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proud of their writers, aren’t greedy. They lay no claims to William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, or John Grisham, also Mississippians, though they might be quick to point out that Faulkner’s literary agent, Ben Wasson, was one of their own. Wasson succeeded in getting Faulkner’s first two books published, and it is said that Faulkner often visited him in Greenville and even did some of his best writing here.
    Another of Greenville’s distinguishing features, of which I am daily reminded, is its brown water. When I lived and taught here some forty years ago, it was a long time before I could bring myself to take a bath. I could shower without distress, but sitting in a tubful of amber liquid was not compatible with my idea of cleanliness. Besides its unusual color, it is very soft water, also. Rub your hands together under soft water, and they feel slippery. After shampooing, you may rinse the suds out of your hair yet never feel the sensation of “squeaky clean.”
    It is a joke in the state of Mississippi that the explanation for the high number of published authors per capita in Greenville has something to do with its soft brown water. Fewer new writers are coming along, they say, because too many youngsters these days are drinking bottled water.
    Though I already knew some of these facts, I heard them rehearsed by Patrick during my visit last summer as he read an article to Rachel at the supper table one night. It was from a back issue of Southern Living . The page, called Southern Journal, is a regular feature of the magazine. All persons, places, or things southern are considered suitable topics for this page. It came to me as Patrick read the article aloud, this one concerning the brown water and the writers of Greenville, Mississippi, that he most likely had aspirations to be a writer himself. Since moving here, I am confident of this.
    Patrick has written many letters to the editor of the Delta Democrat Times , several of which have been printed over the years. He has mounted them all in a scrapbook that sits on the coffee table in the living room. He often repeats stories his father told him about his paternal grandfather, who grew up in Southern California. “I’m going to write these all up in a book someday,” he says. No doubt Patrick thinks the publishing world is eagerly waiting for the manager of an office supply store to burst on the scene with a collection of apocryphal stories about a deceased relative.
    The stories, the ones I’ve heard, sound like folklore. A dead armadillo on the side of a road in New Mexico figures prominently in one of them and a one-legged ventriloquist in another. Most of them are silly stories with no point except to illustrate the many ways a man can waste his days on earth.
    Patrick’s grandfather was what his family called a character, a card, a pill. He was, at various times in his life, a minister, a barber, a bricklayer, a chauffeur for a judge in Lafayette, Louisiana, and a writer of advertising slogans, one of his best-known being for a brand of men’s hair tonic in the thirties and forties called Magic: “Want a magic wave? Wave the Magic Wand!” The picture on the poster showed a man in a business suit, his hair neatly slicked and waved, with three admiring women gazing up at him. In the thought bubble above his head was a bottle of Magic Hair Tonic with a wand touching it and multicolored sparkles shooting away like fireworks. One of the framed posters hangs in the hallway in Patrick’s house.
    The white electrician arrives a little past eight in the morning. I have been awake since five. I am dressed, sitting at the window beside the bird feeder. Rachel has already come and gone with my bowl of oatmeal, slice of toast, and glass of orange juice. My television is on, but I glance at it only occasionally. It is tuned to a channel called TV Oldies, which carries programs such as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Green Acres, I Love Lucy , and The Waltons . John-Boy Walton is