"Fried Chicken and Coffee" published 'Innings'

Rusty Barnes of Emerson College – yes, that Emerson – Boston, published a story I wrote named “Innings” about a courthouse war in his blogazine, “Fried Chicken andCoffee.”(click)

It's all about being a redneck and having the gumption to own the fact, write about it – make it sing.

Yes.

He's an alternative publisher, a professor of creative writing, and a co-founder of many publications, the most famous of which is “NightTrain.”(click) If you think I'm happy, you're right

A short excerpt from the story:

The boss was a boozer from Chicago, Kansas City - points mid and west – an old time Hearst man with ties to liquor, guns, women - and cars, flashy, fast, long, low-slung cars.

All the stuff no well-rounded man of the world would think of leaving home without.

The war was carried out in the courtrooms, the council chambers, schools,hospitals and personnel offices – all the places where small town prairie dwellers meet, greet, and then haul off and kick the shins of the competition in a good-natured exercise of the American dream.(click)

Second place is first loser, and the prize for that lackluster performance is a set of steak knives.

Ouch.

But the old Yankee knew a story when he saw one, and the idea was to sell newspapers.

“Anybody accuses you of just trying to sell newspapers, you agree with them most heartily. Tell them 'Thank you, sir,' and urge them to write that down.”

A part of Mr. Barnes' biography:

The great dirty or not so-dirty secret of my past, is that I grew up in the north­ern­most por­tion of the Appalachian Regional Com­mis­sion des­ig­nated 'Appalachian' area, north-central Penn­syl­va­nia. The stereo­type, or more prop­erly, the arche­type, of the Appalachian region cen­ters around the Kentucky/West Vir­ginia por­tions of the ARC's des­ig­nated area, but the eco­nomic dif­fi­cul­ties and many of the same issues and sim­i­lar­i­ties con­tin­ued into that Bradford/Tioga county area in Penn­syl­va­nia, where I spent the first 24 years of my life. I played in cricks where all the rocks shone orange with runoff, where no fish lived, though the coal indus­try was dead by the time I was old enough to know what it had been and how it had caused the dam­age, and the lum­ber indus­try gone too, fifty or seventy-five years before. What was left to me and my friends was sim­ply grow­ing up and find­ing a way out, via the armed forces, via col­lege, via just shit­ting and get­ting, if you could, the 'brain-drain' typ­i­cal of rural Appalachia. You stay and become part of the scenery, or you never go back. Case in point, my father's fam­ily has lived, with three or four excep­tions, in the same three-county area for 230 years.