Kathy L. Murphy

THE PULPWOOD QUEENS' TIARA WEARING, BOOK SHARING, GUIDE TO LIFE celebrates female friendship, sisterhood, and the transformative power of reading. It includes life principles and motivational anecdotes, hilarious and heart-warming stories of friendships among the Queens, and stories from Kathy L. Murphy about the books that have inspired her throughout her life, complete with personalized suggested book lists.

CHAPTER 1 If Life Hands You a Lemon, Make Margaritas

“In the beginning there was nothing. God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see a whole lot better.”—Ellen DeGeneres

If you saw me today in my full Pulpwood Queens Book Club regalia featuring hot-pink leopard skin and a diamond tiara, you might not immediately think of me as a bookseller. You might think “hairdresser” first. And you would be right on that score. But the truth is that I am both. What you have here is my story, for better or for worse. I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I ambled along, taking my lead from others. My father ran the city pool, so my sisters and I were taught to swim as babies. I took swimming lessons from kindergarten until high school, and during my high-school years I worked during the summer lifeguarding at the Eureka Country Club. Since I’d never heard of anyone becoming a professional lifeguard (this was years before the television show Bay Watch), I saw lifeguarding simply as a way of getting a great tan. Very important in the 1970s. Now, I didn’t have a clue as to what I was going to be in life. I just knew my mother insisted—no, commanded— that I get an education. So I socked away all my paychecks in my savings account for college because my parents had informed me from the time I was knee high to a tadpole that I was going to go. When I graduated from high school, I did just that. What most of my friends did. I went to college. I enrolled at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, home of the K-State Wildcats. I attended college at K-State without any direction. After a few years, I dropped out to attend Crum’s Beauty College in Manhattan, Kansas. At the time, I figured I could become a hairdresser and then go back to school once I figured out what I really wanted to be in life. I worked in several college salons in both Manhattan and Lawrence, Kansas, before I moved back to my hometown in Eureka to open my first salon. I named it Town & Country Headquarters after my favorite magazine. I thought the name was brilliant because Eureka was the county seat, so I did hair for both town folks and country folks. Unfortunately, I was always getting calls asking, “Do you sell John Deere or International Harvester tractors?” Callers were very surprised when I told them my shop was a beauty shop, though it was still a far cry from the glamour and elegance of that magazine. Eventually I closed Town & Country Headquarters and spent the next few years in and out of a few colleges, working in several hair and makeup jobs, and even moving out to California—forever searching for my life’s work. I found California absolutely beautiful, but I missed my family, my friends, and the weather back home. Where is a good thunderstorm when you need one to curl up in front of the fireplace and read a good book? Unable to face another Christmas spent going to a double feature at the movies and having my holiday feast be a couple of hot dogs, I made up my mind. I was heading to Texas for a real Christmas and to visit my sister…