She’d toyed with the idea…

She’d toyed with the idea of going for the ultra luxurious and updating the linens with 400 thread count sheets, the rooms with new fixtures, hiring a chef to manage a gourmet menu and maybe even limo rides from Fort Worth, Dallas or Austin to Chancy. But after she’d unpacked, and settled in for a day or two, cleaned and aired out the old house she realized she was off track. She didn’t want to turn Creekside into something it wasn’t, and she sure couldn’t turn Chancy into a posh little retreat town. Why would she want to when there was so much character here to begin with?

Her mind kept churning over the images. How to capitalize on the town’s character and sense of home. What would people do around here? Bette had always been busy during the week in late August when Chancy had it’s annual Peanut Festival. All eight rooms were booked and bursting at the seams. But the rest of the summers always seemed so slow and lazy. Which was fine when Bette had baked and pickled goods to sell at local markets and just enough business to cover the bills.

Jessie rubbed her neck and looked away from the computer screen. Only thirty minutes and she’d input all of the guests from the last year’s worth of business. She leaned back on the bench she sat on and stretched. Can I be content, she thought, just making enough to get by? To just buy groceries, pay the bills and keep up the house?

She didn’t think so. She didn’t think of herself as materialistic, it wasn’t the expensive things that only more money could buy that she craved. But she did want to be a success. She wanted to be good at what she did, whatever it was. Okay, who was she kidding- she wanted to be great at whatever she did. And in some part of her heart she wanted Bette and her daddy to be proud of her. She wanted to show them that she took pride in what the Hathaway family had built over the years here. No, she wasn’t about to start peanut farming, but she wanted to see this place, this town thriving again. She wanted to see the empty store fronts down Main Street open with new business, she wanted to see the town alive again with people young and old. She wanted to breathe some life back into the beauty that was small-town America.

Before she could get lost in poetic daydreams Buck scratched at the back door. Jessie rolled up from the bench and sat up. The clock in the hallway showed 11:15 a.m. She’d let the morning get away from her. She let Buck in who went straight for his water bowl. She grabbed the earpiece for her wireless phone and said, “Call Kat.”

As the phone rang quietly in her ear she pulled down a large cast-iron skillet from the rack over the over-sized kitchen island. “Time to see if I can whip up some chicken friend steak as good as Bette,” she said to Buck.

When Kat answered the phone, all she heard was the clanging of iron and copper as the pot rack came crashing down onto the island.

Jessie pulled the truck around to the right and into the old barn…

Jessie pulled the truck around to the right and into the old barn turned six-car garage. Now that’s something to figure out, she thought. Parking for guests when I’ve got eight guest rooms I want to fill and only room for five cars. She let Buck out and headed towards the house. She remembered the summer she’d helped Earl and Jimmy lay the stones for the walkway from the barn to the house. Well, she didn’t help so much as she held the rubber mallet. She was very good and holding things she’d been told.

Creekside had a beautiful wrap-around porch that went all the way around the house. The back portion was actually screened off and at some point had been extended a bit wider. There were rocking chairs, a rocking love seat and some café-sized tables and chairs. Jessie remembered learning to play dominoes from Aunt Bette on the back porch on a slow summer afternoon. Bette didn’t believe in letting kids win just because they were kids. Jessie actually had never beaten Bette at dominoes, probably because she cheated Jessie thought with a smirk.

As she went up the back steps Buck trotted off towards the gazebo. About a hundred yards from the house, only green grass led the way towards the simple gazebo. Aunt Bette hadn’t had a green thumb, and never put in a flower garden. But with the creek flowing in the distance Jessie thought that just a few flowers, maybe some Black-eyed Susan’s or daisies around the gazebo would complete the picture. She knew Buck would sleep away the better part of the morning in the shade of the gazebo, and come in around lunch time, or whenever he thought he heard her get into the fridge.

There were two doors to the back porch, one from the kitchen and another from the den. Jessie headed into the kitchen. On the long kitchen table, fashioned from sturdy oak some eighty years before she’d been born, Jessie eyed the half-dozen or so guest books. She wondered if these were even all the books. Bette Hathaway hadn’t been a very organized businesswoman. She made sure her guests were well accommodated and fed regularly but she’d never put much effort into book keeping, marketing or anything else business oriented. The golden jewel of advertising, word-of-mouth, had blessed her Jessie thought.

But four years out of business might have eliminated that blessing. Jessie couldn’t even remember any “regulars” over the course of years, but she’d only spent three of the twelve months out of the year here. She picked up the most recent book, flipped it open and then reached for her laptop. Well, now’s the best time to get started on her customer database. Getting up and in business soon was important.

Jessie had left B&C in good standing, and with a good chunk of money put away into savings of one kind or another. That coupled with the fact that Creekside had been paid off and in the family for a few generations put her in a comfortable spot to start up on her own. But she knew the dangers of getting too comfortable. Her little nest egg wouldn’t last forever. Her general plan had been to leverage her PR skills, with her Aunt Bette’s amazing recipes; Creekside’s natural beauty and the ever-growing need for upwardly mobile, young professionals to seek refuge from their hectic schedules and dispose of their disposable income.

