THELMA’S LUNCH BOX

River Grove. Where the hills kiss the sky. Where every star reflects off the river. Where no one is a stranger. Welcome Home! The sign read, as Lonnie got off the highway and pulled into the little town.

I suppose this place is as good as any, he thought. Kind of looks like Mayberry. If only I were color blind so I could see this place in old black and white.

Not paying much attention to anything in particular as he took the little place in — (the old pre-war buildings, the Georgian architecture, the old-gentlemen-filled benches on every corner, the courthouse from the late 1800s in the center of the bustling town square, the antique malls, the little cafes, the full service gas stations, the local grocery store, the hometown video rental outlet, everything seemingly locally-owned (no big-box influence in sight)) — he didn’t realize the flashing blue and red in his rearview.

Great, he thought, here comes Sheriff Taylor now.

He adjusted his mirror to get a better look at the officer. No, I’m sorry, it’s Fife. Andy must be over at Aunt Bee’s for lunch.

“Sir, you ain’t from ‘round heren ‘re ya?” “How could you tell?” A hint of sarcasm that went overlooked by the officer slipped out of Lonnie’s mouth.

“Well, your plate says California. You got a Hollywood sticker in your back winder there. It didn’t take me long to put two and two together… you know, to make four. Besides, folks from River Grove usually drive under the speed limit around the square ever since Old Man Jenkins got clipped by Parker Holt there in front of Selva’s Antique Emporium. That and what happened this year to Merel Gene of course. Everybody’s been real cautious ever since. Truthfully town’s still in shock. We can’t believe he’s actually gone. It ain’t been but about a month now I don’t guess. Happened during the parade. Mort’s still…,” he trailed off, realizing he was talking to Lonnie like he was a local and knew the whole story about what had happened just a month before… “But I can’t expect that from you, being from out of town and all. You couldn’t know how we do things ‘round here.”

“Yes sir. I’m just here on business. Doing a story about the allure of small towns in the American South. Just doing some scouting you might say.”

“Like location scouting? And you picked River Grove? Well I’ll be. It’s about time Hollywood folks caught on to what we got here.” “Yes sir. Kinda,” Lonnie said, not sure what else to say, since he wasn’t really from Hollywood, and certainly wasn’t doing any kind of Hollywood scouting like the officer seemed to think he was.

“Oh yeah — ever since reality TV started getting real popular we been a-saying it was just a matter of time before some big TV exec landed in The Grove. Then Boom! They’d want to turn this place into a big hit. See, I figure what people like to see on TV nowadays is something new and authentic, something they ain’t seen before. It ain’t got to be glamorous or anything as long as it’s interesting. That’s why reality TV is so big these days. It’s real life, know what I mean. I knew once them gator boys down in the bayou got their own show it wouldn’t be long ‘fore we got ours’. You gonna do the whole town or you just gonna focus on a few local families? ”

“Oh no sir. I ain’t from TV. I just write…”

“Say no more. Say no more,” he interrupted. “Your secret’s safe with me. My lips are sealed. I know how you TV folks got to keep the lid tight on new projects so the competition don’t catch on and beat you to your own idea. Let’s just pretend this never happened. Listen I ain’t gonna ticket you because, well, just be careful when you’re tooling around town okay. This way it looks like I don’t know a-thing about what you’re doing here, and I’m just doing my job keeping the town safe and all, informing the out-of-towners how we do things ’round here. But you know I know that I ain’t suppose to know anything about what’s up, so let’s just pretend I don’t know anything more about you other than you’re here to finish up a story about small towns in the South. And if you need help on your story, wink wink, you just come on down to the station and ask for Jones. That’s me. Or Jonsie, some call me that. I’ll help you scout out places for your show… I mean story, your story. If you need help scouting or anything like that.”

“Thank you Jones. I’ll keep that in mind. But I really am just working on a story. No show.”

“Oh sure, sure. All the way from Hollywood just for a story. Could’ve just used that world network to work on your story, wink wink. But I got ya. Lips sealed.” Jones made a locking motion in front of his mouth, then threw away the invisible key.

“Say, Jones. Where’s a good place to stay in this town?”

“Well, we only got two places really. I’d stay at the Lauraline Motor Inn if I was you. The other place has a rough barroom attached to it, The Maude Fireside Lounge. It ain’t that bad but… well let’s just say they rent rooms there by the hour over at The Maude.”

“Where can I find the… that first place you said?”

