Fair Reads

Fair season is upon us, and while I'm sad to be missing my annual excursion to the Minnesota State Fair, I'm making up for it (sort of) by perusing my favorite Minnesota State Fair references in A Fabulous Fair Alphabet by Debra Frasier and by rereading Charlotte's Web. Do you remember Uncle the big pig in the stall next to Wilbur's? And Templeton's feasting? 

Another fair treat this year is Katherine Hannigan's new middle grade novel True (...Sort Of). We are introduced to Delly Pattison's penchant for inadvertantly drawing trouble in a delightful scene in the Poultry Pavilion of the county fair. A perfect read for a summer afternoon.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if two characters from different books met. I think Tugs and Delly would have quite a time together. That meeting may not take place but I am fortunate to be appearing with Katherine Hannigan this week. If you can, join us at the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Barnes and Noble this Thursday, August 18, at 6pm to hear more about Tugs and Delly and the rest of the gang from The Luck of the Buttons and True (...Sort Of). (Please note, the date listed in Sunday's CR Gazette was incorrect.)

In the meantime, check out this video of Katherine Hannigan talking about her process and the characters of True (...Sort Of). 

Independence Day 1929 to 2011

A fun Luck of the Buttons review appeared online today, written by a twelve-year-old reader who retells a bit of Tugs’s Independence Day 1929. Thanks, Faith McPhee!

It’s hard to believe that it is already mid-summer and Independence Day 2011 is upon us. The Fourth of July is one of my favorite days of summer because all over the country, communities are gathering in celebrations similar to ones I participate in as well as the fictional celebration in Goodhue eighty-two years ago.

The image I had in my head when I first sat down to write a scene of what would become The Luck of the Buttons was of the community Fourth of July event that takes place in the neighborhood where I lived for many years, St. Anthony Park in St. Paul, Minnesota.

There is a parade down Como Avenue. Convertibles carry various local dignitaries and veterans march with flags. When I was a kid, my Grandpa marched with the World War I vets. A vintage fire engine rolls down the avenue followed by a lawn mower brigade, a group that choreographs steps with lawn chairs, clowns of course, school groups, musicians, and more. When all the paraders have passed, children join in on decorated bikes and trikes, then all the spectators follow the parade down the hill to Langford Park. Families claim spots with blankets. Kids wander. Everyone eats. Patriotic essays are read. There are races for all ages, and ribbons.

I dropped Tugs and the Buttons into a Fourth of July like the ones I’ve known and felt immediately at home in Goodhue. Check out the chapters Independence Day, Ribbons, and Click to read about Tugs’s Independence Day.

Enjoy your community celebrations this Fourth of July and may you have many lazy hours for reading this month! 

Just a note: I will be away from the internet until late July, but will respond to your comments and emails when I return. 

Novel and Nouveau...Settling Esther B

One of the things I like about writer Barbara Watson's Novel and Nouveau blog is that she keeps posts concise and to the point. With so many sites to keep up with these days, it's nice to know that when I pop in here, I'll get an interesting, focussed tidbit in a manageable size. 

One of her regular features is Marvelous Middle Grade Monday for which Barbara recently reviewed The Luck of the Buttons. Lucky me. She also asked me to write a guest post about the process of writing the book. It got me thinking about where characters come from, which got me thinking about my dear Grandma B. I pulled out a photo of her and was surprised to find how much she looks like the picture that ended up on the cover of the book. Click over and have a look!

Children Coasting

One of my favorite childhood memories is sledding with my brother and sister at Giggly Hills near the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. We were just steps from home, right in the middle of the city, but when we dipped past the pedestrian path along River Road it felt like we were out in the wilds. 

When I left my friend Jackie Briggs Martin's house in Mount Vernon, Iowa last week, I passed my two favorite signs and it took me right back to my Giggly Hills days. These signs are up year round at the base of a steep city street. In the winter the street is indeed closed so children can sled right down the middle of the street smack in the middle of town. Now that's a town I could live in. But since I can't actually live there, I imagine fictional Goodhue, Iowa, home of Tugs Button in The Luck of the Buttons, to be much like Mount Vernon. Can't wait to visit again. 

 

Thank you, Red Balloon!

Could a publication party be any more fun than this? Button cake, a tiny Thos Britton tombstone like the one that inspired The Luck of the Buttons' Tugs, family, friends, readers, even the family that lives in the Dear Papa house! Oh, and how about selling out of books! Hurray!

