Visits with my Good Witch from Jitney 14 {Women’s History}
Written by Jeannie Smith of Mod Posh

“Oh Hillary, I get it! I am so sorry about all the ugly press that came your way when you were outed for having conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt. I get it, I do the same thing, AND I AM NOT A WITCH EITHER!…”

OK. I just shared a quote with you from my most recent imaginary conversation.  The one I had with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, this morning. Yes, in my car, I said that out loud.

I know, I know, I am going to down a slippery slope here to write about my imaginary conversations, much less with the former First Lady, but let me explain. Today I was worrying about the fact that lately I have such conversations, particularly about my own writing. I was thinking “Am I crazy? Who does this?” And the answer came to me as I remembered that indeed none other than our own Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton admitted having done the same thing! Hillary, you may remember, was skewered by the press in 1996 when a biographer released that she often had conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt. At the time I thought it was a little odd too, although I never went so far as to question her sanity or call her a witch like so many people did when the story hit the press. But now that I am 44 years old I completely understand and this understanding is a revelation to me. One of my “Ah Ha moments” to paraphrase Oprah Winfrey, who I admire and refer to often but have not yet had the pleasure of conversing with, in my imagination or otherwise.

Like I have been doing for the past few weeks, this afternoon I was thinking of how much I love writing. I was also grappling with nagging self doubts that have crept into my fragile psyche since recently leaving a secure 9 to 5 job to devote myself to writing full time.  I was thinking about the writer I admire most and having one of my imaginary conversations with her where I ask “what would you do if you were in my shoes?” It’s my method of sorting things out.

Of course being a hands on mom, I was having deep reflective time behind the wheel, in the school car line. As the mother of three teenage girls I do a lot of soul searching this way because I spend a lot of time waiting for them to come out of the buildings they are in so I can taxi them and their friends home or deliver them to their next activity.  On any given day or night I can be found all over Northwest Arkansas lurking in parking lots and reflecting on life.  Be it the mall, the skating rink, and other various athletic practice facilities,  I try to make good use of my time. Sometimes that includes phone calls, editing on my laptop and on other days just anything to keep from falling asleep. (My big fear is I will nod off and my daughters will walk out to find me snoring or drooling in plain view of other moms, teachers or their friends.) Today I was in line simply lost in my thoughts trying to think myself out of these blues and really feeling bad about my imaginary conversations when I actually found an answer and vindication from the memory of the Eleanor Roosevelt/Hillary Clinton scandal.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a writer who claims to have a muse, nor do I regard myself “muse worthy.”  I simply have someone who, in reverence, I sometimes converse with when faced with looming decisions or introspection.   Like Hillary, this person relates to my chosen profession which happens to be writing. How crazy can this “method” be if Hillary does it too? Today I had a moment where I feel Hillary was the response to my own musings, my “personal car line time” musings! (OK, it sounds little nuts.) While I didn’t hear the actual voice of Hillary respond, “It’s OK Jeannie, You are not alone, and I appreciate you feeling my pain!”  (That WOULD be crazy.)  I was able to breathe a sigh of relief I am not entirely certifiable.

The writer I speak to is Eudora Welty and from here on I will refer to her as my good witch of writing. Furthermore, if this means I am crazy, OK, it’s out there, alert the media. I doubt anyone is going to make much of a fuss about it; I won’t be skewered by the press on the scale of Hillary’s debacle  and if I am booted off  a couple of civic or church committees I can deal, I will look at it as having more free time.

Miss Welty is from my hometown, Jackson, Mississippi. I won’t give you the Wikipedia version of Eudora Welty, if you are not familiar with her artistry, I suggest you look it up for yourself and start reading her work. Among numerous honors, her novel, The Optimist’s Daughter, received the 1973 Pulitzer Prize and her photography hangs in the Smithsonian.

In 1984 she was my customer at the Jitney Jungle Grocery Store, which was recently recreated for the movie The Help. It was the famous Jitney # 14 I landed my first real job as a checker. I was dutiful and always showed up on time in my starched red smock and I remember getting very frustrated at the end of the night if my till was off even 2 cents.

