Standing in the Rainbow (60 page)

Epilogue

R
OBERT
S
MITH
, given the fact that he had traveled all around the world and back lecturing on the Old West, had been asked to write a piece for Aunt Elner’s favorite magazine,
Reade
r
’s Digest
. He wandered around the house for days thinking about the kings and queens, African chieftains, prime ministers and presidents of countries he had met; it was amazing how many people were still fascinated by cowboys and Indians. He had met so many interesting people that it was hard to just pick one. Then one day he chose his subject. He sat down and started on:

The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met
by
Dr. Robert Smith

Her name was Dorothy and she happened to be my mother. I guess a good place to start would be in 1946 in my hometown of Elmwood Springs, Missouri, a little place you have probably never heard of. . . .

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the following people for their invaluable help with this book: Sam Vaughan and family, Wendy Weil, Bruce Hunter, Dennis Ambrose, Judy Sternlight, Carol Schneider, Todd Doughty, Sherry Huber, Lauren Krenzel, Trebbe Johnson, Bonnie Thompson, Susie Glickman, Joy Terry, Lois Scott, Cathy Calvert, and Sue Grafton for all her good advice. Special thanks to the Warren family of Birmingham, Alabama, and Jonni Hartman Rogers, my press agent and good friend for more years than either of us cares to admit.

PHOTO: © SUZE LANIER

F
ANNIE
F
LAGG
began writing and producing television specials at age nineteen and went on to distinguish herself as an actress and writer in television, films, and the theater. She is the author of the
New York Times
bestsellers
Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
(which was produced by Universal Pictures as
Fried Green Tomatoes
), and
Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!
Ms. Flagg’s script for
Fried Green Tomatoes
was nominated for both the Academy and Writers Guild of America awards and won the highly regarded Scripters Award. Flagg lives in California and in Alabama.

ALSO BY FANNIE FLAGG

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man
(originally published as
Coming Attractions
)

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Fannie Flagg’s Original Whistle Stop Cafe Cookbook

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

S
TANDING
IN THE
R
AINBOW

A Reader’s Guide

FANNIE FLAGG

A C
ONVERSATION WITH
F
ANNIE
F
LAGG

Interviewer
Sam Vaughan
was publisher, president, and editor-in-chief at Doubleday, then senior vice president, and is now an independent editor-at-large for the Random House imprints, including Ballantine Books. In addition to Fannie Flagg, he is currently editing Margaret Truman, Dave Barry, Elizabeth Spencer, and William F. Buckley Jr., among others.

Sam Vaughan:
         There are continuities of characters and plot that link
Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!
with
Standing in the Rainbow
. Some of the people carry over, some grow up, some die. Did this come to you as inspiration or did it just seem the natural thing to do? Was there something of unfinished business at the end of
Baby Gir
l
? Or did you simply want to visit with some of those people once more?

Fannie Flagg:
         Well, as usual I seem to do things in a backward way. As it turns out,
Standing in the Rainbow
is the prequel to
Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!
It really should have been written first but I did not know it at the time. The character of Neighbor Dorothy was always meant to be my main character in the first book but the story line of Dena Nordstrom just took over the book and as you know, I tend to write too much rather than too little. Had I written it all at once,
Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!
would have been 800 pages long. I had done so much research and still had so much more to tell about Neighbor Dorothy and her family that I decided to just introduce her in the first one and then write about her almost exclusively as I began the next.

SV:
         How did you come up with the character of Neighbor Dorothy? Was she a real person or just a figment of your imagination?

