Paula Wall's Blog
March 4, 2023
A letter to M.E. on her 18th birthday.
Dear M.E.,
My second year in college, I couldn’t afford to go home for Christmas. It was bleak. Poverty is only good in retrospect. My dorm closed for winter break. I hid in my room, no lights, no music, no TV. The thermostat was just above freezing. I slept in mittens, cap and coat and could see my breath. Worse, school wasn’t going well. I’d changed majors two or three times and still didn’t have a clue. I knew I wanted to write but I also wanted to eat. College was just a meal ticket, but I still wanted a job I liked, where time spent actually made a difference.
I was in the lounge digging in the couch cushions for change on Christmas Eve when I saw a flashlight and panicked. Turns out, there was a small band of girls sneaking around just like me. We pooled our pennies, raided the vending machines and sat around the blinking Christmas tree talking about life. One of the girls gave me a battery for my flashlight as a Christmas gift. I’d never met any of these girls before but by the end of the night, I knew them, they knew me, and more importantly, I knew myself.
I felt my way back to my room, sat down in front of a candle, and wrote a road map for my life, a list of everything I wanted to do, be and have. Some things were a cliché. I wanted to jump out of plane, climb a mountain, drive from coast to coast. I wanted to own a small self-sufficient cabin by a creek on 100 acres of woods. I wanted to have enough money that I never had to think about money. Some things defined my life. I wanted to be a citizen of the world. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to make a difference. Some things were personal.
So far, of the twenty-two things on my original list, I’ve done twenty. Bill says my only mistake was that I didn’t dream big enough. I say, life isn’t over.
M.E., I have complete faith that if you want something badly enough, you’ll find a way to make it happen. However, since my assignment was to offer you wisdom, I offer this:
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re never going to get there.
Life is a canvas. Every decision leaves a mark. You can always add more paint, but you can never take it back. You can cover up the black smears, but they will always be there, bleeding through, dulling the brilliance. So, before you dip your brush onto the palette, decide the portrait you want your life to become. Decide what you want in your life and, equally important, what you don’t want.
The biggest mistake most people make is the person they choose as their mate. Before you give your love to someone, ask yourself, will this person help me get where I’m going? Make them ask the same. If you keep someone from their greatest good, it isn’t love.
Happy 18th Birthday, sweetheart! I have no doubt your life is going to be a masterpiece.
My second year in college, I couldn’t afford to go home for Christmas. It was bleak. Poverty is only good in retrospect. My dorm closed for winter break. I hid in my room, no lights, no music, no TV. The thermostat was just above freezing. I slept in mittens, cap and coat and could see my breath. Worse, school wasn’t going well. I’d changed majors two or three times and still didn’t have a clue. I knew I wanted to write but I also wanted to eat. College was just a meal ticket, but I still wanted a job I liked, where time spent actually made a difference.
I was in the lounge digging in the couch cushions for change on Christmas Eve when I saw a flashlight and panicked. Turns out, there was a small band of girls sneaking around just like me. We pooled our pennies, raided the vending machines and sat around the blinking Christmas tree talking about life. One of the girls gave me a battery for my flashlight as a Christmas gift. I’d never met any of these girls before but by the end of the night, I knew them, they knew me, and more importantly, I knew myself.
I felt my way back to my room, sat down in front of a candle, and wrote a road map for my life, a list of everything I wanted to do, be and have. Some things were a cliché. I wanted to jump out of plane, climb a mountain, drive from coast to coast. I wanted to own a small self-sufficient cabin by a creek on 100 acres of woods. I wanted to have enough money that I never had to think about money. Some things defined my life. I wanted to be a citizen of the world. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to make a difference. Some things were personal.
So far, of the twenty-two things on my original list, I’ve done twenty. Bill says my only mistake was that I didn’t dream big enough. I say, life isn’t over.
