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April Showers Bring May Flowers!

— Jan Goldyn —

The Pretty Daffodil

A daffodil stood blooming

On an April morn

With rain drops still trickling

From the late night’s storm

She pushed her golden cup

Toward the heavens high

And waived in the wind

To all who passed her by

And though she knew her beauty

With her perfume soon would fade

She smiled as one who’s chosen

To adorn earth’s first parade

Jelly Bean Trees

I can remember the damp smell of earth and moss as my grandmother and I entered the path through the early spring woods. My grandma wore a pair of rolled up jeans, a duster apron covered in flowers and a red bandana around her head, which we called a “babushka,” a name taken from Grandma’s Polish background.

Back in those days, you would see many “babushka ladies” — working in their yards, cooking amazing things in church kitchens, being dropped off by their grandsons or daughters at corner stores while their loved ones waited in the car. I didn’t know then how much I would one day miss them.

As my grandmother walked ahead of me in the woods, the sound of robins and the mottled light coming through the newly budded leaves sparked a sort of thrill in me. The world was coming back to life!

My grandma stopped. “Here it is.” She took a small saw and cut a thorny branch from a Hawthorne bush. Our jelly bean tree! I was always amazed that her hands, toughened by years of outside work, didn’t seem to react to thorns, bark, cuts, scrapes.

In her youth, some of grandma’s German friends in this new world had shown her the custom of jelly bean trees — boughs placed in a pot or vase, their thorns decorated with jelly beans, their branches hung with painted, hollowed-out eggs and miniature bunnies, peeps, flowers and birds. Magic!

Each year I try to re-create this Easter enchantment. I still walk to the same patch of woods where my grandma led me so many years ago to gather a thorny branch. The woodsy smell and the robins’ songs create a thrill once again. Though my grandma and her babushka are no longer there, I’m sure I hear her voice before I reach the Hawthorne, “There it is.”

Update on Prequel, Julia

My vision for the unveiling of “Julia” had been on a Spring 2025 horizon. I’m now focusing on Summer 2025. But I promise I will update you regularly well in advance!

April Sneak Peek

-Excerpt from Julia Prequel to Coal Town Girls--

Julia could see John through the front window, hop out of his motor car and close the buttons of his fur coat, the warm spring weather having taken a cool twist this May morning. He strode up the walk with his wife, Anna, at his side……..

“Julia, I’ve come to the conclusion that it may be in your best interest to marry this Francis Donahue.”

Julia scrunched up her face with eyes that were slits of skepticism.

“But I ask only that you wait until the end of June. In this way, we will have time to prepare an appropriate celebration. Anna has agreed to host the festivities at our home. Haven’t you, Anna, dear?”

“Oh yes. Julia, I’ve a five-piece band in mind and many of my home-made dishes. Dorothea makes the most glorious wedding cakes. Do you prefer roses or lily of the valley? Of course, Cecelia, you may prepare the halupki.” She knew her husband loved his mother’s beef- stuffed cabbages.

Cecelia peered at Anna sideways over the top of her coffee cup. “And pierogi.” Cecelia had a certain knack for making the little potato and cheese confections.

Anna sighed, “Of course, Mother Kaczan.”

“Sounds like you all have it figured out fine and dandy. What I can’t figure out is why you’re all the sudden so cozy about the thought of Francis Donahue,” Julie walked up to John with her arms crossed.

“My dear sister, I’ve simply realized that it is futile to fight against something which nature so obviously intends.”

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I am so excited to be working on my Prequel — Julia. You’ve all given me such super feedback on Coal Town Girls! Those of you who have grown up locally have been sharing your excitement at seeing the landmarks of your youth (or your present!) showcased within its pages.

Now, with Julia, I’m taking a journey further back in time to the people, places, struggles, triumphs and dreams of those who came before Joan and Mary. I can’t wait for you to join me.

Jan’s Reading Nook

Throughout history, our ancestors gathered around fires telling and soaking in the magic that is “story.” This primal need continues and has not left us! I love to share thoughts on nuggets of literature I’ve been enjoying and exploring. For me, a main focus has been historical fiction, literary fiction, family sagas. Although all genres have their own jewels.