FF:
         Both. By that I mean I did make her up but she was based on the true lives of many different women who were real “Radio Homemakers.” Something I never knew existed. I first discovered them when, one day as I was browsing through the cookbook section of my hometown book store in Fairhope, Alabama, I picked up a small cookbook published by the University of Iowa Press, written by Evelyn Birkby, a Radio Homemaker in Shenandoah, Iowa. In the book were photographs and histories of some of the Radio Homemakers. I was fascinated to learn that since the 1920s scores of women had radio shows that were broadcast from their homes, offering recipes, homemaking tips, etc. I am always interested in history and as I read on, I realized that these gals were the real pioneer women in broadcasting. Long before Martha Stewart was born, they were offering housewives tips on cooking and entertaining. I called Evelyn Birkby in Iowa and to my surprise she picked up the phone. She is a delightful lady and we became fast friends. I told her I wanted to write about the Radio Homemakers in my next book and she was kind enough to help me with my research. I found out that the broadcasters were also known as “Radio Neighbors” because listeners considered their shows as a visit with a neighbor. From that research the character of Neighbor Dorothy was born.

SV:
         What about the rather colorful and lovely title,
Standing in the Rainbo
w
?

FF:
         The title did not come until after I finished the book. A friend told me of her true experience. It had happened to her and her family, how they wound up actually standing in a rainbow. I put the experience as it was told to me in the book as a letter to Dorothy from Mrs. Anne Carter (her real name). When I finished the book I realized that the time period I had been writing about was from 1946 to the early ’60s when we were, as a country certainly, standing in the rainbow. I suppose it is just another way of saying we were looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.

SV:
         The Oatman Family Singers are a real treat. Given the obvious gifts of black gospel singers, the world of white gospel music is a new one to many of us. What got you interested?

FF:
         I was always very aware of gospel groups. I remember seeing a white group on television in Birmingham, Alabama, and they always seemed so happy. As a matter of fact there was one group I especially liked called The Happy Goodman Family. But then white gospel music has always been around in the South and the Midwest. Its roots go all the way back to the 1800s and started with the Shape Note Singers. It was sung in most rural Protestant churches and continues to this day. Many famous country, western, and rock ’n’ roll singers started with gospel. Elvis Presley was a huge fan of the Statesman Quartet and used to attend all their concerts. Some say this is where he got his wiggle. Gospel singers were moving and jumping around on stage long before Elvis. Now, thanks to Bill and Gloria Gather, the wonderful white gospel groups are bigger than ever and are appearing all over the country in concert and sell out everywhere they go. Not only in the United States but all over the world. I attended a Gather Gospel concert in Anaheim, California, and an entire basketball arena was packed to the rafters.

SV:
         This story opens in the 1940s. Do you feel especially nostalgic for that time? Do you believe that the end of World II produced in many people a childish optimism? A foolish euphoria that all would be well? Or do you find yourself yearning for an era with just a little more room for cheer, or with a little less carping and sniping, one with less fear of the future?

FF:
         When I started the book, 9/11 had not yet taken place and at the time one of the main reasons I wanted to write it was that I felt our country was going through a particularly negative period. Personally, I was saddened and depressed by the way the media, books, movies, TV, etc., were portraying only the dark side of our history. I also hated it that these dark and negative images were being seen all over the world. We seemed to have little appreciation for our country and how lucky we were to be Americans. It alarmed me that young people and the world really might not know that for a lot of people the experience of growing up in this country was a positive one. I do think it had a lot to do with the period after the war and the ’50s. It was a particularly wonderful time to be an American child; at least it was for me. I just wanted to remind myself and the world not to get so caught up in all the negative and forget the positive. And yes, I suppose I was nostalgic for that period of time, and I am so grateful I was lucky enough to have been young then, when the world seemed so much more positive and the future looked so much brighter. But having said that, I am also in awe of the present and the progress we are making in medicine and technology, etc. Not that the progress in technology is helping me much. I am still having trouble using a fax machine and I haven’t as yet mastered e-mail.

SV:
         Do you get many of your story lines or characters from the past? Are you rewriting the past to make it more like you wish it was, or do you try to set it down as it was, from your vantage point here and now, surrounded by rainbow?

FF:
         Yes, I do like to write about what I know and I only know the past. And as most of my stories are based on mostly true stories and my characters are combinations of people I know, I do tend to write about the past. I try to make it as real as I remember it, and in memory things always seem better or worse than they were, but I suspect I have a tendency to make them better.

SV:
         What chance does the present have against the rosy recall of those years back then? Or is there no competition between then and now?

