THE USUAL NOTE FROM LB: From the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2010, Gwen the Beautiful and I were the proud and often exhausted owners of a beautiful Ozarks property we called Cloud Creek Ranch.
In many ways, the ranch was paradise. But it was a paradise with a price that started going up before we even knew it existed. Here’s another Monday musing about our adventure and the lessons we learned.
Oh, and if y’all detect any irony, please believe me when I say it comes straight from the universe and not your kindly Uncle Larry B.
by Larry Brody
Four weeks ago a remarkable event occurred in my life and, guess what?
I didn’t even know.
How human is that?
I’d be ignorant still if I hadn’t run into one of the best of the Paradise Good Ole Boys, Jimmy Blue in the Paradise Town Square:
“Hey, Larry B, congratulations! Bet you never thought you’d make it this far.”
“Oh, hey to you, Jimmy Blue. Um…thanks. I think.”
Jimmy Blue motioned for me to take my place on the bench beside the one where he sat working on a chaw of Skoal. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? I’m talking about Live! From Paradise!, Larry B, that’s what. This newspaper in my hand today is the home of your 200th column, boy. Who’d a thought you’d ever be able to throw out that much B.S.?”
“200th column? You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. Been counting on my fingers, toes, and age spots for almost four years now.”
Two hundred columns.
About Paradise and what it’s like for a smart, sophisticated city boy to come out to the Middle of Nowhere and discover—lo and behold!—that I wasn’t anywhere near as smart and sophisticated as I’d thought back in L.A.
That I was, in fact, just another doofus who didn’t get it.
Who didn’t know that when you drove past a car on a little country road and the driver waved it wasn’t to say, “Hiya!” but, “I see you, so everything better be where I left it when I get back home.”
Who didn’t understand that when your closest neighbor said, “You need anything—anything at all—you call me, hear?” what he really meant was, “I’m really here for you, so if you don’t call I’m gonna be madder than your mama when you tracked all that mud into her front room during that big summer storm.”
Who was completely unprepared for the fact that everything that happened in my life or that of any member of my family would instantly be known by all of Paradise County. And scrutinized. Discussed. Dissected. Not out of idle boredom or mere curiosity but from the genuine need to pull together all the lost, separated parts of what otherwise really would be Nowhere into one great Paradise Whole.
600 pages.
About my loved ones and my friends and my not-such-friends and my neighbors, and their hopes and dreams and joys and sorrows and celebrations and brawls.
About Gwen the Beautiful. Brannigan the Contractor. Sweet Jane. Dwayne the Earthmover. Chet the Unhandyman. Brenda the Blond. Burl Jr. Buck the Ex-Navy Seal. Dellie the Interstate Trucker. Uncle Ernie. Donny Zee. The Horse Lady. The Old Billionaire. And, of course, Jimmy Blue.
About Emmy the Bold. Decker the Giant Hearted. Belle the Wary. Baggy the Zillion Pound Cat. Bob the Careful. Huck the Spotless Appaloosa. Elaine the Not So Wild Mustang. Huck’s Gal Rosie. McNugget the Banty Rooster.
The Ghost Dog. The Spirit Voices. The Demon in the Cave.
About the time my garbage can talked to me.
And the time I crawled under my truck and so crazily and joyfully ate snow.
Gwen the Beautiful’s hugs.
And her blindness.
The Old Billionaire’s sage advice.
And his dementia.
The birth of Burl Jr.’s son.
The death of Gwen the Beautiful’s mother.
Lawn tractors.
Weed whackers.
Ladybugs.
Chiggers.
Ticks.
150,000 words.
About the “illuminated ordinary” (as my friend the Beautiful Philanthropist puts it) of real life, lived by real people struggling to survive not in the trendiness that is L.A., nor the exotica of Beijing, nor the desperation I feel whenever I’m in Branson (although I’ve written about trips Gwen and I have taken to all those places), but here in Rural America, where Lindsay Lohan’s latest fight with her girlfriend means nothing but today’s weather Matters Indeed.
I love writing what I write here. I love the act of filling this space far more than I ever loved writing anything else..and I’ve written a great deal else (books, short stories, articles, TV shows, films) and loved it—I thought—oh-so-very-much.
It’s a privilege to be able to do all I can to help “illuminate” the “ordinary” and show how extraordinary this world is. To have the time and space to put the authentically meaningful into words that will communicate it to others.
Well, to try like hell to communicate it, anyway.
Thanks, Jimmy Blue. And everyone who reads this.
Time to throw out more B.S.
