Essays

Every Fourth of July, my buddies and I camped in the woods behind Anderson’s house. We called it Boston Hill because you could see the lights of the city thirty miles away. You could watch fireworks from all directions, all at once.

In January of this year, The Booksellers at Laurelwood began the process of liquidating its stock and closing its doors. As a new store rises from its ashes, Chapter 16’s Kathryn Justice Leache remembers the old store and looks toward the new one. It will be called Novel.

“Stayed here on our wedding night,” is the first entry in the scrapbook. Accompanying her text is a linen-paper postcard of the Hayes Hotel in Jackson, Michigan. My parents spent an entire month driving to California and back, a lengthy journey even today, and a grand expedition in the 1940s, before the wide availability of air conditioning and the franchising of America.

The Knoxville team was a AA affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, so of course it was called the “Knox Sox.” Its games drew scarcely any fans, and many of those who came seemed lost, like troubled souls stumbling into an empty church—or, like me, simply sitting in the silence, absorbed by the mysteries of the game.

The idea was simple: we’d host a live comedy talk show in a theater every week and interview people from around town. Just like Letterman if Letterman was broadcast from a tiny theater in Nashville—or, really, just like Letterman if Letterman wasn’t actually broadcast.