Chunky Soup

January 31, 2020

My hometown, Blackstone, Virginia, was full of characters, quirky ones, like those you’d meet in a Eudora Welty story, with names to match, like Puny Nash, Walkie-Talkie Robertson, Boosey and Dice Cobb, Shooney Beach, and Tootsie and Truly Orange.

Part of this small-town charm was our local weekly newspaper, The Courier Record. As a child, I mostly remember photos of people and their freakishly large zucchini or other memorable garden vegetable, or of hunters and their prized dead animal, lists of honor roll students, the mayor cutting the ribbon to some town improvement, an announcement from the Three Arts Club. My friend Debbie Tomlinson got her picture and a byline in the paper for being the first girl to have a newspaper route. A column called “Personal Intelligence” reported afternoon visits between friends or children home from college, or so and so who had their cousin from North Carolina over for the weekend.

It was, like all small towns back then, very local. Not a single fast food chain. Just about every store on Main Street was owned by a local family. Of course, that is no longer the case, as anyone who has driven through a small town in America in the last 20 years knows. There’s a harshness now that was not there 30 or 40 years ago. Sometimes it grieves me to read the paper and be reminded of what has been lost.

But in the paper that arrived today, I caught a sweet glimpse of my quirky hometown of long ago—a full page ad on the back of the newspaper that read: “LOOKING for a white female at Walmart. 2 years ago in chunky soup section. She asked me “Do you know what I put in my chunky soup?” and I said “No, what?” And she said “rice,” and I said “so do I.” Then I walked away. I’m sorry I walked away. Call me, Kenny.”

Beneath that was his photo, phone number, and email address. At the bottom of the page, somebody had gotten artsy and edged it with a photo of rice.

I wish you luck, Kenny. I’m so grateful for your putting your heart out there for all of us to see. I hope you find her and that you have many years together putting rice in your chunky soup.

Lucky Girl

The Woods