Day 7, Kay: This year the squirrels are lazy as town dogs, and I love them for it

When my family moved to town from the farm, and our mother wanted to chide us for any less-than-industrious behavior, she’d say, “You’ve gotten lazy as town dogs.” Apparently country canines had more pressing responsibilities.

As a working writer, I find my inspiration often comes from—in addition to childhood nostalgia—looking out the window and seeing what is transpiring in my own backyard.

I have seen next to no squirrels this year. Let me be perfectly clear, this is not due to increased hunting stealth of our two felines who share a sense of simpatico with town dogs.

Legend has it that you can forecast how harsh the winter will be by the gathering habits of the squirrels.

Snowflake takes it easy

In 2010 squirrels started collecting pecans from the trees near me in April, as soon as small green fruit would appear on the tree. The winter of 2010 had its last snow May 1, 2011. That was the year that Snowflake, the all-white stray cat, swam in snow across the street to greet me, and ultimately took up residence here awhile.

This year we have plenty of pecans on the trees, and I haven’t even seen the telltale green husks and half-eaten nuts strewn on the deck.

The squirrels are slackers, and I am thrilled. I am no fan of the harsh, cold days of winters with slick and treacherous surfaces.

When it comes to battling winter, I am a town dog.

Day 6, Barbara: Me ’n’ Sookie and a toe-tappin’ time in Texas

Kay and I are just back from a stint at the State Fair of Texas, an extravaganza of fried foods, Ferris wheels, and my annual tour of duty at the Food & Fiber Pavilion on behalf of heritage tourism in the Lone Star State. (Did you know that travel & tourism is Texas’s second largest export product, after energy? But that’s another story.)

While we were in Dallas Big Tex debuted a sporty new shirt. Ebola made a nasty appearance. (Another story too.) The world’s largest commercial jetliner landed at DFW from Australia on the world’s longest commercial aviation route. (Yet another story.) And Sookie wouldn’t stop licking my feet.

Now, Sookie isn’t a vampire—she’s just named for one. You see, on the last night of our Dallas visit we accepted the gracious invitation of some of Kay’s kin to stay overnight in their home, which has plenty of extra bedrooms now that the kids are grown and gone. Things are pretty quiet at their house now, except when the granddogs visit.

Barnabas, the six-pounds-when-soaking-wet Silkie, yips and nips when semi-strangers show up. He takes after his namesake that way. I should’ve been mindful to bring closed-toe shoes. (Years ago, when I was a stage mom working with the ever-gallant Jonathan Frid on a college production, I don’t recall having to take any such precautions.)

But Sookie, the winsome Boston Terrier, loves everybody to death. Sookie wags. Sookie slurps. Sookie licks. No fangs in sight.

When I first made the acquaintance of puppy Sookie some years back I hadn’t yet cracked open a Charlaine Harris novel, much less watched an episode of True Blood. Sookie? I asked her pet human. He and his family clued me in.

So I had to know more about the telepath from Bon Temps. Since then I’ve followed the fortunes of Sookie Stackhouse’s prolific creator, and Kay and I will get to meet her at the Books in the Basin festival this weekend in Midland-Odessa's Wagner-Noel Performing Arts Center. We'll kick up our heels at the historic Yucca Theater and stick around for Literary Death Match. We’ll look forward to learning how a mystery writer from Mississippi made it big in the world of the undead.

And hey, Sookie the Terrier, watch your back. We've read there are Living Dead in Dallas. And we hear Ms. Harris’s first book, way back when, was published in the UK as, um, Dead Dog.

Sookie wants to make sure all her friends know there’s an entire museum devoted exclusively to Boston Terriers in Floydada, Texas. 

Day 5, Kay: Happy October from West Texas

Happy October, everyone, from The Working Writer and The Paragraph Ranch.

With the calendar turning toward autumn, I can’t help but remember my earliest memories of the season. Growing up on a cotton farm brings back very different recollections of fall. Autumn meant picking cotton.

The year I turned six was a triumph for me when I was big enough to join the family in pulling those fluffy white bolls from the plants. We had just moved to town from the farm but still had to go back and harvest one last crop. One October afternoon after school, we four kids changed into working clothes and rode with our parents out to the field to pick cotton.

I was too small to haul a traditional white cotton bag, but pulled a burlap tow sack instead. By sunset I had picked 58 pounds—more than my own weight—and enjoyed the kudos from all.

When we drove back into town to our new house, children were running across the streets in costumes, and I didn’t know what that meant. My parents explained that it was Halloween, and “town kids” got dressed up and went door-to-door asking for candy.

“And they get it?” I asked in wonder.

Those days were a lot more isolated on the farm. Now with media immersion, no child escapes commercial culture. But I was the poster child for rural naivete.

My dad stopped at a store on the way to our house for milk and bread and bought one of the biggest bags of candy I had ever seen. It even had wax teeth in it. “Here, this is for y’all,” Mama said, opening and offering the bag around.

“How many pieces do we get?” my brother said, as was the norm for our frugal family.

“All of it,” Mama said. “Pass it around and share.”

Fall always brings back memories of this moment, this gentle kindness and sense of largesse. It can take so little sometimes to make a person happy.