Alone but never lonely

Usually I am all alone but I never get lonely. I have so much ambition. I’m always quilting, writing, fixing, or remembering something that happened years before. I guess that’s why so many people come to visit me -- to ask how I am and can they do anything for me.

For about 80 years I have written my thoughts on scraps of paper. Sometimes, I wrote with lead pencils sharpened with my pocket knife. When my hands became shaky, as old hands do, I salvaged an old manual typewriter and typed with two fingers. “Hunt and peck,” it’s called.

I talk  to myself even when I’m asleep, I guess. One day after my visitors had left, I said to myself, “Stupid, why don’t you just write a book and sell it  to ‘em. They just come to hear you tell hillbilly stories.”

Well, old lady Stupid went to Poplar Bluff and bought the biggest best computer I could find. It would take time, I figured, but I would sell books to the crowds of company that to see me. That way they wouldn't forget me when I'm gone.

Even though my house had burned when I was 42 years old, I yet had a bushel of scraps of scribbles.

I often call myself stupid when I make a mistake. (I apparently don’t have alheimers since I know it’s a mistake.)

Never have I piloted a plane nor engineered a train. I am not an electrician or a mechanic but I have done many things and can remember back to when I was too small to walk. Editing a manuscript is easy for me; but when I talk I speak the hillbilly ‘lingo.’

When my many visitors come to ask how I am, I tell them I’m fine. They stay just to hear me talk.

Visitors see that my home is like a museum full of everything from rocks to buttons. Pictures of people old and young are everywhere. I have a bedroom which is only used when company spends the night. I sleep on a little bed by the front door. I am a trained firefighter and want to be where I could get out quick if my kitchen were on fire.

This is where I stay busy. I’m even writing another book.

“What are you writing about?” they ask.

“Oh, just whatever I’m thinking” I answer. “I don’t cook much anymore. Let’s go out to lunch and I will pay.”

I will write about cooking for my kids and life on the farm in Kentucky.