M.E., I have complete faith that if you want something badly enough, you’ll find a way to make it happen. However, since my assignment was to offer you wisdom, I offer this:
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re never going to get there.
Life is a canvas. Every decision leaves a mark. You can always add more paint, but you can never take it back. You can cover up the black smears, but they will always be there, bleeding through, dulling the brilliance. So, before you dip your brush onto the palette, decide the portrait you want your life to become. Decide what you want in your life and, equally important, what you don’t want.
The biggest mistake most people make is the person they choose as their mate. Before you give your love to someone, ask yourself, will this person help me get where I’m going? Make them ask the same. If you keep someone from their greatest good, it isn’t love.
Happy 18th Birthday, sweetheart! I have no doubt your life is going to be a masterpiece.
November 12, 2022
Postcard from the road: Weiner Girls
“You hungry,” Sweetie asks.
I follow Sweetie’s gaze to a hot-dog truck where a bronzed girl wearing a thong bikini and a smile is beckoning. Let’s just say hot dogs are not the only thing she’s steaming up. They call them “Weiner Girls” down here in Florida and they’re the cause of at least ninety percent of the rear-end collisions in the Sunshine State.
Now, a lot of women wouldn’t like their men buying footlongs from a girl equipped with toasted buns but it's my philosophy that a guy will never fly coach as long as he has a first-class ticket.
Unfortunately, every so often, I have to take my philosophy out of my mouth and put it where I live.
“Look, don’t touch,” I say, pushing him off the hood of the car.
Sweetie and I are propped on top of a rental car, backs against the windshield, waiting for a jet to take off in the dark. When I told Sweetie I wanted this to be a night I’d never forget, this wasn’t exactly the lift off I had in mind.
In Orlando, according to Sweetie, only the bourgeois watch the million-dollar fireworks at Disney. The traveler-in-the-know is mingling with the locals at the end of the airport runway waiting for a plane to start its descent a little too early and grind them all into pâté.
I’m sure the fact that it costs a pot full of gold to get into the Magic Kingdom, while plane watching is a dollar’s worth of gas and two Puffs tissues to wipe the dust off the hood, has nothing to do with it.
Plane watching is the extreme sport for the danger-seeking lawn chair crowd. As far as the eye can see, loners straddling motorcycles and sucking on cigarettes, moms and dads feeding sandwiches to their brood out of coolers and stoners with Jimi Hindrix kissing the sky on the stereo are lined up on either side of us. Kind of like a JetBlue tailgate party.
“The key to successful plane watching is alignment,” Sweetie informs me, as he slides us into position.
“O.K. Here she comes.”
In an otherwise pitch-black sky, three lights, which might be stars if they weren’t moving, slowly come into focus. As the lights get brighter, someone turns Jimi up and the heart beats faster. Finally, this huge metal bird the size of a small town in Alabama with a little less red around the rim, is all you can see. As it thunders down the part in your hair, it sucks the breath right out of you.
While the rest of my girlfriends are being wooed with boxes of Godiva and flashing rings that come with Ray-Bans to keep from blinding you, I’m a hood ornament on a Toyota.
“Well,” Sweetie says, “what do you think?”
I think it’s a night I will never forget. When I am old, I will remember this moment and smile. Assuming the Wiener Girl hasn’t cut me down in the prime of my life with food poisoning.
Of course, I’m not about to let Sweetie know this. Without a little mystery, a girl’s just another pair of legs in control-top Spanx.
“That's it?” I say. “A hotdog and planes landing in the dark?”
Sweetie tosses me a box of Raisinettes.
“Well, that’s more like it,” I say, ripping into the cellophane with my teeth.
It seems to me a good relationship is a lot like watching planes land in the dark. You need proper alignment, a modicum of comfort, and if doesn’t suck the breath right out of you, what’s the point?
