Song of the Chimney Sweep by Tamatha Cain

Author:Tamatha Cain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orange Blossom Publishing
Published: 2022-06-14T12:35:38+00:00

Betty,

25 years old

October 20, 1977

Dear Diary,

I got this little blank book today from the delivery fellow who stocks the card rack. It was free! A gift for being a loyal customer, he said. That’s a good idea. Maybe we should offer some free gifts to loyal customers. How many of those do we have? Four? Haha.

Such a pretty little journal! So fine. And all the pages are so clear and white. Just flipping through them makes me want to write and write. There are so many words inside of me every day and I feel like I just swallow them back down over and over until they jumble up and get clumped up. Constipated. I suppose I could take some ExLax. (There I’ve gone and written something gross in the very first paragraph.) Instead I think I’ll write in here when I’m bored or lonely, like I used to do.

Randell doesn’t like when I say things like ‘gross’ and ‘out of sight.’ Asks me how I know all this ‘slang talk.’ I put him off by pointing out the magazine rack right there in his own shop.

Today’s my wedding anniversary.

I really shouldn’t get bored. There’s plenty to stay busy with. The rooms always need dusting, at least, and I’m never done vacuuming it seems! It’s a good motel. It is a little further down from the border, sure, but I think our mattresses are nicer and I make sure our package prices are a dollar less than up at the St. Mary’s. Have to get them in how we can, Randell says, especially now folks prefer the interstate for getting to Orlando. We still get a good dry Sunday crowd from Georgia, and folks who came through with their parents when they were kids on family vacation, they want to take the same route now with their own kids. That’s sweet, I guess. Nostalgia holds things together around here, in lots of ways.

I gave the shelves a good cleaning today and helped some folks find their purchases. Well, I guess I do every day. Someone left this fine pen I’m using in one of the motel rooms. I brought it up here to the lobby for safe keeping, but I don’t suppose it would hurt for me to use it just to write in here. Maybe they’ll never even realize they lost it, and if they do, maybe they won’t know where. Anyway, no sense having it just sitting there, and I just got this little book and all.

Oh, looks like somebody’s pulling up outside.

I’m back again. Junie just stopped by and made me turn on the TV. I can’t let myself think on it. I just can’t. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane crashed in Mississippi. It’s just too awful. Junie was crying and carrying on like she knew them. Not as upset as when Duane Allman crashed his motorcycle, though. She always says Randell looks like Duane if he’d have cut his hair, tells him he should grow his hair out. She really had a thing for that hippie guy with the guitar.

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