Henry Chappell

More on Leon from my buddy Randy Walker:

"I wanted a good shot of Leon showing his eyes ( bluer than Leo's ). He is Leo's nephew. Leon was a slow starter. He was two years old before he knew I was in the cattle business. He would go with me, but he was just on a lark. He was just running and being happy, while the other dogs worked. He reminded me of Marmaduke, in the cartoons. Then the last few times I took him out with the other dogs he started to work. The light switch came on."

Funny how that happens. How many potentially good dogs are wasted because of our lack of patience? Good for Randy for giving Leon time to grow up.

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I spent last Saturday at the Southern Kentucky Book Festival in Bowling Green. What a great day. I met and chatted with David Madden – one of my literary heroes – and sat next to Dana Chamblee Carpenter, whose new novel, Bohemian Gospel, is selling briskly and receiving strong reviews. Over the course of the day, Dana and I covered a lot of conversational ground, ranging from Southern literature to football (she wanted to play in high school) to the merits of introversion to the virtues of coffee.

This was one of the nicest, best organized literary events I’ve attended; big enough to draw a good crowd, but not so big as to be hectic and confusing. My thanks to event coordinator Sara Volpi and other staff members and volunteers. Of course I’m proud of the festival’s association with my beloved Western Kentucky University.

J. and I spent four of the happiest years of our lives in Bowling Green. We left, reluctantly, only because the careers we’d prepared for weren’t available there. It’s hard to convey the feeling of peace and gratitude I experience whenever I visit familiar places in my old home. Driving from Louisville, where I enjoyed a long lunch with my niece Courtney Chappell Boyer, I got off I-65 as soon as I could, and took backroads to Bowling Green. As I drove into Edmondson Country, Grayson County, and Warren County on once familiar roads I hadn’t traveled in 34 years, the dogwoods blooming in the greening woods and the familiar accent at stops for gas and coffee brought on something close to heartache.

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Some of you may remember a post a couple years back about my friend Randy Walker’s fine Catahoula Cow dog being killed by wild hog. Yes, most working dogs are necessarily exposed to danger, but no amount of philosophizing can blunt the pain from the loss of a beloved dog. Randy took it hard, but like everyone who works closely with dogs, he had no choice but to get up the next day and go to work with his surviving dogs.

So his April 25 email, accompanied by a photo of another Catahoula at work, with the question “Does this dog remind you of another dog,” made my day.

According to Randy, “He is a nephew of Leo. He is not the dog Leo was, but there is still hope. Happy!” Of course no dog is ever as good as the great one that died too young. But I know Randy, and he won’t put up with a sorry dog. I’m betting Leon will make a good one.

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All of my writer friends have seen this, but It's a classic and worth posting again. I wish I had a dollar for every time some pleasant person has told me how much free exposure I'll get if I'll allow the use of an article or essay at no charge. Or, "Yes, we'd love for you to drive 300 miles to do a 45-minute talk to the Society of Semi-Literate People who Want to Write Books About Themselves. We can't pay you or even reimburse you for gas and lodging, but you'll get a good meal out of it, and you can bring books to sell to folks who don't read, let alone buy books."

Yes, it occurs to me that Ellison probably isn't getting anything for this YouTube clip. (Yes, but just think of all the free publicity ...)

Mild profanity warning.

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Just back from the Southern Kentucky Book Festival, where I made new friends, enjoyed the company of old friends, signed plenty of books, and had an all-around fine time, I'm feeling like quoting a great writer from my beloved home state. James Still, Kentucky's first poet laureate, feels just right:

“The flat fruit of the locust fell, lying like curved blades in the grass. August ripened the sedge clumps. Father began to come home from the mines in middle afternoon, no longer trudging the creek road at the edge of dark, with the carbide lamp burning on his cap. He came now before the guineas settled to roost in the black birch. We watched the elder thicket at the hillturn and plunged down to meet him as he came in sight. The heifer ran after us. Euly was the swiftest, reaching him first and snatching the dinner bucket Father carried. She hid in the stickweeds to nibble at the crusts in the bucket, scattering crumbs for the field-larks seeding the grass stalks. Fletch waited halfway down the path and Father would swing him to his shoulder, packing him to the house like a poke of meal.“

James Still, River of Earth

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