I follow Sweetie’s gaze to a hot-dog truck where a bronzed girl wearing a thong bikini and a smile is beckoning. Let’s just say hot dogs are not the only thing she’s steaming up. They call them “Weiner Girls” down here in Florida and they’re the cause of at least ninety percent of the rear-end collisions in the Sunshine State.
Now, a lot of women wouldn’t like their men buying footlongs from a girl equipped with toasted buns but it's my philosophy that a guy will never fly coach as long as he has a first-class ticket.
Unfortunately, every so often, I have to take my philosophy out of my mouth and put it where I live.
“Look, don’t touch,” I say, pushing him off the hood of the car.
Sweetie and I are propped on top of a rental car, backs against the windshield, waiting for a jet to take off in the dark. When I told Sweetie I wanted this to be a night I’d never forget, this wasn’t exactly the lift off I had in mind.
In Orlando, according to Sweetie, only the bourgeois watch the million-dollar fireworks at Disney. The traveler-in-the-know is mingling with the locals at the end of the airport runway waiting for a plane to start its descent a little too early and grind them all into pâté.
I’m sure the fact that it costs a pot full of gold to get into the Magic Kingdom, while plane watching is a dollar’s worth of gas and two Puffs tissues to wipe the dust off the hood, has nothing to do with it.
Plane watching is the extreme sport for the danger-seeking lawn chair crowd. As far as the eye can see, loners straddling motorcycles and sucking on cigarettes, moms and dads feeding sandwiches to their brood out of coolers and stoners with Jimi Hindrix kissing the sky on the stereo are lined up on either side of us. Kind of like a JetBlue tailgate party.
“The key to successful plane watching is alignment,” Sweetie informs me, as he slides us into position.
“O.K. Here she comes.”
In an otherwise pitch-black sky, three lights, which might be stars if they weren’t moving, slowly come into focus. As the lights get brighter, someone turns Jimi up and the heart beats faster. Finally, this huge metal bird the size of a small town in Alabama with a little less red around the rim, is all you can see. As it thunders down the part in your hair, it sucks the breath right out of you.
While the rest of my girlfriends are being wooed with boxes of Godiva and flashing rings that come with Ray-Bans to keep from blinding you, I’m a hood ornament on a Toyota.
“Well,” Sweetie says, “what do you think?”
I think it’s a night I will never forget. When I am old, I will remember this moment and smile. Assuming the Wiener Girl hasn’t cut me down in the prime of my life with food poisoning.
Of course, I’m not about to let Sweetie know this. Without a little mystery, a girl’s just another pair of legs in control-top Spanx.
“That's it?” I say. “A hotdog and planes landing in the dark?”
Sweetie tosses me a box of Raisinettes.
“Well, that’s more like it,” I say, ripping into the cellophane with my teeth.
It seems to me a good relationship is a lot like watching planes land in the dark. You need proper alignment, a modicum of comfort, and if doesn’t suck the breath right out of you, what’s the point?
January 11, 2016
I love a good question.
Sometimes you get a question that lets you know the reader really "got" your book. They didn't just skim through yawning until the next steamy scene. They searched for the secrets you hid in the pages like Easter eggs. When Joyce Dixon interviewed me, I knew she'd found the golden egg. Thought her interview was worth passing along. Joyce Dixon -- thank you.
Humor both naughty and nice
An Interview with Paula Wall
by Joyce Dixon
Almost a blend of Fannie Flagg and Florence King, Paula Wall is an author worth watching. Paula Wall developed her earthy humor in a syndicated column before giving a voice to the Belle women of Leaper's Fork, Tennessee, in her debut novel The Rock Orchard.
Born in Clarksville, Tennessee, Paula Wall grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. She majored in environmental science at Austin Peay State University. She worked as an environmentalist, but eventually became a full-time humorist with a nationally syndicated column for Universal Press. She was named “Humor Columnist of the Year” in 1997 by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and was a semi-finalist for the 1999 Thurber Award.
What women in your life inspired the Belle women?
