Homecoming Day

Tomorrow Goshen, my little country church, will celebrate 196 years of keeping the doors open at our annual Homecoming Day. Visitors and former members will come "home" and remember growing up in the church. They'll talk about going to Bible School and Sunday School there A few of them will even remember when the church was heated by a stove on each side of the sanctuary and when the men sat on one side of the church and the women and children on the other side. Nearly all of us will remember the great "eating" to be found at a Homecoming dinner on the grounds. While now a lot of us busy members let Kroger do the cooking, back then the ladies had country cooking down to an art. On Homecoming Day, they cooked everything they could find and a lot of it was straight out of their gardens or off their pantry shelves. I don't know that it's ever been a competition, but I've known preachers who had to load down their plates to keep from favoring one lady's food over another's.

Banana croquettes are my favorite church dinner food. Don't know what that is? Then you must not be southern although I met a preacher's wife from Alabama once who had never seen bananas coated with salad dressing and then rolled in crushed peanuts. Yum! Yum! As Granpa used to say on Hee-Haw. So I'm hoping somebody will make them for tomorrow. It's never me. It's just too messy and I can dump a jar or two of my homegrown greenbeans in a pan a lot easier. But I'll be sure to brag on anybody who does put in the work to make the banana croquettes. And don't ask me where the name comes from. I might not even have the name right, but that's what I heard when I was a kid growing up. Nobody, but nobody had a holiday dinner without banana croquettes, mashed potatoes, and some kind of gelatin salad. Pink cloud salad was popular for a while, and do you remember watergate salad? Was that after the Watergate mess? And did it have any connection? I just remember it was green jello and whipped topping and marshmallows. I don't know how it was made. I never fixed it and at the dinners I just headed straight for the bananas and peanuts.

Enough about food. I might get us all hungry. And probably half of you are trying to diet. That seems to be the American past time. Putting on the weight and then trying to take it off.

I finally got pictures of my new twin babies up on my website along with plenty of other photos. Even some of me when I was a little girl. So go check it out if you get a chance. The babies are so cute as well as the rest of my grandbabies.

Entries are still coming in for my new book give-away. I'll be drawing the winner the end of October, so if you haven't entered the contest yet, you still have time. Just send me a message saying you'd like to be entered into the drawing.

The Patriots were at Renfro Valley today. It was a beautiful day weatherwise and the guys did a great job singing, too. I enjoyed meeting Bev from New York and Sharon from Chicago and their husbands. They were both sweet enough to say they enjoyed reading my books and even brought their books along with them for me to sign. It's always fun for an author to meet a reader. Thanks for checking my website schedule and coming by to talk to me, Bev. I've got some other signings and such coming up. Hope if you are in the area wherever I am, you'll come out and say hi.

I'm sort of in the doldrums writing. I sent off my book, The Believer, for the editor to look over, and it's time to think about the next book. But I need a little time to let the characters of the last book fade out a little. Plus I'm supposed to be doing some other kinds of writing work. I'm scheduled to speak in WV next Saturday. It's good to have something in mind when you step to the podium. Rambling is okay for a blog, but not so okay for a presentation. I'm going to be talking about "Writing about Shakers... and Other Odd Characters." I'm excited about meeting new reading friends in West Virginia. And then Virginia Smith and I are having the signing at Joseph-Beth's bookstore the week after that and I need to get some postcards sent. Maybe if you're in the central Kentucky area you'll get a card. Or just come on down to hear us talking and reading. It's going to be fun sharing the floor with Ginny.

Still, even though I'm busy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, I miss writing a story. Address labels and speeches aren't the same. So it won't be long until I lift my sails so I can try to catch a little breeze of creativity and get back into a new story.

Maybe I'll talk more about the doldrums of writing next time. Hope you all have a wonderful week and that you stay out of the doldrums.