I loved the job in part because it was in the Belhaven area of town near two colleges and I was itching to finish high school and join the academic world. I also loved the store because Miss Welty was a familiar customer. We were all protective of her “celebrity” since a few reporters would hang around from time to time trying to catch up with her and in fairness we worried about all the senior citizens who came in and out of the store because the neighborhood was becoming unsafe. Miss Welty did not send someone to grocery shop for her even when she was in her 80’s, she just walked right in carrying her own purse wearing sensible shoes and was as polite to us and I imagine she was to Gore Vidal or the famous people who visited her at home a few blocks away. She walked the isles seemingly unaffected by her fame and appeared very patient and deeply appreciative of any admirer that stopped her.

Each day I worked I looked for her to come through my line at the Jitney Jungle and I practiced just what I would say on the day I came face to face with her. When it finally happened I remember my palms got sweaty and I nervously placed her apples on the scale and carefully counted out her change saying “Thank you Miss Welty, have a nice day.” Then the most remarkable thing happened, she read my name tag then looked me directly in the eye and said, “Thank you, Jeannie.”

Yes, the simple acknowledgement changed my life, I felt like Dorothy being touched by Glenda’s wand. I already knew I wanted to write but there is just something electric about having a Pulitzer Prize winner say your name and acknowledge your existence. I took it as a sign I was going in the right direction. As I would learn later, she was kind to many others throughout her lifetime and was well known for her keen eye with people. No one loved other people’s stories imagined or real quite like Eudora Welty. She told them through her camera lens and with tapping the keys on the typewriter that sits in her famous home, now a museum.  She was much more interested in the working class and the poor, the “regular Joe” than she was anyone on the society page, a page she could have easily owned. She was enamored by her fans and much more likely to compliment other writers than obsess about her image or engage in PR gimmicks. She never would have been less than polite to anyone who approached her and even in old age when she needed to turn people away from showing up at her doorstep she felt terrible having to place a sign on the door she was not available.

Among many things I admire how bold Eudora Welty was. At the young age of 23 she wrote a letter to the editors at The New Yorker and asked for a job. Although she was not published in the magazine for another 18 years she firmly took her writing career into her own hands and wrote the following letter:

“Gentlemen,  I suppose you’d be more interested in even a slight-o’-hand trick than you’d be in an application for a position with your magazine, but as usual you can’t have the thing you want most.  I am 23 years old, six weeks on the loose in N.Y. However, I was a New Yorker for a whole year in 1930-31 while attending advertising classes in Columbia’s School of Business. Actually I am a southerner, from Mississippi, the nation’s most backward state. Ramifications include Walter H. Page, who, unluckily for me, is no longer connected with Doubleday-Page, which is no longer Doubleday-Page, even. I have a B.A. (’29) from the University of Wisconsin, where I majored in English without a care in the world. For the last eighteen months I was languishing in my own office in a radio station in Jackson, Miss., writing continuities, dramas, mule feed advertisements, santa claus talks, and life insurance playlets; now I have given that up….” 

I can give you a thousand reasons I am not a great writer, and will certainly never be as prolific an artist as Miss Welty.  I will not try and I cannot rewrite ancient mythology and change the setting to rural Mississippi, it would be a disaster, but I have a deep love of both, and my current home, Arkansas.  As a writer, I am working on being bold enough to remain unaffected by others’ opinions of my work, good or bad. I am also very engaged in other people’s stories and continue to collect a pay check writing. I imagine my constant desire to understand place and put into perspective community and the people in my life by putting pen to paper would please her and that just might make me crazy.

As for my career, I am approaching it with more confidence after this morning’s discussion. I am trying to be bold, trying not to let sweaty palms get to me and I am so appreciative to get a paycheck for my stories. I owe a great deal of thanks to my good witch, the one who spoke my name in Jitney Jungle 14 on Fortification Street in 1984. She and I will continue talking and I will let you know how that works out.

 Jeannie Smith is the ( sleepy) mother of three teen-age daughters and wife(to one of the thousands of Mike Smith’s in the country) who resides in Northwest Arkansas. She  blogs about everything from fashion & style she admires( but possesses little of) to her childhood in the deep south and her happy life in Northwest Arkansas (currently #1 on her favorite place on the planet list). She is a Senior Advertising Executive and Features Writer for Peekaboo Magazine.  You can read more of her writing on her blog Mod Posh.