A huge thank you to the magnificent staff at The Red Balloon, especially Amy Baum for her extraordinary party planning skills (want to come help with a grad party in California?) and Carol Erdahl for the enthusiastic introduction. Click here to see a few pictures from the day.

The Rowdies

Setting The Luck of the Buttons in 1929 gave me an excuse to peruse newspapers from that year. One of my most charming discoveries was The Brooklyn Standard Union. In the company of headlines like "Woman's Wit Foils Bandits After Payroll" and "Florence Berger Not Worried" I found this gem:

McGUINNESS After Park Rowdies
   Alderman Peter McGUINNESS is making good his threat to war on rowdies who
visit the parks in Greenpoint. He has been seen strolling about the parks for
several nights.

And from there, Goodhue's band of rapscallions, the Rowdies, were born. Luther Tingvold, Walter Williams, Bess McCrea, and Finn and Frankie Chacey mostly lump about parks and alleys looking tough but one never knows where they'll turn up or what their intentions may be. 

Midwest readers, I will see you soon! Come hear more about Tugs, the Rowdies, and other Button tales in St. Paul at The Red Balloon on Saturday or in Iowa City at Prairie Lights on Sunday, 2pm both days. 

Why Iowa...spring

 I'm hoping for a traditional blooming midwest spring when I visit there next week. Today's Why Iowa comes from an email I received from Kara Backlund who described her Iowa day to me. Stunning. And she sent photos.

dogwoodThe dogwood leaves are much bigger than a mouse's ear, and the lilac buds are growing but still very small.  Tulips and hyacinths are blooming, yarrow sprouting, mint resurrecting, dandelions staking their claim. You will be landing, to use a midwestern phrase, smack dab in the middle of a prairie spring!

grape hyacinthI met Kara when she moved to Cedar Rapids from St. Pierre, Manitoba where she taught college English. She is not only a great reader and writer (check out Kara's blog A Peculiar Influence, about her challenge to read a classic a week), she is also an extraordinary baker.

I loved this story Kara told me about her baking life so will share it with you, too. To see photos and find out where to buy her baked goods, join Pumpernickel Place on Facebook.  

I grew up watching my mom and grandmas bake. I remember sitting at my paternal grandma's formica kitchen table in her log cabin in Alaska while she shaped 20 loaves of bread; her weekly baking! My other grandma made a pie every day and always packed a piece in my grandpa's lunch box, which made the other guys on his crew of the Illinois Highway Department a little jealous.  She approached the daily pies and all her other baking and canning in a matter of fact way. I never felt that there was anything mysterious or complicated about baking; it was just something that people did, like cutting their own hair and changing the oil in their own cars.

After a few years of making cookies, I baked my first loaf of bread at age 20; as a poor grad student I found it was cheaper to make it than buy it and I made about 4 loaves of bread a week that year, and gave away many tins of cookies as Christmas gifts. My mom and I baked and decorated my 4 tier wedding cake.

Over time I taught myself, with my mother and grandmothers' help, to make yeast breads, cakes, pies, cookies, graham crackers and other things. In Manitoba, I never even thought of selling my creations because nearly everyone baked their own things. Suddenly when I moved to Cedar Rapids, there was demand!

Last year my stand at the farmers market was successful, and I hope for a similar response this year. I teach myself new recipes and techniques through books and youtube videos. Friends and family get to eat the mistakes, and the successes too.  My newest (and oldest) fun ingredient that I haven't had a chance to use yet: a sourdough starter that journeyed the Oregon Trail in the 1800s!

Why Iowa...family

Last week I wrote about my decision to set The Luck of the Buttons in Iowa. It got me thinking about the notion of place and what qualities people value in their home states. Several Iowans have shared their thoughts, with a few more to come, including today's guest writer, Katie Mills Giorgio. Look for other states to be represented soon, including the reflections of school children in Hawaii. 

Katie Mills Giorgio is a freelance writer living, working and raising a family in her hometown of Cedar Rapids. She writes for dozens of newspapers, magazines and websites (and even sometimes just for fun!) and hopes to someday make the leap into the world of children’s literature. You can read more about her writing life at katiemillsgiorgio.wordpress.com

I am proud to say I was born in the great state of Iowa (my birthday is actually the same date Iowa officially became a state way back in 1846!) But growing up, we moved around a lot so I'm not a lifelong resident of the state.