I didn’t realize it while I was writing, but Angela is very much like my mother as a young woman, a haunting beauty with the gift.
Much of the action in The Rock Orchard takes place in the cemetery: a child’s birthday party, lover’s meeting at night, and a woman dancing buck naked. Why did you choose a place of death and peace to display so much life?
The scene where Dixie runs through lightning bugs thick as spilled glitter while playing hide-n-seek in the cemetery is right out of my childhood. I have always been drawn to old graveyards. The graveyard is my secret garden.
The descriptions of The War Between the States and Bellereve, the Belle home, are vivid. Being born in Clarksville, Tennessee, not far from the Battle of the Clouds in Chattanooga, did you have a strong personal connection to the War?
When I was a kid, my grandmother told me stories that her grandmother told her of how the Yankees burned the old home place. They locked the horses in the barns and set fire to the hay. I had nightmares of the horses screaming and trying to break down the barn doors. My grandmother is 95 and talks about the war as if it is still going on. Family legends are passed on in the blood.
Nashville was known for its hospitals and soiled doves during the War. Did that influence the Belle history?
Bellereve was based on my great-aunt’s house, which was used as a hospital during the Civil War. There are rusty stains on the ceiling that my cousin Earl, who was mean as a snake, told me was the blood of Yankee soldiers. Earl inherited the house. We hope those Yankee ghosts are giving him hell.
Was Leaper’s Fork based on a real town?
It’s loosely based on my hometown, Clarksville, Tennessee.
What is the significance of the name? Could it be lovers having to choose a path?
You’re one of the few people who caught this. Yes, I called the town Leaper’s Fork because all the characters stand at a fork in life and must make the decision whether or not to leap. One of the characters must make the leap of faith.
The Rock Orchard has already received accolades. Barnes & Noble has named the book a "Discover a Great New Writer" title, the American Book Association has named it a Book Sense Pick, and Ingram made the novel one of its Premiere Picks. Also, foreign sales are moving at a clip. Are you overwhelmed by the book auction and early success of a debut novel?
I’m overwhelmed by the encouragement and good word of mouth people are giving the book. Kindness always takes my breath away.
I’m sure there was an uproar when you retired your humor column “Off the Wall.” Did you have second thoughts? Will you do another book of essays?
I always knew I was just passing through. Writing a weekly newspaper column was good for me as a writer, but I felt like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill.
Monday you’re thinking Pulitzer. Tuesday you’re lining the birdcage.
You have been part of the Erma Bombeck Workshop and spoke at a tribute for her. How has Bombeck influenced you?
Mom was a disciple of Erma and taped her columns on the fridge. She says making me read Bombeck was like Mozart’s mom making him play Bach.
Describe your writing day.
I’m part owner in a couple of businesses. Usually, I write between phone calls.
Though you were born in Tennessee, you grew up in Alaska. Do the states have anything in common?
They both have air, but that’s about it.
Will your writing stay in Southern settings, or do you plan to take your pen to the Great Northwest?
I love Alaska, but that muse isn't singing yet. You have to wear a lot of clothes up there. I like my characters sweaty.
"What a brave girl you are. What a strong fine woman you are going to be." Whether being said to a boy or girl, that Belle spell inspires one to greatness. Did someone say those words to you?
Mom always told me I would “do great things.” She’s still waiting.
The Rock Orchard: A Novel
by Paula Wall
Atria Books, 2005
Hardcover, $24.00 (244 pages)
ISBN: 0-7434-9620-5
Southern Scribe Review
© 2015, Joyce Dixon, All Rights Reserved
Humor both naughty and nice
An Interview with Paula Wall
by Joyce Dixon
Almost a blend of Fannie Flagg and Florence King, Paula Wall is an author worth watching. Paula Wall developed her earthy humor in a syndicated column before giving a voice to the Belle women of Leaper's Fork, Tennessee, in her debut novel The Rock Orchard.