“Just go on around the square here and head back toward the highway. Make a left on Short Mountain Road… No, no, I’m sorry. Make a right on Short Mountain, then a left on Cardinal Street. Go straight until you pass the farmer’s co-op, then Thelma’s, then the old Haddox Hatchery and Feed building (the one with the old mini silo), then on up a piece from there there’ll be a pink elephant in front of a car lot. On past that a piece you’ll see signs that’ll take you right to it, the Lauraline. Ah… the Lauraline; brings back old memories just thinking about it. You tell Elsie, the pretty lady at the front counter, that Ol Jonsie sent ya. She’ll take good care of you. Ah… ol Elsie…” “Jones. Officer Jones…,” Lonnie said. “Yes’sir, sorry ’bout that. Old memories, you know…”

“Officer Jones I just wanted to thank you for all your help, especially for not ticketing me. My company per diem doesn’t cover legal expenses. That would have come out of my pocket. And I just don’t have that kind of cash to spend on speeding tickets.”

“Oh don’t thank me. We ought to thank you. No telling what your story may do for River Grove. Tourism liable to boom. Jobs may move in. Never can tell. But like I said if you need anything at all you just come on down to the station.” Jones said again.

“Will do. Will do. So just around the square here and back down that way?” Lonnie asked again.

“Yes sir. You can’t miss it. Our town ain’t very big but it’s home. I know darn near everyone in town. Darn near the whole county. Just come on down to the station any time,” Jones said yet again.

I’ll be damned if I’m willingly going into any police station, friendly or not, invited or not. I’ve had enough of those places for the rest of my life, help or no help. I’d soon get fired as to go into any police station looking for a story.

The Lauraline Motor Inn was modeled after a tropical estate manor from the early 315 twentieth century Caribbean. One you might find dilapidating in a non-tourist district of Key West, overlooking a sad beach cove covered in rotting seaweed and jellyfish. The roof is a fading sea foam green made of cracking clay shingles not meant to persist in the Deep South humidity and the long cold winters. One or the other, but not both. Its lobby doors resemble those found in the front foyer of an old Spanish villa. Cortez would have been proud, under certain absurd pseudo historical circumstances. A tropical mosaic adorns the floor: a burnt sepia sun that looks more like a wilted, crispy dandelion dying in the desert is surrounding a three-tiered roman fountain filled with old pennies stained with hard water and algae. The place is an architectural hodgepodge of poor aesthetic decisions. It was obviously built years before Lonnie was born. Lonnie was, needless to say, taken back as he passed through the lobby. The name hadn’t prepared him for what he was witnessing. Why not name the place The Villa Suites of The Grove, or something that suits the design? Why not match form with content and purpose — though at the time its exact, original purpose in River Grove perhaps could’ve eluded even the most savvy historian, sociologist, or anthropologist. What were they thinking? Of course it was meant to provide lodging to travelers. But the original builders/designers obviously had something else in mind when they constructed a two-star (at best) Greco Roman-Spanish-Caribbean inspired pseudo resort in the middle of nowhere in the America South. Have the citizens of River Grove been for years secretly hoping to attract the attention of the rest of the continent? Did this sleepy little town always have bigger dreams of becoming a tourist trap? So many places like this look to preserve their local heritages and keep outsiders away. Did River Grove want the exact opposite? Lonnie couldn’t answer those questions right then. All he knew as he 316 walked through the lobby that first time past the dandelion fountain was that for whatever the Lauraline was — architecturally speaking (an old ill-informed resort or a designer’s worst nightmare) — the name certainly hadn’t prepared him for what he was seeing. Lauraline Motor Inn suggests a place more akin to a small town truck stop, something with a bit more prideful local sleaze. Or maybe not even that. No, not that at all. As Lonnie made his way around the square with the name of the place in mind he thought of something far more sinister than an old truck stop. He was reminded of a place in Memphis, Tennessee (a place not too far away): a place in his father’s home state: a place that still wears the wide stain of shame where a wreath hangs from the railing on the second-story balcony: a place that ceased renting rooms on a brisk windy day in 1968. But this wasn’t his father’s South. This wasn’t even his father’s country. The name Lauraline Motor Inn conjured no such images in anyone except the most ardent student of history and language. That place in Memphis wasn’t called the Lauraline Motor Inn, but it was close. And when history and language mingle in a person’s mind like Lonnie, the connections can’t help but be made when one finds themselves looking for lodging in the Deep South. Still a sense of responsibility and shame came over him. His father was from the South, not two hundred miles from that wreathed balcony. So in his own convoluted way, Lonnie felt that it may have been him that pulled the trigger. Both triggers. The one that killed Dale Edwards, and the one that killed that peaceful reverend in 1968, decades before he (Lonnie) was even born. But that’s nonsense, he thought. Lauraline is just Lauraline, Lonnie told himself as he sought out the place he’d make his headquarters for the next several days and nights in River Grove. It isn’t that other place. This isn’t Memphis; not even the same state he didn’t think. (River Grove straddles the line; it’s in two places at once). And Dale did what he thought he had to do. What he needed to do. By the time Lonnie found the Lauraline his mind was racing over a hundred miles per hour. He’d thought nothing but nonsense, guilt and shame nonsense. So he told himself to breathe. And he did. Then he took one look at the place and began to laugh. It wasn’t the Ritz-Carlton but at least they didn’t rent rooms by the hour, and continental breakfast and wi-fi access are included. So he couldn’t expect much more in a little place like River Grove. As long as he reminded himself that this wasn’t his father’s South he’d be fine. No guilt. No shame. What’s done is done, and he hadn’t done a thing. Not yet.

