WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A PULPWOOD QUEEN

Thanks to Brother Mockingbird Publishing, I’d like to share an excerpt from one of the Pulpwood Queens featured in the collection, The Pulpwood Queens Celebrate 20 Years!

In the Beginning

by Christopher Cook

After living for several years in France and Mexico, I returned to the United States for a while about twenty years ago to catch my breath. I’d written a novel and needed to sell it. I was broke and in debt, so I took a paying job as editor of a statewide magazine in Texas. First thing on my plate upon arrival in Austin: find good feature story ideas for the magazine. So I began poking around and a rumor caught my attention—a rumor about a woman up in northeast Texas, somewhere around Caddo Lake, somewhere on the outskirts of the small town of Jefferson, who ran a business that was both a beauty salon and bookstore. She also had started a book club called the Pulpwood Queens.

That sounded like a dandy feature idea to me and I decided to assign it to a freelance writer. Then I changed my mind. The story was just too damn good to give to another writer. If one of the perks of an editor’s job isn’t claiming first dibs on the best stories, then what’s the point of being an editor? I decided to write the story myself, which of course required thorough research and an interview. Which naturally meant a road trip. So I packed a bag, jumped into my Dodge pickup truck, and headed northeast toward the East Texas Pineywoods and the hamlet of Jefferson, population 2,000 or so. I recall hitting the road with a surge of excitement. There’s no adventure like chasing down a good story, as any writer knows. Add a bit of travel into the mix and… well. And that’s how I met Kathy Murphy. Then, as now, Kathy was no mere beautician. Nor was she a simple bookseller. No, she proved to be something much, much more: a geyser of ambitious ideas, a whirlwind of energy, an explosion of creative possibilities. In short, a force of nature.

It didn’t take a genius to realize Kathy was starting a venture that had the potential to grow much larger. But in those days—in the beginning, I mean—the endeavor seemed modest, a project likely limited by the parameters of time and place. Because even under the best conditions, success is an iffy proposition. The world is cruel and most ideas—even great ideas—die on the vine.

On the other hand, Kathy clearly wasn’t your average human being. Her whole attitude was so upbeat and positive. She seemed full what the French describe as joie d’esprit. You found yourself really wanting her to succeed because her success would validate this world as a place worth living in.

Her beauty/book shop back then was called Beauty and the Book. It was a single room tacked onto the side of a large, sprawling home, itself tucked beneath towering pines on a large wooded lot fronting a rural county road. It was not an auspicious location for a business of any sort, I thought. Inside, the shop was stuffed with shelves and books interspersed with salon chairs and mirrors, the air perfumed with the aromas of both printed paper and beauty products.

As for her book club—the Pulpwood Queens—it was just a handful of local women who shared Kathy’s love of reading. They met regularly at Kathy’s home for potluck dinners and discussions of books they were devouring together. Merging the social aspects of eating and visiting with the intellectual aspects of reading good books seemed to me a fine way to build and celebrate community.

All in all, Beauty and the Book and the Pulpwood Queens and the woman behind those endeavors made for a fine human interest story. So I spent a day with Kathy in her shop, a prolonged interview of sorts, while she told me her story and gave some customers haircuts and permanents. Then I returned to Austin and wrote my magazine feature. It was a fun story to write because Kathy was a fascinating person and her beauty/book shop business was both unique and inspirational.

When the feature was published, the response from our magazine readers was enthusiastic….

(find out the rest of the story inside the pages of The Pulpwood Queens Celebrate20 Years!)