Sandra Chastain - Mossy Creek

Mossy Creek

A collective novel by Deborah Smith,

Sandra Chastain, Debra Dixon,

Virginia Ellis, Nancy Knight,

and Donna Ball

Authors of

Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes

Delightful. Marie Barnes, former First Lady of Georgia

Mitford meets Mayberry in the first book of this innovative and warmhearted new series from BelleBooks.

Cleveland Daily Banner , Cleveland, Tennessee

MOSSY CREEK is as much fun as a cousin reunion; like sipping ice cold lemonade on a hot summers afternoon. Hire me a moving van, its the kind of town where everyone wishes they could live.

Debbie Macomber, NYT bestselling author

A fast, funny, and folksy read. Enjoy!

Lois Battle, acclaimed author of S toryville, Bed & Breakfast, and The Florabama Ladies Auxiliary & Sewing Circle

SUMMER IN MOSSY CREEK takes you to a land that time has not forgotten, but has embraced.

Jackie K. Cooper, WMAC-AM, Macon, GA

Colorfully and cleverly portrayed. A wholesome story.

Harriet Klausner, Amazon.coms top reviewer

The characters and kinships of MOSSY CREEK are quirky, hilarious and all too human. This story reads like a delicious, meringue-covered slice of home. I couldnt get enough.

Pamela Morsi, USA Today bestselling author

[MOSSY CREEK] is a book you will not lend for fear you wont get it back.

Chloe LeMay, The Herald , Rock Hill, SC

These southern belle authors have done it again, even better this time.

Bob Spear, Heartland Reviews

In the best tradition of womens fiction, MOSSY CREEK points to a genuine spirit of love and community that is our best hope for the future.

Betina Krahn, NYT bestselling author of The Last Bachelor

Copyright

BelleBooks, Inc.

ISBN 978-1-935661-01-6

Mossy Creek

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors imaginations or are used ficticiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2001 by BelleBooks, Inc.

Published in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published by:

BelleBooks, Inc. P.O. Box 67 Smyrna, GA 30081

We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers. You can contact us at the address above or at BelleBooks@BelleBooks.com

Visit our website www.BelleBooks.com

First Edition published May 2001

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

Cover Photo - MistikaS | istock.com

Back Cover Photo - Jeff Kinsey | fotolia.com

Cover Design - Martha Crockett

Mossy Creek map: Dino Fritz

Acknowledgements

The authors of the Mossy Creek collection gratefully acknowledge all those whose patience and expertise have played such an integral role in bringing these stories to life:

Laura Austin and Jack Berrywho believed you had to feed a childs imagination as well as her stomach.

Shannon Harper and Libby Hedrick, who know a good story when they hear one.

Pepper Chastain, who would have lived in Mossy Creek in a heartbeat.

Karen, Kim and Lynn, the original softball players who inspired the story of Casey, and Whitney Huffman, who begins a new generation of courageous young athletes.

Greg Hicks, dart-master and Irishmansteady and ever-ready to help.

Hank Smith, who knows his coffee beans, and Dora Brown, who would be happy drinking whiskey and cleaning guns with Miss Ida.

Bob, who cheers me on, and for Mike, Karol, Kristi, and Michael, who believe, and for Mother, who keeps on being the best.

Maureen Hardegree, Bill Dixon, and Rena Brown, who made sure everything made sense.

Stories

Ida Shoots the Sign

A Day in the Life

The Prodigal Son

Casey at the Bat

The Naked Bean

The Bereavement Report

The Hope Chest

Your Cheatin Dart

The Ugly Tree

And a Prosperous New Year

Mossy Creek Map

The Mossy Creek Gazette

215 Main Street Mossy Creek, Georgia

From the desk of Katie Bell, Business Manager

Lady Victoria Salter Stanhope

Cornwall, England

Dear Lady Victoria,

Let me introduce myself...Im Katie Bell, gossip columnist for the Gazette and the unofficial town historian. That would mean that youve come to the right person for stories about the hometown of your recently discovered American ancestor! Im happy to share what I know and to find out what I can.

Right now I can give you a few sketchy details. Your Great-Great-Great-Great Grandmother Isabella Salter began the 1859 feud between Mossy Creek and Bigelow, our neighboring town, when she ran away to England with Richard Stanhope. Apparently she jilted a Bigelow in the process.

But like any good gossip columnist, I want to check my facts before I say any more about their love affair or exactly who broke promises to whom.

I can definitely tell you that the feud isnt over. In fact, the feud is whats keeping me from getting more details right now. I need to talk to our Mayor Ida Hamilton Walker, butas you can see from the story Ive sent alongshes been busy this spring. If you knew Ida Walker, youd know a lot about the kind of woman your ancestor probably was. And about the people in Mossy Creek today.

I look forward to sending you more news when I have it.

Your new friend and very distant relative to you on my mamas side,

Katie Bell

Ida

Ida Shoots The Sign

I was six years old, the year was 1950, and the torch of stubborn Mossy Creek pride was about to pass to me in true Mossy Creek style. I clutched the railing on a rickety wooden scaffold the Hamilton farmhands had hung fifty feet up the side of the whitewashed Hamilton Farm corn silo. My grandmother and namesake, Ida Hamilton, stood precariously on a level of scaffolding above me, wildly waving a small brush dipped in black paint. Big Miss Ida, as people called her, was six feet tall, thick-limbed and as strong as a mountain lumberman. Yet she wore her silver hair in a snazzy French twist and her trademark pearl necklace always showed above the collar of her practical chintz work dress. I was known as Little Miss Ida. I trembled in my overalls and Davy Crockett coonskin cap as I gazed up at Grandmas stocky legs and chintz-covered behind, directly above my head. If Grandma made one wrong move, Id be known as Little Miss Squashed Ida.

Pray like a saint and paint like a heathen! Grandma sang out, slinging specks of black paint everywhere. Oily dabs speckled my upturned face. I refused to duck. I had to be brave. This had to be crazy. But in Mossy Creek, courage was a given, and crazy was a virtue. Helping Grandma re-paint the aged Mossy Creek welcome sign on the big corn silo was as solemn as a prayer in church, only without hard patent-leather shoes. The silo stood in a sanctuary framed by broad cattle pastures, high, wooded ridges, and blue-green Southern mountains. I stared up at Grandmas painting projectthe tall, faded words of the town slogan.

WELCOME TO MOSSY CREEK

THE TOWN YOU CAN COUNT ON

AINT GOIN NOWHERE, AND DONT WANT TO

Those words had greeted town visitors for generations. The silo faced South Bigelow Road, the country two-lane that led the world to our mountain doorstep with the promise of great charm but also stubborn independence, metropolitan Mossy Creek. You could count on Mossy Creek to stay put, to always be the hometown you remembered, the place you would never forget and never wanted to. We might make only a pinpoint on maps of the world, but that pinpoint was a jewel. And so I, Little Miss Ida The Terrified, vowed to survive and uphold the town motto.