Tuesday, November 01, 2005

NaNoWriMo Begins - Nov. 1

Here's a snippet of what she's written today. I hope you enjoy it.

Tentatively Titled: How Lydia Glunger Ruined Her Daddy’s Reputation

Lydia Glunger was the mischievous, nonconformist child of prominent dry goods and sundry businessman Carey Allen Glunger. Both were products of the South and the sixties, where everyone knew everyone else’s business. The social network was so well-organized that if she were to huddle beneath Mrs. Landry’s willow tree and sneak a puff from a Kool filtered cigarette at three o’clock, every Christian woman in a two-mile radius knew Lydia had smoked by three-oh-five. Despite a generous helping of Dentyne by the time she walked in the kitchen door at three-fifteen, Lydia’s mother already of Lydia’s indiscretion.

The way news spread so efficiently in those days was by way of the phone tree. Mrs. Jennings called up Mrs. Wallace, who then called Mrs. Rectenwald who had three ladies on her party line. Those three ladies scurried to their respective back fences and spread the news to their closest neighbors who, in turn, dashed inside and phoned their friends and spread the news. Poor Lydia didn’t stand a chance. The phone tree was faster and more powerful than Dentyne.

The worst part of the phone tree was its propensity to embellish the crime. At the drop of a lacy handkerchief, a simple cigarette snuck under the willow tree could balloon into a pot party by the time the news made its way around the community. An innocent conversation between a boy and a girl behind the gym could get blown up into a passionate tryst. The old game of Gossip came by its name honestly.

Lydia’s parents trusted her, partly because she was forthcoming about her activities and partly because her father had pretty well beaten into her the importance of maintaining the family reputation (if not her own). In short, for the most part, she was a good girl despite the occasional filtered Kool.

A generally tolerant attitude about sex, cigarettes, beer, wine, and even pot prevailed, but white girls who associated with black boys were doomed to stand at the end of the reputation line. Lydia didn’t go out with black boys – none of them ever asked her – but every Monday evening Dwayne Wiggins drove his pale yellow Nova from the “darker” side of town up tree-lined, winding Mathews Avenue in order to take her to Junior Achievement meetings.

As far as her snoopy neighbors were concerned her association with Dwayne was scandalous. In order to torture them further, each week she dashed out the front door in patched Land Lubber hip hugger blue jeans, breasts gleefully bouncing beneath her skin-tight T-shirt, and hopped into Dwayne’s car. He’d rev the engine (at her request), often spinning his tires but always making a lot of noise, and off they’d go to JA.

Mr. Glunger tolerated this unusual arrangement mostly because he didn’t want to give up the use of the family car for three hours every Monday evening -- that and he knew nothing more went on between Dwayne and Lydia than the weekly carpooling. He was a practical man. Despite Mr. Glunger’s tolerance, the neighbor ladies clucked their tongues and gossip about Lydia abounded. Carey Glunger had developed a scornful disdain for the community’s crones and their gossip as a result of dealing with them in such close contact at his dry goods store through the years. He knew that most members of the fairer sex were kind and loving, but he held no fondness for the bitter spiteful hens who spent their days whispering behind their hands, stirring up trouble. He encouraged Lydia to shock that faction of old biddies at every opportunity. Some fathers bond with their daughters through dancing. Carey Glunger bonded with Lydia as a result of their mutual disdain for mean-spirited women.

Lydia paid little mind to their whispering. When she did respond, it was only to devise ways to raise their ire.
* * *
Lydia and Dwayne Wiggins graduated in May. Dwayne went on to college, his tuition partially funded by money he saved selling Amway. Mr. Glunger convinced Lydia to stay at home and not waste his money going to college when she’d surely drop out in a year or two and get married. She moped around the house all through June as one by one her friends either married or prepared to go off to college. In July Carey presented Lydia with a peace offering -- her own car. It had belonged to Carey’s maiden aunt, Elizabeth Glunger, another in a long line of General Motors products purchased from the local George German Chevrolet dealership. Miss Elizabeth had purchased her Chevys from Mr. German for over thirty years and would continue to patronize his business as long as she lived.

Carey arranged the title transfer between Elizabeth and Lydia. Because Mr. Glunger believed entitlement or outright gifts weakened the character, Lydia would make a token $43 monthly payment to her great aunt before she owned the car outright. It was an electric blue 1969 Impala coupe, flashy enough for a seventeen year old and conservative enough to suit her father. The Impala had a respectable 327 engine and Lydia enjoyed its pick-up on the winding roads of her hillside community.
* * *
Two friends of Lydia, Delia and Arnold, got married the last Sunday in August. Arnold had recently bought a new Volkswagen bus to accommodate his rock band instruments. Arnold was particular about his personal appearance and the condition of his instruments, and he expressed concern about the wedding party marring the VW’s shiny new finish with shoe polish and shaving cream on the wedding day. It was customary to slather newlyweds’ cars with off-color messages made with shaving cream and white shoe polish. Lydia told Delia and Arnold they could conceal the van and use her car to drive away from the church, retrieve the VW and then take her back to her car. It sounded like a simple enough plan.

The wedding reception took much longer than usual, mostly due to Arnold’s pickiness. Someone in the wedding party basted his going away pants’ zipper as well as both pant legs. Furious, he demanded the pants be returned to their original condition before he and his bride snuck away for their honeymoon. This entailed someone finding an iron and re-pressing the slacks while Lydia and the rest of the wedding party waited around in the late August heat and humidity.

It took even more time for Lydia to escape the persistent wedding party who by this time were intent on seeking out the groom’s car so they could annoy him even further. She employed every trick she knew, crisscrossing from one end of town to the other, and eventually succeeded in losing their pursuers. It was one in the morning before she finally dropped her friends off at their own car.

The wedding preparations had begun before nine on Saturday. By the time Lydia arrived home, it was nearly two a.m. Sunday. Exhausted, she parked the Impala on the street in front of her parents’ house and went inside to bed.

The neighbor ladies woke up Sunday morning expecting nothing more exciting than a thick newspaper and possibly some juicy gossip later on in the ladies’ meeting at church. What a banner day it was! Parked in front of the Carey’s house was Lydia’s bright blue Impala, besmirched with “Sock It To Her,” “Congratulations,” and “She Got Him Today, He Gets Her Tonight.” Wilted crepe paper streamers hung from the car’s antenna and a shoe polish message on the back window declared “Just Married.” There were perhaps other conclusions that might’ve been made but the worst possible assumption was that Lydia had married the “black boy” who picked her up each week throughout the school year – despite the fact Dwayne hadn’t been around for more than more than three months.

Benefit of the doubt be damned, the Sabbath peace was broken and the phone tree put in motion. Whether it was standard black telephone or frivolous white Princess model, phones were jangling and every woman in the Edgewood Hill area was contacted with the scoop of the decade, except for poor Mrs. Carey. The scandalous, shocking news was whispered about over sausage and eggs at breakfast tables before Sunday school ever convened that late August morn.

Oblivious to the impending explosion, Lydia slept until early afternoon when Mr. and Mrs. Carey arrived home from church.
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What do you think so far?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dang, Ginger - this is Rockin'!! Nice work for your first day. No doubt a wonderful novel is being born!! You are indeed well named - MOTU!

Inspired,
Fran
Yada Feast