Something Rich and Strange

— Ron Rash —

Being a lover of all things Appalachia, I deeply soaked up Ron Rash’s stories and let them marinate. It seems to me that is the only way one can drink in his completely ordinary yet mystical, prose.

“Trusty” focuses on a chance depression-era meeting between a young wife in North Carolina and a man from a chain-gang.

“For the first time since she’d gone to fetch her husband, Lucy stepped off the porch and put some distance between her and the door. The rifle and axe too, which meant that she was starting to trust this man at least a little. She stood in the yard and looked up at an eave, where black insects hovered around clots of dried mud.

“Them dirt daubers is a nuisance,” Lucy said. “I knock their nests down and they builds them back the next day.”

“I’d guess them to be about the only thing that wants to stay around here, don’t you think?”

“You’ve got a saucy way of talking,” she said.

“You don’t seem to mind it too much,” Sinkler answered and nodded toward the field. “An older fellow like that usually keeps a close eye on a pretty young wife, but he must be the trusting sort, or is it he just figures he’s got you corralled?”

He lifted the full buckets and stepped close enough to the barn not to be seen from the field. “You don’t have to stand so far from me, Lucy Sorrels. I don’t bite.”

She didn’t move toward him but she didn’t go back to the porch either.

The ending is quite ordinary, yet told in a mesmerizing way.

In “Waiting for the End of the World” Rash, as he so often does, shows us the unvarnished truth of a culture “left behind.”

“So it’s somewhere between Saturday night and Sunday morning and I’m in a cinder-block roadhouse called the Last Chance, playing Free Bird for the fifth time tonight….my rhythm guitar player, Sammy Griffen, is down on all fours, weaving through the crowd of tables between the bathroom and stage.

One of the great sins of the sixties was introducing drugs to the good-ole-boy element of Southern society. If you were some Harvard psychology professor like Timothy Leary, drugs might well expand your consciousness, but they worked just the opposite way for people like Sammy, shriveling the brain to a reptilian level of aggression and paranoia.

There is no telling what Sammy has snorted or swallowed in the bathroom, but his pupils have expanded to the size of dimes. He passes a table and sees a bare leg, a female leg, and grabs hold. He takes off an attached high heel and starts licking the foot. It takes about three seconds for a bigger foot with a steel cap toe to swing into the back of Sammy’s head like a football player kicking an extra point. Sammy curls up in a fetal position and blacks out among the peanut shells and cigarette butts.”

While his honest portrayals may at times seem bleak, Rash also brings out every bit of beauty that lives in all things human.

Coal Town Girls

Coal Town girls was an idea that bubbled up over the years and finally found its way to paper. My mother, Joan, and her best friend, Mary, were often found on our back porch, telling stories of their youth -- the town, the river, the people, the adventures, the sadness's, the joys. 

Each month I’ll try to highlight a tidbit of history from Coal Town Girls!

—-Excerpt from Coal Town Girls—-

“Isn’t Johnny waitin’ for ya or somethin’?” Eugene asked.

“Oh, well, you see, we had a little tiff.” Joan explained.

“Yeah?" Eugene stopped and leaned on his bat. "About what?”

“Well, it’s nothing really. Look at the time!” Joan said quickly and began to walk away as she glanced at her wrist watch and Eugene's biceps. “I’m running late, so I’ll see you ---”

"Wait up a minute.” The game had ended and Eugene put his equipment away, telling his buddies he'd see them later. He walked toward Joan and put his hand above her head against the backstop. "There was somethin’ I wanted to tell ya.”

“What is it?” she asked nervously as she felt a heat rise from somewhere in her toes.

“I hear you got that math and science scholarship. Gee, I couldn’t be more proud of ya, egg-head.” He smiled and searched her eyes, looking at her in a way that seemed to make all of their years – from playing in the creek when they were seven to their late-night talks in the chestnut tree – come together in one glance. "Looks like you'll be goin' places."