Slow, Slow-Quick, Quick
by
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Bouie wanted to know if I was a Yankee. I had not thought about it, so I said no. Such things were important in those days, though I did not know why. I had just moved south. Mother said that moving into a new town was not easy, but that I’d make friends. It seemed okay to say I was not a Yankee although Kentucky was not exactly the south. Three of us went to the movies that first week. Mrs. Hamilton gave her son, ML, a half-dollar to take the three of us. His name was Merwin Louis, but the family called him ML. The movie was the Lone Ranger with four cartoons, two Elmer Fudds and two Roadrunners. We had enough money left for candy bars, so we stuffed ourselves because my mom gave me a quarter, and Bouie had money too. Remembering those early days is like being in a movie. Feelings were not profound, but making friends required effort. I was a good runner, and could easily outrun the other two and showed off. When ML suggested we race to the corner from the theater box office, I got there first. It established me as okay. Bouie was a nice slow poke. He made up for his athletic shortcomings by using imagination. "My Aunt Lucille sleeps in the same bed that General Sherman slept in," he said. "Cool," I replied. I had no idea who General Sherman was. My new friends decided to show me the sights: the statue of Longstreet on the military college campus, and the tunnel beneath the Old Capitol building steps that was supposed to run across town to The Mansion on the Woman’s College campus. "Used," they said, "to keep the governor out of the rain. Milledgeville was the antebellum capitol of Georgia, don’t you know. A Capitol during the Civil War." Bouie liked using the word "antebellum". "Cool," I said. They showed me the sliding fire escape on the side of a girls’ dormitory at the college; the largest pyracantha bush in the state; and finally, the underground drain pipe at the back of the cemetery. It ran to the City Hall and branched off to other places in the city. I could smell the dampness and see cobwebs. "There’s lots of rats in there," Bouie said. "They’ll bite the heck out of you," added ML. I took a last look and vowed I would not venture there. "Is your dad a Democrat?" Bouie asked. I didn’t know, but I said that I thought so. "We don’t allow Republicans in town," he said. "You own a bike?" "Schwinn," I said. "That’s good. You got a BB gun?" "Naw." "Well, you got to get you one because all the guys got BB guns. We hunt."
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About the Book
Slow, Slow-Quick, Quick is set in 1952 in a small town where one can count on others for friendship and advice; where playground battles are settled without guns or knives. Jimmy Merritt moves to town in the summer before sixth grade, and becomes best friends with Bouie and ML. Innocence awakens as the boys face life’s challenges. Sometimes they manage affairs quite well. At other times, mistakes cause them to suffer. DeeDee Rose becomes Jimmy’s first love, but an older boy enters the scene. ML, the show-off, almost loses his best friend because of his antics; Bouie sometimes places self-interest above others. Parents’ influences are never far away, yet Jimmy notes that they are, sometimes, "Mostly out of it." Simply put, Slow, Slow-Quick, Quick is a charming book with a clarity of vision easily identifiable to young adult and older readers. It will make you nostalgic for a more gentle time; it will make you smile to recall when you discovered that another thought you were special, and you had never considered it; it will make you laugh to remember how you escaped from certain danger because you were lucky. It might make you sad that you never celebrated a time when you could hit the target without thinking, or run faster than all others. It will make you recall the entry of the older person into your life, who might have changed your world for the first time. Time was, then, like a dance, Slow--Slow--Quick--Quick.
About the Author
When you spend your life teaching in secondary schools, you learn a lot about adolescence. I told stories for forty years, hence, Slow, Slow – Quick, Quick. I grew up in a small, college town and went to a military high school and lived at home. My dad was a college administrator. The campus was a great place. You could ride bikes, eat ice cream from the snack bar, play on the fields, and sneak into the dorms in the summer to jump on the mattresses. You knew everyone in town. We were neighbors of Flannery O’Connor and her family. At Emory University I received a BA in English, and an MA from the Breadloaf School of English at Middlebury College in Vermont. In grad school, I had a flirtation with high school theatre that lasted for about ten years before I became an administrator at a prep school in Dallas. There, I also became a soccer coach and won a lot of games. In the mid-1980’s, I moved to Athens, Georgia, put my boys through prep school, chaired an English Department, and helped my wife begin a career in environmental science. Writing novels seemed what I ought to do because one cannot teach English without telling stories. In forty years, I counseled and cajoling a lot of young people as they grew into successful, contributing citizens. The experience was ripe with emotions and events. I witnessed tragedy associated with three schools. I witnessed President Kennedy’s assassination, the moon landing, Vietnam to Saigon’s fall, and the World Trade Center attack. I celebrated forty commencements, five undefeated football seasons, eleven soccer championships, and a host of debating, drama, math, science and writing awards. I watched Elvis be rediscovered, the Beatles come and go, hairstyles change, long skirts, short skirts, tattoos, earrings, and pet rocks. Dancing changed from languid romance to frantic mosh-pits. I danced at forty senior proms, directed musicals and plays, performed with two orchestras and three symphonic bands, taught Julius Caesar twenty-eight consecutive times, and listened to more screams of victory and success than litanies of complaint and sorrow. American education, public and private, still intrigues me, though we read mostly about its failures. I was lucky to be witness too far more of its success. I tried to maintain high standards. Students responded. Like some poets and novelists before me, I have tales to tell and yarns to spin – maybe in my books I can make enough "rough magic" to please a reader.