It's interesting though when I look back on all of our moves that Iowa remains a constant. We moved to Illinois but Iowa pulled us back. Then we went all the way down south to Georgia...again Iowa pulled us back. I tried Illinois again after college, only to be pulled back to Iowa.

Admittedly, the last move back to Iowa (now more than seven years ago) was my own choice. I was about to start my own family and have always known I wanted to raise my kids in my hometown of Cedar Rapids.

I've loved something about all the places I've lived. But Iowa—Cedar Rapids, in fact—means the most. It means family and fun because we are lucky enough to be surrounded by relatives. It means having a big backyard to run and play in. It means living in a city with a downtown we love to frequent. But it also means we are close to wide open spaces. We pick strawberries in the summer, apples in the fall and go chop down our own Christmas tree. And my son wouldn’t let me forget that Iowa means some pretty delicious sweet corn.

So maybe all of those years I wasn't just being pulled back. Iowa was simply calling me home.

Why Iowa...small towns

Thank you to Monica Leo for sharing her Why Iowa thoughts today from her cultural jewel in West Liberty, Iowa.

Monica is a first generation American, born to German refugees in the waning days of World War Two.  After the war, her parents ordered a set of Kasperle hand puppets from a German craftswoman, and Monica was hooked.  Since 1975, she has been creating and performing as founder and principal puppeteer of  Eulenspiegel Puppet Theatre.  Eulenspiegel’s home is Owl Glass Puppetry Center, a tiny center in the small town of West Liberty, Iowa. Monica lives in a log cabin in the woods with her carpenter husband, John Jenks.

When I started touring with the puppets, one of my surprising discoveries was the diversity in this seemingly white bread state.  Living in Iowa City, as I did at that time, I had learned to believe that rural areas (and people) were essentially all cut out of the same cloth.  Was I ever wrong!  Places like Amana and Manning celebrated their German heritage, as reflected in the pace of the school residencies my puppet partner and I did (work hard; take a nice break; too much rushing around has a negative effect on quality).  Columbus Junction was one hundred per cent blonde and blue-eyed the first time we worked there; imagine my surprise when we came back to a school that was fifty per cent Latino!  And Postville!  We watched Postville go from German/Scandinavian to Latino/Central European/Hassidic Jewish! 

In western Iowa, we made friends with Floyd Pearce and reveled in his amazing print shop, located in one-street Cumberland, in which he published exquisite books using antique letterpress technology.  He took us to tiny Mt. Aetna to meet his friend Merrill, an accomplished pianist who’d played in venues all over the United States.  Merrill lived in an ordinary looking ranch style house that revealed itself as a veritable art gallery when we entered.  He’d shared the house for some years with Isadora Duncan’s former private secretary.

We even worked at the Maharishi Elementary School of the Age of Enlightenment in Fairfield.  Having no idea where it was located,  we asked a college student, who hopped into our van and said he’d show us the way.  “What are you doing here?” he asked.  “Puppets.”   A little later he repeated his question.  “Puppets,” I said.  “We’re making puppets with the kids...and doing puppet shows!”  “Oh,” he said, “I thought you were speaking metaphorically.”

I’ve come to believe that Iowa’s soul is most visible in its smallest towns.

Why Iowa...serendipity

WHY IOWA continues as I hear from more artists and writers who share what it means to live, work, and play in Iowa. If you have thoughts or images on this subject, email me here. Not an Iowan? What is it about your state that sets it apart? Why (insert your state here)? Look for a photo gallery coming soon, and knitters, don't forget to read this and submit your entry to win Michelle Edwards's A Knitter's Home Companion. 

I was introduced to author and artist Claudia McGehee over a bowl of soup at Devotay in Iowa City on the coldest, snowiest of Iowa days. The author and illustrator of  A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet and Where Do Birds Live? among other wonderful books and works of art celebrating the natural world, Claudia turned our conversation to dreams of spring and the transformation that would occur in Iowa. A picnic was planned for May, in a cemetery that is home to a tall grass prairie; the picnic where I would meet Tugs Button. Serendipity! Enjoy Claudia's thoughts on Iowa and serendipity. 

Prairie Sunset, scratchboard and watercolor by Claudia McGehee

I made several moves as a young adult before my husband and I finally planted in Iowa nearly 20 years ago. Introducing myself to every new home, I followed the old adage “To know the land is to know the people”.  Maybe this stems from my former occupation of archaeologist, where geography literally does inform on past populations and individuals. But there’s also a spiritual, romantic component to looking at the land and wondering about those who’ve been here before me.

