Over the Pond Banks & Through the Woods

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The Story Behind True Stories from Home

For every writer, there’s a day of small beginnings. Jane Austen started with a quill and inkwell in her family’s sitting room. Hemingway carried a notebook and pencil around in his pocket. For Tolkien, it was the back of a student’s Oxford exam paper where he drafted the first line of The Hobbit. 

For me, it was a little of everything I could find in my grandparents’ basement—drafting paper from Papa’s workbench, a pen from the sewing table, and most inspiring of all, the big, iron typewriter against the wall. That typewriter, hunkered among the other toys, may be why I am a writer today. On hot afternoons, my siblings would play in the cool basement. Trent hammered wood scraps and Janaya cooked in the toy kitchen from the 60’s, while I would go immediately to the typewriter, scoot up my plastic chair, and begin. It wasn’t that I had much to write, but a beautiful antique like that—with its black ribbon and sharp scent of ink—demanded a story. So I’d stare out the window, over the pond, and start looking for one.

I wrote newspaper articles for my family that went something like this:

WEEKLY NEWS

Beaver Business

Friday morning, Papa and Mema spotted a beaver on the pond. Then they saw it again under the dock that afternoon. Papa and Joel set a trap and covered it with pine. Although they haven’t caught it yet. We will keep you posted. 

ENJOY YOUR WEEK

There were articles about opossums, too, and changes in the weather. Experts in the writing craft say to “write what you know,” and what I knew as a ten-year-old on Edgewood Road were the beavers and opossums, the hot summers and snows. 

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One day when I was twelve, Mom handed me the local newspaper and pointed to an article. The picture showed four girls my age holding copies of a newspaper like mine—except theirs was a neighborhood-wide publication. I cut the picture out of the Missourian and took it to my younger siblings. 

We can do this, I thought.

I’d found a portable typewriter at a rummage sale, and now I dusted it off. Papa Larry and Nanny were babysitting us that evening, so I carried my typewriter all the way over the hill to the cul-de-sac, where, in a corner of my grandma’s kitchen, I typed the first edition of the Argyle News (named after our neighborhood).

My siblings and I advertised our paper door-to-door, and a few folks signed up. People wanted to hear good stories on Edgewood Road—but good stories were hard to come by. I knew that to succeed, a journalist must pay attention, so those early articles documented it all: wildlife, rain, birthdays, lost kites. Trent drew cartoons and Janaya made puzzles. There were poems and recipes and weather forecasts and sports. 

Winter began with breaking news of a frozen pond for ice hockey, which melted into a spring of flooded creeks. Summer was marked by our Grandma Karen’s annual “Camp Day” for all the neighbor kids, and with autumn came photos of the maples blushing red. The seasons turned on Edgewood Road, and I kept the pages turning out from the little typewriter’s roller—then later, from my computer printer.

It turned out that folks liked reading about other ordinary folks, who were fighting the heat and had to get new septic systems, too. But beyond and beneath the newspaper was a warming reality I couldn’t see as a twelve-year-old:

My neighbors needed a friend.

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There was Mrs. Kathy, who put a cement block in her rock bed as a shortcut for us, which she called “The Melton Step.” Bob was a retired school administrator, and his wife, Brenda, was a published author who sometimes gave us copies of her newest book. (I always got the feeling she liked the idea of there being another writer on Edgewood Road.)

Then there was Ms. Sue. She lived in the house with the yellow gables, but we weren’t sure what the inside looked like, because Sue never invited us in. We stood on the porch, and the front door stayed shut. Sue seemed to like it that way. 

Ms. Sue was neither grouchy nor rude. Her front porch was a welcome place, where she would sit in a wicker chair and visit for twenty minutes or so. We’d pet her dog and wait as she read the newspaper right in front of us, commenting or asking questions about things as she went. Sue wore collared blouses, and her short hair was always neat.

But it was a little strange that, while I filled the Argyle News with details about our family, there were many things about Ms. Sue we didn’t know.