Jessie stepped to the edge of the sidewalk…

Jessie stepped to the edge of the sidewalk on Main St. and felt Buck come up against her leg. She looked up and down the street, remembering what it had been like as a kid.

Across from the radio station had been a five and dime, but the space was empty now. Next-door was Carlene’s Beauty Shop where all the ladies in and around town got their hair done, usually weekly. Weaver’s drug store was next, and Jessie had been happy to find out they still had the soda counter and made the best dang cherry Coke in the world.

She could remember sitting on the stools in Weaver’s as her daddy spun her around. Lou had always brought Jessie to Chancy in the summer. He’d stay for a week then head back home. Jessie knew her mother preferred to travel without her in tow so Lou always took his second week of vacation with his wife, to give her the attention she craved.

Her dad, Jessie remembered, had always ordered a malted and made sure that whoever was working the counter knew they had to make the best cherry Coke in the world for his favorite girl in the whole wide world.

Jessie looked past Weaver’s to two other empty storefronts. One had been an office of some kind, which now had butcher paper in the windows, and the other was the big store- Bailey’s. Bailey’s was the closest thing Chancy had to a department store since the end of the depression and had always been fun to run around as a kid. Mr. Bailey had let her play office at his big oak desk, and draw up her own ads for the store. One time she’d even helped Mrs. Bailey put up a window display for the Peanut Festival. She’d heard they’d closed up the store about six years ago and retired in Alvarado to be close to their daughter who taught school there.

As she stepped off the curb towards her truck she thought it looked almost like the town was being slowly erased. Sure the peanut factory was still up and running and there was enough commerce to keep the town moving along its self-sufficient route. They even had an annual peanut festival that drew in crowds from some of the surrounding small towns, and always pulled in a few “city folk” looking for a nostalgic weekend.

Buck hopped into the cab when she opened the door to the cab of the truck. As he settled into the passenger seat she started the engine and the wheels in her head began to turn too.

Now what did Chancy have to offer now-a-days that could help her bring in more of those “city folk” to Creekside for those nostalgic weekend stays? They were just far enough north of the hill country where she couldn’t organize day trips to a vineyard or mineral springs. As she turned off Main and headed down 142 she asked Buck, “What is it about Chancy babe?”

About a mile past Mable’s she took the turn off towards Creekside and thought- this. This is what it is about Chancy. She’d looked forward to coming over this small hill and down towards the house every summer. There was just something about how the land just seemed to roll out like a green welcome carpet. A few sparse mesquite trees and some cactus, near the county road, then the quarter mile of well-worn road that led to Creekside. There was just something about seeing that beautiful white house, anchored on each side with two giant oak trees. As a kid she’d always known that about half way down the road Aunt Bette would open the front door and spread her arms open wide until Jessie ran into them. Today the house itself looked like it had its arms open wide ready to greet anyone who rolled up to it.

How exactly Jimmy John Harrison was her cousin she couldn’t remember…

How exactly Jimmy John Harrison was her cousin she couldn’t remember, but he’d always been Cousin Jimmy, or Jimmy John if he’d gotten into trouble with Bette. She remembered how her summer visits wouldn’t be complete without seeing his latest impersonation. A man born out of time, she thought to herself, and just a little “special”. Special in that “bless his heart” way that translated from Southeren-ese into English meaning “darn fool.”

She gave him a whistle and a “hubba hubba” look as she opened the studio door to the small KCHY radio station. Jimmy was sporting his Elvis 1960 Comeback Special look today. Thank gawd it wasn’t the white jumpsuit. Then she remembered he saved that for special occasions. Jimmy was wrapping up the weather report and reminding all the listeners in “radio land” about the sale on weed and feed next week for their beautiful southern summer lawns when Jessie saw Buck was at his feet.

“Sorry,” she said as Jimmy signed off and switched on some Hank Sr.

“Hey no problem cuz,” Jimmy said as he swiveled his chair to look out on Main Street, “I guess ol’ Buck got tired of watching beautiful downtown Chancy from the passenger side of your ride.”

He gave her a wink and said, “So I hear Ernie Craw is gonna fix you up with a handy man,” which he followed up with an obnoxious six shooter hand gesture.

“Um…nope.” She reached into the fridge at the back of the room to grab a Dr. Pepper, “Earl’s gonna come by and show me what I need to do just to make the place presentable again so I can get some photos taken for new brochures. I’m sure you’d come out and help if you weren’t so swamped here, right cuz?”

“Sure, sure, sure. But you know how show biz is huh-ney,” he said with his best Elvis lip twitch and a spin of the swivel chair.

With a slow swig she nodded, “Yeah. Okay killer. Just popped in to say hey. I’m off to enter Creekside’s last year of customers into a database.”

“First of all, the Killer was Jerry Lee,” he said as he got up and grabbed his own drink, “and second, why on earth would you dig through those old books when you’re needin’ to drum up new biz?”

With a roll of her neck Jessie smiled, “Just looking to tap into some latent customer loyalty, nostalgia, word-of-mouth buzz, get a geographic picture of previous customers, and how on earth did you hear about Ernest Craw’s nephew the handy man?”