Just before we moved out to Iowa from Washington state, my dad reminded me that a few of my ancestors had lived in Iowa in the 1800’s.  A few continued on to Oregon and Washington (my great-grandparents met on a westward bound wagon train on the Oregon Trail!), but some stayed on in Little Sioux, Iowa (close to the Nebraska border).  A couple summers ago, we found these pioneering family members in a little cemetery nestled at the bottom on the Loess Hills. It was strange to think that I wasn’t the first in my clan to stand in the tallgrass prairies that I had grown to love so. I realized that for me, to know this land, Iowa, is to also know my family. And to also know myself.

Why Iowa...prairies

I had a chance meeting with Iowa author Jacqueline Briggs Martin just before I moved to Iowa from Minnesota. Call me when you arrive, Jackie said, and I'll show you around. She was as good as her word and our friendship grew over picnics and walks by creeks and through prairies.

Jackie is the award winning author of nineteen books for children including her latest, The Chiru of High Tibet, which was chosen as a Junior Literary Guild selection for January 2011 and has been named an Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students K-12. Read about Jackie's journey to Tibet here.

Why Iowa, Jackie?

Prairie is one reason why. Most of our prairie has been lost to the plow, but there are remnants, wonderful remnants, including the Rochester Cemetery, where Mother Button is inspired by a gravestone to give her unborn child the name “Tugs Button.”

This little patch, where the soil has never been turned,  really does almost buzz with wildflowers in the spring of each year—shooting stars,  columbine, Solomon’s Seal, trillium, even yellow ladies’ slippers on a hidden hillside.

Looking at these flowers you’d think they were the “action” on a prairie. But the real action is underground where the roots and rhizomes go down almost as far as the plants go up,  making a dense mat of plant support. That’s why the plants could survive those roaring prairie fires that took down oak trees and sent bison running for their lives. Those roots just lay low and waited, and the next spring sent up another round of green.

We can make a prairie in a few years. Plant the forbs (flowering plants) and grasses, pull the weeds, do an occasional burn.  Soon we’ll see flowers. But it takes a hundred years to restore the roots and rhizomes.

Many in Iowa still love these flowers, gifts of time and climate, and are working to restore prairie plants to our roadsides and small pockets of vacant land. 

Writers need a place to go to wander, to take in, to add to “the well” from which they draw. A walk in one of Iowa’s  prairies does that for me.

Why Iowa...inspiration

Five years ago, as I was considering a move to Iowa, I searched the internet for author/illustrator Michelle Edwards. We had met once, just before she left St. Paul for Iowa City. What is it like? I wrote. Her immediate response: I love Iowa. She later welcomed me when I moved to Iowa and we became great friends.

Michelle is the author and illustrator of  A Knitter’s Home Companion, an enticing collection of essays, knitting patterns and recipes, as well as numerous books for children, and is a regular columnist in the Lion Brand Yarn Co. newsletter.

Here are Michelle's Why Iowa thoughts:

from A Knitter's Home Companion by Michelle EdwardsIt took me a long time to fall in love with Iowa. At first, the rolling vistas of vast greenness, the calmness of Iowans, and the quiet of day to day living, spooked me. Now, it inspires me.

Many other places hold a piece of my heart, too. The Hudson River Valley where I grew up. Vermont where I spent my summers at Camp Hochelaga. And Israel where I studied and worked and do so deeply hope to return someday.  After years of being unsettled, Iowa is where I have landed. It is where I have hung up my curtains, grown deep roots, and found a good life.

Win a copy of A Knitter’s Home Companion! Enjoy Michelle’s charming illustrations, delicious recipes (Mitten Lady Soup is a favorite at our house), patterns, and insightful essays.

Enter by submitting an email with your name and the name of a place that inspires you.

One entry only, please! Submit by by 5 pm. PST Tuesday, May 3, 2011. The lucky winner will be announced the next day.

See more Why Iowa thoughts here.

Why Iowa

When I moved away from the Midwest, I was surprised at how many people confuse Iowa with Ohio and Idaho. It’s true that the vowel-laden names sound similar to ears that don’t hear them frequently, and all three are land-locked states, so what sets Iowa apart?

Today I’ll share why I set The Luck of the Buttons in Iowa. Learn more about Iowa by checking back in the following days as several authors, artists, and others answer the question, Why Iowa?