“One please. California King if available.” “Smoking?”

“No ma’am. Elsie? Are you Elsie?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Oh, I just met Deputy Jones and he told me to ask for Elsie and tell her that he sent me here.”

“Billy said that did he? Well,” she half smiled, “that’s me. Elsie Anne Meyers in the flesh. What brings you to River Grove? And what else did Billy say about me?”

“Work. I came for work. And he didn’t say much else. He did call you pretty though.”

“Oh that William. Well, since William sent you and you’re here for work, I’ll give you the best rate I can.”

“I appreciate it ma’am.”

“Room 117 has a Cali King and a mini fridge. It’s got a Jacuzzi too. It’s a non- 318 smoking room, but since you know my William I’ll overlook it if you happen to slip up and forget.”

“Oh, no worries. I don’t smoke cigarettes.” “Well, if you do… Anyway, how long will you be with us?”

“Not sure yet. Just keep me listed as a guest until I let you know otherwise. I’ll give you at least fourteen hours’ notice before I check out.”

“That’ll be fine honey. Anything for a friend of my William. I swear that boy’ll be the death of me if I let him. And I just might too, if you know what I mean. See me and Billy used to stay in 207, the honeymoon suite. But that’s neither here nor there…”

Lonnie didn’t care to know all this small-town gossip. But he didn’t have much choice. Elsie hadn’t given him his key cards yet, so he was at her mercy. It wouldn’t take him long to learn that just about everyone in River Grove has a story to tell if you let them. And since everyone knows everyone just about, everybody knows everybody’s stories too. Essentially, if one had enough time, the whole history of River Grove could be learned just by listening. Of course, everyone would have a different version to tell each time they told it, depending upon mood and time of day, among other things. Around the courthouse like dark pink blazes lit against a navy blue curtain-draped sky, the redbuds had just reached full bloom. Scattered here and there around the square were the wind-swept collections of white petals off the Bradford Pears. The air was heavy with human voices, giving Lonnie the impression that River Grove was much more populated than it truly was. What a marked difference. Millions of people pass daily through the streets of L.A. silent of actual communication, oblivious to the fact that others are within arm’s distance of them: in lines for espresso, traversing the sidewalks, jogging in place at the health clubs, waiting for the bus to take them away. So many people to talk to and yet the smoggy air in the city of angels is absent of meaningful conversation. So many people that people cease to be people. They become racks on which to hang one fleeting trend or another. It’s all city noise and chatter. When people talk, and they do, they talk to themselves. They talk at others as a means of talking to themselves, because no one is more interesting to talk to than themselves. Here in The Grove people actually have conversations with one another. Lonnie was taken back at first. But in time he settled in, took out his pen and legal pad and began to record everything he heard and saw. His first afternoon in River Grove gave him an intimate look at the town it really was, the town it was when no one was looking: like when people are alone they act one way, and when they know someone is looking they act another. That first afternoon, River Grove acted like no one was looking. But overnight everything and everyone changed. The town looked like a movie set the next morning. The people all looked like extras in a big budget movie. While life carried on as it would on any given day, just below the surface of life was the unnatural buzz of voyeurism. Everyone seem to act as if they were being watched but pretended not to notice. They seemed to like the idea of being watched and pretending not to notice, as if they were acting naturally like they would naturally act. Life carried on as usual, but anyone with half a brain could sense that something was there, some presence, some omnipotent force guiding every detail of the life of the town and its people, like at any moment everyone was going to break out in a song and dance they all already knew by heart. This isn’t the town I arrived in the day before, Lonnie thought the morning after the day he arrived. Somehow it changed. Changed how? It would take a group of renown sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, and lord knows who else to answer that question any further than what’s already been mentioned. He couldn’t say for sure, Lonnie couldn’t, but something was different. Lots of things really, grouped under the umbrella term: life. Suffice it to say that word must have gotten around that Lonnie was in town. Jones must have told someone that told someone that told someone that told someone else that there was going to be a TV show made about River Grove, that someone famous was in town to do the preliminary scouting. Jones must’ve thought Lonnie was famous, and he was River Grove’s direct link to fame for itself. Damn it, Lonnie thought, if only I hadn’t been speeding yesterday. Fame, even the faintest potential of fame, changes everything the moment it seems within reach. Lonnie no longer had access to the real River Grove, the one that had no pretensions of fame. The one he saw that first afternoon when he was caught speeding around Haddox Square.