“I’m the information hub of the greater Chancy area,” he grinned.

“Apparently.”

“You’ve just forgotten how quickly news and matchmaker plots travel around here,” Jimmy grinned, “and young singles have to watch out for the matchmakers in town. Surely you anticipated the good ladies of Chancy getting involved in your personal life.”

With a final swig of her Dr. Pepper she rolled her eyes, “yeah but I’ve only been here like two weeks. And I didn’t expect the men to want to match-make.”

“Oh you know it was ol’ Clara Craw behind the match making. Poor Ernest is probably just trying to get the old nag off his back. Truth is Jeff ain’t a bad fella, and you don’t have much to worry about. I think he’s more interested in…,” Jimmy raised his left eyebrow and nodded, “someone of his own gender.”

“Great,” Jessie said as she tossed her can into the trash, “Now I’m going to have to avoid getting into a small-town, closeted love triangle?”

With a mischievous glint in his eye Jimmy said,“Hey all I hear is he likes art and when he goes into Fort Worth for a weekend on the town he ain’t exactly swigging beers at Billy Bob’s.”

Jessie rolled her eyes and gave Jimmy’s chair a kick with her foot, “Oh well that settles it I’m sure.”

“No need to unleash the sarcasm on me, I’m just letting you know not to get your heart set on JC courting you.”

Jessie leaned up and headed towards the door, “Well thanks for the heads up. I’ve got some data crunching to do. Hey you wanna come out on Sunday for supper? I need to dust off the pots and pans.”

Jimmy grinned, “Chicken fried steak?”

“Can’t change the house specialty can I?”

“I’m there. See you after services.”

Jessie was grinding her teeth as she rubbed her temples…

Jessie was grinding her teeth as she rubbed her temples on aisle three of five in Chancy’s Hardware. “What does it matter,” she mumbled to herself as she looked at the bins of nails, “I mean really.”

“Well…it depends on what you’re working with,” said a soothing male voice that was music to her ears.

“Oh, thank goodness Earl,” Jessie grinned, “I couldn’t find you when I came in.”

It still boggled her mind that folks in Chancy felt safe enough to walk and talk to the business next door, or not lock their cars and houses. It was still the big city in her that probably would never completely fade.

“Oh I popped next door to tell Jimmy to announce the sale next week on the weed and feed,” Earl smiled as he hooked his thumbs on the straps of his overalls. Earl Higgins had owned Chancy Hardware all of Jessie’s life. His daddy before him had owned it, and his grand-daddy had opened it when the railway expanded through Chancy. He had always been on hand to help Aunt Bette out at Creekside. Chancy Hardware was next door to KCHY radio where her cousin Jimmy kept the locals in a five thousand watt radius apprised of “goings on” and humming to a variety of tunes.

“That Jimmy is a character, bless his heart. He just fancies himself the Big Bopper,” Earl chuckled as he reached up to scratch a tuft of white hair above his ear.

“I guess,” Jessie said and bit her lower lip, “What kind of nails do I need to patch the floorboards under the stairwell and the planks on the gazebo? Oh, and two of the kitchen cabinets are loose at the hinges so I need smaller nails for that right?”

Jess squatted down and grabbed a paper sack next to the nail buckets. Then she looked up at Earl who was smiling down on her like a balding, benevolent Santa Clause. “Now sugar, you’re gonna need screws for the cabinets, maybe new hinges, and you’re going to need maybe finishing nails for that storage room floor, and you’ll need some framing nails for that gazebo.”

As Jessie started to pick up his recommendations Earl asked, “Honey don’t you want some help? I’m not as spry as I was but I know I can get you a handy man to help get the old place back in ship shape.”

Jessie sighed as she stood up and leaned back against the stack of ladders. “Earl it isn’t like the place is falling down around me when you drive up, but every place I turn there’s something that needs mending or fixing or refinishing. How on God’s green earth did Aunt Bette do it all those years? I don’t think Bob Villa could keep up with this old house.”

Earl draped an arm around her shoulders, “Well, you gotta figure an old house is just like an old body I suppose. Sometimes it’s the spirit inside of it that keeps it going, even if it’s starting to creak a bit here and there.”

At that Jessie grinned, “True enough. And I’m determined to breathe some Hathaway spirit back into Creekside. It’s just hard to grasp how four years without Aunt Bette there could have made such a difference. You’d think the old place had been abandoned for a decade.”

“Oh that house is just like Bette, solid foundation and a great frame,” Earl said with a waggle of his eyebrows, which caused Jessie to laugh. “You’ll get her in ship shape soon enough. Town can’t wait for you to open up again and bring some new business into Chancy.”

“Gee thanks, no pressure.”

“No pressure, just friendly encouragement.”

With a pat on the back and a push towards the door Earl had Jessie heading outside. “Now you go say hey to your cousin and head on back home. I’ll send you some help this afternoon.”

“Well, okay,” Jessie said as she was scuttled out the door. She walked the ten steps to the radio station next door and made a face at Jimmy through the window.