Young Corn - Grant WoodI was living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa when I got the inspiration for The Luck of the Buttons. (Read about Tugs Button here.) But the reason for setting the fictional town of Goodhue in Iowa goes deeper than that.

Iowa has at once a wideness of space and a closeness of community that is enticing.

New Road - Grant Wood
Waiting for the Parade - Marvin ConeThe paintings of Cedar Rapids natives Grant Wood and Marvin Cone illustrate the sense of wideness and closeness of landscape and people that captivated me. I visited their work at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art as I settled my imagination into the atmosphere of Iowa, 1929. I could see Tugs, Ned, and the rest here.

Stone City - Grant Wood

Do you have a Why Iowa thought you’d like to share? Add a comment below. If you’d like to write a guest post or share an image on this topic, email me here.

Have a Listen

When I was a kid, listening to an audio book meant slipping a record out of its sleeve, lifting the heavy lid of the stereo cabinet, balancing the record on the spindle, waiting for the record to drop, then lowering the needle carefully so as not to scratch the surface and cause one line to repeat over and over.

The book I remember listening to most often was Robert McCloskey’s Homer Price. Just say the word “donut” and the distinctive voice of that narrator comes back to me instantly, bright and lively, a sit-down-here-and-let-me-tell-you-a-story voice. On those lazy summer afternoons, I felt as though Robert McCloskey himself was curled up inside that cabinet, telling me over and over again about Homer and the donut shop.

The Luck of the Buttons was released last week in audio book and when I got my first listen I couldn’t stop smiling. The charming voice of Laura Hamilton takes me right back to those blissful hours sprawled out on the floor in front of the stereo cabinet.

Hear a sample here and see if Ms. Hamilton doesn’t leave you with a craving for pie and lazy summer afternoons.

Thank you, Librarians!

Miss Lucy, the librarian, was the most exotic person of Tugs's acquaintance. Unmarried, yet not a widow or an old maid, taller even than Uncle Elmer, with wavy sunset-orange hair skimming her belt, and a warm whispery voice, she seemed completely unaware of Tugs's lack of academic prowess whenever she chose books for her. (The Luck of the Buttons, p. 44)

It's book launch day for The Luck of the Buttons and it's also National Library Workers Day. I know Tugs would want to say THANK YOU to Miss Lucy and I'd like to thank librarians everywhere for the work they do to connect readers with books and information. 

I grew up going to the Roosevelt branch of the Minneapolis Public Library where my own Miss Lucy, Lucy Selander, seemed to have magical powers. She would stand in front of the shelves of books, look over at me with a long pause, maybe ask a question or two, then turn back and peruse the shelves while I held my breath, wondering what treasure she'd retrieve. 

Lucy was also the librarian behind the counter when I signed up for my first library card. Because I had an older sister, I knew that in order to get my card I had to be able to print my full name. Anne was easy, but my middle name, Elizabeth, seemed an endless stream of letters. I practiced and practiced at home and was so proud to walk into the library that day and ask for a card.

Lucy passed a card and a pen across the counter. I remember sounding out Elizabeth as I wrote: Eliz za beth. Elizzabeth. I passed the card back for approval. Lucy praised my neat printing then asked me if I was sure that my middle name had two z's. Yes, I said. I'm sure. I pronounced it out loud for her. To her great credit, Lucy did not dampen my big moment by correcting me. She simply smiled, congratulated me, and handed me my card. I've been proud to carry a library card ever since. 

 Thank you, Lucy!

Through the Lens

Tugs looked down through her camera’s viewfinder and pivoted slowly all the way around and down and up. It was like watching a movie, seeing the bandstand, the bakery, the soft evening sky go by in that tiny frame. These were the same ordinary sights she’d been seeing her whole life, but suddenly they were sharp and beautiful, like little jewels collected in a box. (The Luck of the Buttons, p 102)

My first camera was a Kodak Brownie Box, the Hawkeye model. It was my summer of being twelve and Dutch Elm Disease was rampant in Minneapolis. City workers painted red lines around the trunks of doomed trees on the boulevards on my street, and though the infected trees appeared healthy, they were to be cut down within the week.

I remember standing in the middle of the street looking down through the lens of my Brownie at the long rows of elms. I noticed for the first time the perfect arch they made of the three-block length of 47^th Avenue. I couldn’t save our beloved trees, but the act of taking a picture made me feel empowered, like I was witnessing and preserving a small piece of my neighborhood’s history. 