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I was reading on my bed the day I found out Sue had cancer in her back. I put down my book and cried, which was strange, I thought. I didn’t know Sue that well. But the truth was that, in the seven years the newspaper lasted, Ms. Sue had changed. I remembered the day when she opened her front door and waved us inside. We had looked at each other, then filed quietly into the foyer. There was an old coat rack and ceramic English racehorses on a scrolled table. Beyond that was a parlor under a skylight, with a brick fireplace and brass-buttoned armchair. A few months later, Sue told us to follow her into the carpeted living room, and to have a seat. This became the usual, where we’d stay for half an hour, while Sue read the paper and chatted. 

Sue started coming to church, too. She had long been quiet about the idea of God and shy of religion, but now, she wanted us to pray for her. She had never been a cold person, but as one winter warmed into another spring on Edgewood Road, there was something about Sue that warmed, too.

One day after Sue had been diagnosed with cancer, she called for help. Mom and I drove the van around the bend and went through the front door without knocking. Under different circumstances, I might have smiled at the irony of that. Sue was lying on the couch in her parlor with her knees pulled to her stomach. She felt weak, her back hurt, and her son wasn’t home. Mom went to the kitchen for a bottle of Ensure, and I sat in the armchair next to Sue—the armchair I always sat in on our newspaper visits. 

“Can I do anything?”

Sue wanted her hair combed (she had company, after all). I ran a pick through her thin bangs. The house was still; the only sound was the ticking of a big clock. Sue turned over.

“Would you read that?” She pointed to a folded copy of the Argyle News lying on the table next to her.

I picked it up and began reading about the latest family birthday cookout. Sue laid still, listening. The wrinkles on her forehead smoothed. 

There, in the stillness of her formal living room, I couldn’t help but think how far we’d come, Sue and I. In feet and inches we hadn’t moved much, over the pond banks and through the woods, from the front porch to the parlor. But in our friendship, it seemed like we’d crossed an ocean.

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The week I finished high school, I had a sense that the days of the Argyle News were ending too. It wasn’t a welcome realization. I loved the newspaper, but more, I loved its readers. If I stopped now, wouldn’t I be letting the weeds grow between our front porches and our friendships? It made me cry to think about it. 

But I was wrong.

Every few months, Mrs. Brenda and I sit at her kitchen table to talk about our writing, and we pray for each other. I still cut through Kathy’s landscaping to take her garden tomatoes, and though it’s a bit overgrown, the Melton Step is waiting for me.

The Argyle News lasted longer than 12-year-old Bethany could have imagined. The friendships it forged have lasted even longer—in fact, they’re relationships that may reach into eternity. Because of God’s providential work through the humble newspaper, our family found ourselves inside the lives of people like Ms. Sue, who had politely closed the door on Him. It gently opened that door to let the Word of Christ come in and dwell richly. And when cancer took Sue to the brink of her life at the nursing home, she opened the door again to let Dad come and share the gospel with her. 

Dad preached the sermon at Sue’s funeral, and we sang Amazing Grace.

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My window is open this morning, as I sit at my desk on Edgewood Road. The mourning doves are sighing, and a rabbit is bounding from my garden. These days, I’m poking on a computer instead of a typewriter, but in many ways, it is another day of small beginnings for me.

I’m wondering, What other stories are out there?

I have a hunch there are other people like Ms. Sue, living on quiet streets and wondering if they’re alone. If I’m honest, I have been that person—wondering if the ordinary dishes I wash and garden I plant really matter. But that’s when I have to ask myself, “Could a 12-year-old’s neighborhood newspaper really make ripples into eternity?”

In God’s providence, somehow it did.

So I sit at my desk like Tolkien or Jane Austen. I look out the window to the pond, and I’m ten again. I’m in a plastic chair at the big typewriter in my grandparents’ basement, my fingers on the square keys, and I can feel it. Somewhere beyond the wall, over the pond banks and through the woods, there’s a good story just waiting to be told. 

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