So, he did his best to write it (his report) from memory: how he saw it that first day: even though the River Grove he was writing in wasn’t the River Grove it had been the day before, the River Grove he was writing about. He started to wish he’d never stopped there. He wished there was some way he could recover the old River Grove from the grips of the rumor of potential fame, restore it to the way it was before he got there, before anyone from AMTROPETA had ever heard the name River Grove. He felt responsible for forever altering the personality of River Grove just by showing up there. He’d brought with him like a disease the pretensions of fame, even though it was all just a big misunderstanding from the get-go. Lonnie wasn’t famous then. Lonnie had no ties to the Hollywood community yet, even though he lived and worked in a Los Angeles district not four miles from Culver City. He was just a copywriter sent into the field to do his job. And he’d made it all very clear to that Jones that he had no intentions (or means for that matter) of doing anything more than writing a short piece of copy for the web about the local attractions. This was just a huge misunderstanding he’d have to clear up after he was finished with his assignment. But what was done was done, history is history, and history is dead as a doornail: no matter how much you try to bring it back to life, history is always the stiff corpse of a life on the move. In just under thirty-six hours the first draft was done and he was back in his room at the Lauraline typing it up, getting it ready to send to Reed. He decided against writing about the old River Grove, which by the way isn’t the real name of the town where Lonnie first arrived. He vowed to never write or mention the name of the town for the sake of its own safety and preservation. So he made the name up: River Grove. Forgot the old name, the real name. Never mentioned it again. If he had, tourists would show up in small towns like River Grove like he had; ruin them like he had. So he thought he’d sabotage the campaign, do a piece about a small town in the South that’s getting its own reality show. Fake the whole thing. Idea of the story being that people would want to come see the region and all its attractions based on the fact that if it was interesting enough to make a TV show about it was interesting enough to visit first-hand. But they’d never be able to find this town because it won’t really exist, except in his story. Potential customers will search and search the web for this so-called famous town and they’ll never be able to find it except in Lonnie’s story, and so they’ll pick some other HOTT locale to visit and leave the little small Southern towns alone. He figured by writing a good enough story he could kill two birds with one stone. First off, he could sabotage the whole campaign of trying to lure travelers to small towns by creating a place they could never find (i.e. the fake town with the TV show) and save all the small towns from becoming like River Grove. And secondly, he could get his assignment done and get back to the office. Eventually River Grove and its people would forget about him and return to the way it was before he got there. His plan was perfect he thought. Job gets done, small town America gets spared the intrusion of tourism and urban sprawl, and even more importantly: fame. In a roundabout way, by sparing the old River Grove he was sparing all small towns in the South and beyond. That means he would be sparing the land of his father from the plague of fame. In his own way, Lonnie Edwards was preserving a way of life he’d never know. He wasn’t sure why it needed to be preserved, he just knew it did. The only way to experience and preserve the truly authentic is to forget about it and let it be what it is.

“Oh my, oh my. Reed you’re gonna love this one…”

Compose

To:rcb@thebuckman.com

From: ledwards@amtropeta.com

Subject: First Draft of piece on American South

Dear Mr. Bucknerman,

I landed in a little town called River Grove Thursday afternoon. I think it serves perfectly as a universal model for small towns in the South. I am attaching my first draft as a text document. I’m sure it could use some corrections, but I’m sure you’re gonna love the content. Working in the field requires a whole different set of techniques than working in 323 the office. It’s thrilling actually. I wouldn’t mind doing more work in the field in the future. Anyway, see you in the office first thing Tuesday morning to discuss the material and potential graphics and packaging options.

Sincerely, Lon