My grandaddy, Robert Stockett, Sr., told me a Eudora Welty story once that I’ve never forgotten. It’s just about the most literary thing that’s ever happened to my family so please, if I’ve misremembered or misunderstood, don’t spoil it for me.

Grandaddy used to have what we called The Barn, which some old Jacksonians will know as Stockett Stables. It was where folks would come ride horses and drink coffee and read the paper.

Eudora liked to go down there too, which I found funny because it was mostly men who gathered on those early mornings, gossiping and running the legislature from the old rocking chairs. Eudora liked to sit and listen to the stories being told. Eudora knew how to listen.

If somebody started to tell a particularly salty story, Eudora would point to a sign she’d tacked up on the wall that read: NO CURSING. Over time, she added a few other no-no’s, but that was the one she pointed to most.

One morning, Eudora came down to the barn carrying her little beat-up blue travel typewriter- the kind that comes in a cardboard case with the floppy handle. Somebody started telling a story that was ‘right colorful,’ but Eudora didn’t point to the sign. She let those euphemisms run right on by her.

Grandaddy finally said, ‘Eudora. What’s gotten into you? What are you looking at?’

Eudora pointed to a new Royal typewriter sitting on Grandaddy’s desk. Somebody hadn’t been able to pay their horse rent and instead gave Grandaddy this brand new behemoth of a machine to settle up.

‘I’ll trade you, Robert,’ Eudora said. ‘This one for that.’

So Grandaddy, God knows why, traded his this for her that- or I hope to think, just gave it to her since he was a gentleman.

I have savored that story like a delicious secret: that the typewriter Eudora Welty wrote some of those poignantly beautiful stories on had belonged to Grandaddy– my granddaddy, the one who inspired my own stories.

‘Then she ran off to Europe to chase that boyfriend.’ And that was all I got out of him.

I beg of you, if you were a typewriter salesman in nineteen-hundred-something, and you know otherwise, don’t tell me. Please, just let me keep thinking this thing is true.

-Kathryn Stockett

———

If you have story about Miss Welty that you would like to share on our blog, please e-mail them to lisa at lemuriabooks dot com.

Click here to learn about Carolyn Brown’s A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty

Click here to see all blogs in our Miss Welty series

wwwwww

Share