BLOGWORDS – Wednesday 28 May 2025 –WRITING WEDNESDAY – DOUBLE DOUBLE WHO’S IN TROUBLE – SUMMERS at NONNY and J-POP’S
BLOGWORDS – Wednesday 28 May 2025 –WRITING WEDNESDAY – DOUBLE DOUBLE WHO’S IN TROUBLE – SUMMERS at NONNY and J-POP’S
WRITING WEDNESDAY – DOUBLE DOUBLE WHO’S IN TROUBLE – SUMMERS at NONNY and J-POP’S
* cover reveal Friday 5 September
SUMMERS at NONNY and J-POP’S
Summers at Nonny and J-Pop’s were the best. Their street was long and curvy and ran down a hill, ending at Dr. Bingham’s house. It had been abandoned years before and no one had lived there for ten or twenty years. A great place for boys to have grand adventures.
Unlike our street at home, there were a bunch of kids on Hazel Lane, from toddlers to kids our age to teenagers. I had a crush on Laney, who babysat when Mom and her parents went out for dinner. Of course that was only when she was there to drop us off for the summer, then again in August when she came back to take us home. Still, Laney was so pretty and so sweet. And so much older than me. At least it seemed that way; she was eight years older than Jere and me but she didn’t treat us like little kids. Even when she had gone to college, she was home on summer break and still baby sat us.
Gramma Georgie lived in the first house on Hazel Lane. Laney’s brother, Denny, cut the grass for her but the flowers in her yard were crazy. It’s where I learned to love gardening. When I was little, I’d sit and watch as she weeded and pruned and mulched. As I got older, she’d let me help, and by the time I was twelve, she was the one sitting and watching me.
Georgia Montgomery wasn’t related to us, or anyone else on the street. She was ancient but no one knew for sure how old she really was. She had a sister named Jeannette, who had died years ago. They had both been born in the house on Hazel Lane.
Anyhow, there were a dozen different maple trees on the property, which went way back into the woods behind the house. In front of the house, though, were cypress trees, and countless flowering shrubs. She had a rose garden, and a wildflower patch, and a really nice perennial garden. And every summer she had a vegetable garden. Jere and me would eat fresh tomatoes straight off the vine.
Best of all, after working in her yard, we would sit on the porch and drink lemonade and eat homemade sugar cookies.
What Gramma Georgie didn’t know, though—or maybe she did; she always seemed to know everything that went on on Hazel Lane—was how much trouble Jere and me were getting into.
Brian Hastings was a bully. And he liked to pick on us. Never could figure why, but that’s how it was. It was kind of a war between us. At first, Jere and me just ran off and went inside the house to watch TV or play in our room. But the year we were ten, everything changed.
We fought back.
It wasn’t pretty. Brian got a cut on his hand on account of I ducked when he went to punch me—he punched the barbed wire fence instead.
Of course that made him mad and he set out to get even. But we got him first. I took the basket off his little sister’s bike and put it on his, and left it in the street so everyone would see it. He pushed a nail in my bike tire; I took the chain off his and threw it away. He took my whole bike and threw it in the creek.
That day he threw a snowball in my face I felt this anger I hadn’t known was there. Like a volcano erupting. I knew it wasn’t accidental no matter how loud he said he didn’t mean to do it. And I knew he had intentionally packed a rock in it, and that it was specifically for me.
That ice weapon hit its mark—my face—and did minor damage; it could have been much worse—it could have cut my eyeball.
What Brian didn’t know was the level I would go to to get back at him. Christmas vacation ended and we went home with no payback action.
But operation payback was definitely underway.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“I’ve always had voices—er, stories in my head. I once said I should write them all down so someone could write them someday. I had no idea at the time that someone was me!”
My stories are deep and dark, my characters raw and real, with a healthy helping of hope and joy, humor and laughter, and abiding and sustaining faith.
My characters struggle in some way for their identity. Their stories are their journey to know who God created them to be.
There is also a strong element of friends, family, and faith in all my stories, and the difference it makes to have such a support system.
· unsavory heritage series—seven generations, from Cissy to Connie, each with their own secrets, one of which is ugly and unsavory, and initiates the curse they all bear
· Seasons series—four friends, each one struggling to know the truth of just what happened when one of them plunged into the depths of the black waters of the Edisto River
· FourSquare – Four stories about four couples who also happen to be four sets of twins.
Comments
Post a Comment