FF:
         No, I don’t think so—every era is different. The future will be better in some aspects, worse in others.

SV:
         Did children’s books or teachers or librarians contribute to your storytelling urge?

FF:
         When I was very small my parents read
Heidi
to me and I had a wonderful sixth-grade teacher named Mrs. Sybil Underwood, who used to read us Nancy Drew stories. I am sure that helped. By the way, Mrs. Underwood still lives up the street and I had dinner with her just the other night. We both had shrimp. But I think going to work with my father, who was a motion picture machine operator, and seeing as many movies as I did as a child, really sparked my love of stories and my interest in people and their lives.

SV:
         Do you come from a family of storytellers? Was there one person who filled your memory with tales? Or was it part of the atmosphere, not confined to your family? Somehow, a reader might get the idea you did not grow up surrounded by glum, laconic types.

FF:
         My father was a great storyteller. As a matter of fact my mother used to get mad at him because he could tell such sad stories so convincingly that I would sob for hours. But he was extremely funny, as was my grandmother.

SV:
         You’ve had extensive experience in television, theater, and movies, yet there is a sense that you were meant to be writing books the whole time.

FF:
         I think you are right because I am the happiest when I am writing. I did not like acting that much and never knew why until I started writing. I was finally doing what I was supposed to be doing. I am one of those lucky people who got to have two careers and the best was saved for last.

SV:
         Several of the female characters in your novels start out strong and continue to be so, while others gradually emerge into their full strength. Do you feel that a characteristic of some notable women is to start slowly and then come on full tilt? Is there a touch of the meek inheriting the earth in that?

FF:
         Well, yes. I think the women I write about tend to be late bloomers, but then women my age and older were socialized differently from men. Men were encouraged to achieve and succeed early in life. I think it took a woman longer to figure out on her own, usually without much encouragement, what she really wanted to do. I think the young women of today have a better handle on what they can do and do it sooner. As far as the meek inheriting the earth, I don’t know if that is true as a concept. I think the meek may inherit a happier and calmer life somehow. Ambition comes with a lot of excess baggage.

SV:
         Didn’t your mother once demand that you never be seen with a frying pan in your hand, as if you knew what to do with it? Was that loving law laid down the reason why you grew up eating in restaurants? And did you do your first writing in them?

FF:
         When my mother noticed I was signing up for Home Economics in high school she said with alarm, “Oh no, darling, don’t ever learn to cook or they will expect you to do it!” My mother discovered cafeterias very early on in my life and so I had very few home-cooked meals. I was an only child and my father worked at night and so my mother and I did eat out a lot. I enjoyed it. I still do. I write in restaurants and many chapters have started on a napkin.

SV:
         I somehow suspect that organization is not your strong suit. Characters, yes. Sheer storytelling, dialogue, subtle everyday poetry, comic timing, yes. But chapters, outlines, transitions, that sort of thing doesn’t hold out much appeal for you. Care to organize an answer?

FF:
         Organization? Isn’t that like the Elks Club or something?

SV:
         What devices do you use, if any, to prepare for writing, or once you are well into a book, to stay with it? I heard once something about hanging chapters on a laundry line.

FF:
         When I am preparing for writing a book I do a tremendous amount of research. I write notes everywhere and on anything and then when I think I have done enough I transfer all my handwritten notes, if I can find them, to the computer. On this last book I wasted an entire hour trying to figure out why I thought a certain kind of bread, eggs, and a can of floor wax should go in the book, only to discover it was nothing but one of my old shopping lists. And it is true that I do use a clothesline down the hall to hang my chapters on. As I said before, I find that I do things backward from most writers. I tend to write a chapter at the end of the book or in the middle before I write the beginning, and the clothesline helps me keep them in some kind of order. I even read magazines backwards. I suppose being dyslexic has caused this or else I am Chinese and just don’t know it.

SV:
         I know that you tend to disappear into a book and cut off the outside world while in one of your own making. Do you read other fiction while writing, or do you swear off the stuff?