Born in Clarksville, Tennessee, Paula Wall grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. She majored in environmental science at Austin Peay State University. She worked as an environmentalist, but eventually became a full-time humorist with a nationally syndicated column for Universal Press. She was named “Humor Columnist of the Year” in 1997 by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and was a semi-finalist for the 1999 Thurber Award.
What women in your life inspired the Belle women?
I didn’t realize it while I was writing, but Angela is very much like my mother as a young woman, a haunting beauty with the gift.
Much of the action in The Rock Orchard takes place in the cemetery: a child’s birthday party, lover’s meeting at night, and a woman dancing buck naked. Why did you choose a place of death and peace to display so much life?
The scene where Dixie runs through lightning bugs thick as spilled glitter while playing hide-n-seek in the cemetery is right out of my childhood. I have always been drawn to old graveyards. The graveyard is my secret garden.
The descriptions of The War Between the States and Bellereve, the Belle home, are vivid. Being born in Clarksville, Tennessee, not far from the Battle of the Clouds in Chattanooga, did you have a strong personal connection to the War?
When I was a kid, my grandmother told me stories that her grandmother told her of how the Yankees burned the old home place. They locked the horses in the barns and set fire to the hay. I had nightmares of the horses screaming and trying to break down the barn doors. My grandmother is 95 and talks about the war as if it is still going on. Family legends are passed on in the blood.
Nashville was known for its hospitals and soiled doves during the War. Did that influence the Belle history?
Bellereve was based on my great-aunt’s house, which was used as a hospital during the Civil War. There are rusty stains on the ceiling that my cousin Earl, who was mean as a snake, told me was the blood of Yankee soldiers. Earl inherited the house. We hope those Yankee ghosts are giving him hell.
Was Leaper’s Fork based on a real town?
It’s loosely based on my hometown, Clarksville, Tennessee.
What is the significance of the name? Could it be lovers having to choose a path?
You’re one of the few people who caught this. Yes, I called the town Leaper’s Fork because all the characters stand at a fork in life and must make the decision whether or not to leap. One of the characters must make the leap of faith.
The Rock Orchard has already received accolades. Barnes & Noble has named the book a "Discover a Great New Writer" title, the American Book Association has named it a Book Sense Pick, and Ingram made the novel one of its Premiere Picks. Also, foreign sales are moving at a clip. Are you overwhelmed by the book auction and early success of a debut novel?
I’m overwhelmed by the encouragement and good word of mouth people are giving the book. Kindness always takes my breath away.
I’m sure there was an uproar when you retired your humor column “Off the Wall.” Did you have second thoughts? Will you do another book of essays?
I always knew I was just passing through. Writing a weekly newspaper column was good for me as a writer, but I felt like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill.
Monday you’re thinking Pulitzer. Tuesday you’re lining the birdcage.
You have been part of the Erma Bombeck Workshop and spoke at a tribute for her. How has Bombeck influenced you?
Mom was a disciple of Erma and taped her columns on the fridge. She says making me read Bombeck was like Mozart’s mom making him play Bach.
Describe your writing day.
I’m part owner in a couple of businesses. Usually, I write between phone calls.
Though you were born in Tennessee, you grew up in Alaska. Do the states have anything in common?
They both have air, but that’s about it.
Will your writing stay in Southern settings, or do you plan to take your pen to the Great Northwest?
I love Alaska, but that muse isn't singing yet. You have to wear a lot of clothes up there. I like my characters sweaty.
"What a brave girl you are. What a strong fine woman you are going to be." Whether being said to a boy or girl, that Belle spell inspires one to greatness. Did someone say those words to you?
Mom always told me I would “do great things.” She’s still waiting.
The Rock Orchard: A Novel
by Paula Wall
Atria Books, 2005
Hardcover, $24.00 (244 pages)
ISBN: 0-7434-9620-5
Southern Scribe Review
© 2015, Joyce Dixon, All Rights Reserved
