One Christmas, Old Folks and Brenda drove
down to the coast for a week. Owen and Jean had rented a beach house with another
couple, Balder was living with Suzette, and a friend of Suzette's let Old Folks and
Brenda stay in her house, on the beach, in Seagrove.
It was a beautiful two-story
house, on the beach. They could go out on the second-floor balcony at night and look
at the stars. The master bedroom opened onto a balcony.
They could cook breakfast
in the mornings and eat it on the deck.
* * *
Another Christmas, they stayed with Suzette and ate Christmas dinner at Pretty
Michelle's. She lived in Seagrove Beach.
Woody Long brought a pot of beet
tops, out of his garden.
Brenda had baked fruitcakes for everyone, and Woodie
brought paintings.
It seemed an unfair trade, a fruitcake for a painting,
but there was about the same amount of time, and materials, involved, if you consider
how fast Woodie works and how much shelled pecans cost.
But Old Folks and
Brenda got a Woodie of black and white cotton-pickers and angels out of it.
The beet tops got Old Folks to thinking.
What he wanted to do was live
somewhere where he could plant a garden with beets, kolhrabi, and Swiss chard in
it, eat fresh mullet, weekly, and go hear acoustic string band music once a week,
without having to drive in Atlanta traffic, work at a fiber-optic cable factory in
a job that made him tired, from talking to his co-workers, who listened to Rush Limbaugh
and were consumed with hatred.
He wasn't a beat poet, he was a beet poet.
He called his pamphlet about driving to the coast that year The Beet Poet Tour,
instead of The Beat Poet Tour.
* * *
They ate at the Seagrove Village Market, which served a fried grouper, fried
shrimp, or fried oyster platter, or a two item or three item combo.
One visit
they saw a poster advertising a play at the Seaside Repertory Theater called Picasso
at the Lapin Agile, a play by Steve Martin. They made reservations and went.
They enjoyed the play. Jennifer Steele, an actress, and co-founder of the company,
and co-artistic director, was in it. Jennifer and Balder are getting married in November,
although they were not dating, then.
* * *
Old Folks wrote a play called Working Title: Play. Old Folks wrote
as fast as Woodie Long painted.
* * *
Brenda bought an ocean alphabet for Ella Blue at the Seagrove Village Market,
and Old Folks wrote a pamphlet, Florida Cracker: A Bestiary. Then he wrote
three more pamphlets. Florida Native: A Gazetteer, Florida Writer: Kvetch, Kvetch,
Kvetch, and Pascua Florida: Feast of Flowers. Then he wrote two screenplays,
100 Views of Parker, Florida: A Screenplay and Florida's Last Frontier:
A Screenplay.
He combined these into the book FLORIDA WRITER: WHY I LIVE
WHERE I LIVE: AN UNEMPLOYED PERSON'S GUIDE TO FLORIDA'S EMERALD, AND FLORIDA'S FORGOTTEN
COASTS.
Then he wrote the play and added it.
So his manuscript was
four self-published pamphlets, two unproduced screenplays, and an unstaged play.
* * *
He thought it was a good one-volume introduction to his work.
But
he couldn't convince any publishers to read the manuscript, let alone publish it.
* * *
He just went on and wrote other books, on the same subject.
The subject,
and how he wrote about it, was the problem. That and how prolific Old Folks
was. And the fact that he was unknown, and must be damaged goods. Tainted goods.
Why wasn't he already discovered, if he was any good? He must be a crank.