Read Online Rhythm and Bluegrass by Molly Harper - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Molly Harper
Tags: Romance, Contemporary
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Especially when he’s wound up enough to talk to his mama about her. The town grapevine gets a-jangling.”
“His mama?”
She ignored my distressed squeak. “I can’t say anyone deserves it any more than him. Oh, that boy used to give me fits, hiding in the stacks with his little girlfriends for ‘study dates’ and doing who knows what.”
I frowned. “Of course he did.”
She snorted delicately. “Well, he grew up nice. You have to give him that.”
“I don’t have to give him anything,” I said, a bit more tartly.
“Good for you, honey,” she said, grinning at me and patting my hand. I had absolutely no clue what was so funny about my statement.
Miss Earlene had a wealth of news clippings for me to look over. And she saved me the awkwardness of having to go to the Mud Creek Ledger ’s office to ask for access to their archives. A pipe had burst in the newspaper’s press room in 1984, prompting the publisher to move the archives to the library basement. The only things I couldn’t find were photos from the performances of the crowd. The newspaper generally used head shots provided by publicity offices when reporting on events at the music hall.
I showed Miss Earlene how my portable scanner worked, storing hi-res images on my computer and making PDF copies of all relevant newspaper clippings. I intentionally didn’t correct for any yellowing or damage, to preserve their authentic “vintage” appearance. Besides the fact that Miss Earlene wouldn’t have let me take the items from the library, I could not and would not damage original documents by mounting them.
While I worked, Miss Earlene pried the boards loose from the special collections room with an upper-body fortitude you wouldn’t expect of a woman approaching seventy. She flipped on the light inside what looked like a perfectly neat, functional special collections room. My jaw dropped as I stammered, “What— Why?”
“Had a couple of genealogy nuts come through town a few years back and try to clean me out. They thought I wouldn’t put up a fuss when they tried to just waltz out with the only copies of the high school’s yearbooks and property surveys from the year the county was founded. They had the gall to tell me that because the library was so old and the county was so broke, those ‘precious documents’ would be better off in the discerning hands of the descendants of the ‘founding fathers.’” She gave a gentle harrumph and took off her glasses to give them a thorough polishing. “Never mind that those so-called founding fathers only moved to town in the 1880s and then jumped ship at the first sign of drought a few years later.”
“And I take it that you brought their waltz to an abrupt end?”
“I may or may not have convinced them that their ancestors left town under suspicion of ‘livestock worrying,’” she said, throwing the boards aside as I burst out laughing. “After that, I put boards up on the room and only take them down for special cases.”
“Miss Earlene, I think you and I are going to be very good friends,” I called after her as she began searching the shelves.
Her shrunken little form came toddling back to the circulation desk, carrying a pile of books that reached her chin. She plopped them in a perfect stack beside my laptop. “Right back at you, girlie.”
6
In Which I Tangle with Marsupials, Both Living and Dead
No good day ever started with staring down a dead possum.
Thanks to some helpful utility workers, I got the electricity temporarily turned on at the music hall, making my job there much easier. I spent the first few days sifting through mountains of dust and debris. I kept little things, like buttons and guitar picks I found on the floor. Larger items were sealed in Tupperware until I could handle them properly.
I tried to develop a schedule. I worked in the music hall in the mornings, when the building was coolest. In the afternoons, I visited Miss Earlene at the
“His mama?”
She ignored my distressed squeak. “I can’t say anyone deserves it any more than him. Oh, that boy used to give me fits, hiding in the stacks with his little girlfriends for ‘study dates’ and doing who knows what.”
I frowned. “Of course he did.”
She snorted delicately. “Well, he grew up nice. You have to give him that.”
“I don’t have to give him anything,” I said, a bit more tartly.
“Good for you, honey,” she said, grinning at me and patting my hand. I had absolutely no clue what was so funny about my statement.
Miss Earlene had a wealth of news clippings for me to look over. And she saved me the awkwardness of having to go to the Mud Creek Ledger ’s office to ask for access to their archives. A pipe had burst in the newspaper’s press room in 1984, prompting the publisher to move the archives to the library basement. The only things I couldn’t find were photos from the performances of the crowd. The newspaper generally used head shots provided by publicity offices when reporting on events at the music hall.
I showed Miss Earlene how my portable scanner worked, storing hi-res images on my computer and making PDF copies of all relevant newspaper clippings. I intentionally didn’t correct for any yellowing or damage, to preserve their authentic “vintage” appearance. Besides the fact that Miss Earlene wouldn’t have let me take the items from the library, I could not and would not damage original documents by mounting them.
While I worked, Miss Earlene pried the boards loose from the special collections room with an upper-body fortitude you wouldn’t expect of a woman approaching seventy. She flipped on the light inside what looked like a perfectly neat, functional special collections room. My jaw dropped as I stammered, “What— Why?”
“Had a couple of genealogy nuts come through town a few years back and try to clean me out. They thought I wouldn’t put up a fuss when they tried to just waltz out with the only copies of the high school’s yearbooks and property surveys from the year the county was founded. They had the gall to tell me that because the library was so old and the county was so broke, those ‘precious documents’ would be better off in the discerning hands of the descendants of the ‘founding fathers.’” She gave a gentle harrumph and took off her glasses to give them a thorough polishing. “Never mind that those so-called founding fathers only moved to town in the 1880s and then jumped ship at the first sign of drought a few years later.”
“And I take it that you brought their waltz to an abrupt end?”
“I may or may not have convinced them that their ancestors left town under suspicion of ‘livestock worrying,’” she said, throwing the boards aside as I burst out laughing. “After that, I put boards up on the room and only take them down for special cases.”
“Miss Earlene, I think you and I are going to be very good friends,” I called after her as she began searching the shelves.
Her shrunken little form came toddling back to the circulation desk, carrying a pile of books that reached her chin. She plopped them in a perfect stack beside my laptop. “Right back at you, girlie.”
6
In Which I Tangle with Marsupials, Both Living and Dead
No good day ever started with staring down a dead possum.
Thanks to some helpful utility workers, I got the electricity temporarily turned on at the music hall, making my job there much easier. I spent the first few days sifting through mountains of dust and debris. I kept little things, like buttons and guitar picks I found on the floor. Larger items were sealed in Tupperware until I could handle them properly.
I tried to develop a schedule. I worked in the music hall in the mornings, when the building was coolest. In the afternoons, I visited Miss Earlene at the
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