It was a piece of Kodak camera history that led me to setting The Luck of the Buttons in the year 1929. The first Brownie came out in 1900 and was made expressly to put photography in the hands of children. In 1930, to celebrate the company's 50^th Anniversary, Kodak gave free Brownie cameras to children who turned twelve that year. 

I set my story in 1929 because I wanted Tugs to have a camera before most of her friends. I chose the Number 2 F Model for Tugs, which came in five colors. She was able to get her favorite color, green. And, lucky me, I found one just like it on ebay. 82 years old and it still works!

Enter the cat...meet Leopold

This is my great-grandmother's cat, so docile on her lap. She's knitting and he's not even chasing the yarn. But I have a cat that looks remarkably like this one and my cat can act demure and innocent one moment, then get into mischief as soon as I turn my back.

So it is with The Luck of the Buttons's Leopold, who belongs to the elderly Thompson sisters but, unbeknownst to them, finds adventures all over town. 

Leopold outsized most raccoons. His belly hung so low he collected all manner of leaves and ground scraps, which he then left on the library carpet every time someone let his shaggy self through the door. You could always tell where Leopold had been when you went into the library, as there was a trail of leaves and grass marking his path, like Hansel and Gretel's crumbs. Usually he went to the children's area, because he got lots of attention there until somebody's mother shooed him out. Then he went scurrying in a straight line for the door, mewing as if maimed. 

How a cat that fat had gotten himself up in the apple tree Tugs couldn't imagine. But sure enough, there he was, the tiny sisters carrying on beneath the tree.

The Plot Thickens

This is another family photo that has fascinated me for years. Most of the pictures we have from that era are posed, taken for an occasion. So, like the porch picture I wrote about yesterday, I've long wondered who had a camera on this trip. Where is this group going and where have they been? How long have they been stranded? 

Again, I imagined Tugs looking through the lens. I imagined that the man was a stranger who'd chanced along. What was his business, appearing on a country road out of nowhere?

Meet Harvey Moore, a slick and optimistic newsman on his way to deliver progress to Goodhue, Iowa. He's come to help, so why is Tugs wary?

Meet the Buttons

A framed enlargement of this picture has hung on a wall in each of my last three houses. It is a family photograph with my grandmother's handwriting on the back: 1927 House north of town. My grandma is the one standing next to the door. Her in-laws are seated on the edge of the porch, holding my Aunt Sylvia.

Who's house is this, north of town? Why is the window broken? Why are the chickens running around? There is another picture taken just a moment before or after, without the chickens. I could find the answers to these questions easily, but because wondering about it is half the fun, I haven't asked. 

Most of all, I've wondered, why was the picture taken at all, and who is behind the camera? As a writing exercise I tried starting a story with this scene. I wrote as if this weren't my family at all, but some strangers I was encountering for the first time. After a few flat starts, Tugs Button (see yesterday's post) popped into my head as a spunky twelve-year-old girl with a new camera. This is my family, she seemed to say. Let me tell you about them. 

When something went wrong in the Button family, they shrugged, they sighed, they shook their heads. “Just our luck,” the Buttons said. 

Tell me more, I said to Tugs. And she did. 

Aggie, Felicity, Mary Louise...Tugs?

The countdown is on! The Luck of the Buttons launches one week from today.

This is the story of twelve year old Tugs Button, a girl born to a luckless family. The Buttons are content with their lives of misfortune until the summer of 1929 when Tugs decides to become the first lucky Button.

Where does the name Tugs come from?

Several springs ago I was on a picnic with writer friends in a rare tall grass prairie that happens to be in a rural Iowa cemetery. While searching for wildflowers we stumbled across this Civil War era headstone.

Tugs! I said. Now there's a name with scope for the imagination!

I went home to try to write a story about a boy named Tugs who fights in the war. By the time I got to my notebook I remembered the last name as Button, not Britton as on the tombstone, perhaps because I'd recently been to the Pearl Button Museum in Muscantine, Iowa.

But Tugs was elusive, and the Civil War story just didn't emerge.

The next spring we went back for another picnic and I looked at the stone more closely. Not only was the last name Britton, not Button, but the first name was actually THOS, short for Thomas, not Tugs at all. 

Hmmm...I thought...what if someone else made the same mistake? What if...

Tomorrow: how I met the Button family.