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Cow Across America |
written by Dale Neal
illustrated by
October 2009
ISBN: 9780981519234
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Behind the Book
"The myth of the Southern writer always originates in the petri dish of the summer front porch, cultured by some garrulous grandparent beating your eardrums bloody with how it was back in the day.
"I come from a good but silent people, who kept the juiciest stories to themselves about family secrets, those black sheep among the complicated cousinage, whispered divorcees and suspicious deaths, tales not to be discussed in earshot of impressionable minds.
"My grandfather lived about as far away from that suburban world as you could get midway through the 20th century, up in Beaverdam, N.C., in Watauga County, just this side of the Tennessee line, on about a 24-acre mountainside farm dependent mostly on an acre or two of tobacco, and yes, one milk cow.
"Mostly deaf, my grandfather didn't talk much, but always greeted my sister and me with sticks of Juicy Fruit chewing gum, and when we left at the end of the weekend, a wrinkled dollar from his leather wallet.
"Plunked down in the fastness of those mountains, removed from TV reception, movie theatres and convenience store candy, I suffered through the stultifying silence of those summer days on the front porch or the winter in the parlor by the overheated woodstove.
"Into the silence, there was nothing to do but make up the stories myself, filling in the blanks where the adult conversations veered away from hard realities, the unpleasant facts.
"Much later, I came across a tidbit in a history of Watauga County, something rumored to have happened in the Beaverdam community. Two residents deciding on a whim to walk across the country in the company of a cow. Sounded too good to be true, but what if that really happened? I began to wonder, and wander, setting off on my improbable journey writing Cow Across America.."
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