading went fast. The deeper I got into it, the more interesting it got and the faster I read.

I read early in the mornings. I read at least a chapter (sometimes more) before turning out the light at night. I read in the brief moments when the grandkids were swimming or doing things I couldn’t. And on the last day before we left to return home, I finished it.

I had never read anything else by the author, Keith Warren Lloyd. He is a Navy veteran, a graduate of Arizona State University, where he studied history and political science, and a retired firefighter.

Lloyd has also written several other books, including Above and Beyond: The Incredible Story of Frank Luke Jr., Arizona’s Medal of Honor Flying Ace of World War I; The Greatest POW Escape Stories Ever Told; Avenging Pearl Harbor: The Saga of America’s Battleships in the Pacific War; and Dark Nights, Deadly Waters: American PT Boats at Guadalcanal.

The Great Desert Escape reminded me in many ways of the movie The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen. But Lloyd’s book tells about the escape of German POWs who were members of the Kriegsmarine, U-boat crewmen and officers, not American POWs. It also reminded me of my earlier research into the control over the lives of other German POWs by the hard-core Nazis among them.

When the escape from Camp Papago, north of Tempe, Arizona, occurred, Army officials had to alert not only local, state, and national law enforcement agencies of the escape but also the general public. The press quickly learned how Axis POWs were being treated, and accusations soon erupted that the Army was “coddling” the very enemies who were killing Americans’ sons, fathers, brothers, and other relatives in Europe.

The book details how the German prisoners, led by Captain Jurgen Wattenberg, masterminded the escape, arranged for the precise calculation and digging of a tunnel that exited Camp Papago within mere centimeters of their calculations, and eluded capture as they dealt with the harsh desert topography and climate of southern Arizona.

Most of the escapees–tired, hungry, and unable to deal with the desert conditions–turned themselves in or were captured within a few days. But several of them blended inconspicuously for several days into the communities through which they passed. (I couldn’t help thinking of how easy it would be for the innumerable terrorists who have entered the United States illegally over the last several years similarly to blend in until they spring their diabolical plans on an oblivious and unsuspecting public.) Wattenberg was the last escapee to be captured.

History buffs and general readers alike would enjoy Lloyd’s book. I certainly did. But don’t take my word for it. Get a copy and read it for yourself. Then you’ll know.

Meanwhile, now that I’m back home, I think I’ll dive back into the book I was absorbed in before we left to visit the grandkids, Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War by Paul Kennedy. The chapters are longer than Lloyd’s, but the subject matter is no less interesting.