Blue Bayou Days- The Summer of 61

By George Artie Whitlow Enterprises

The creation of my novel

Every picture tells a story don’t it are words to a 1960s song by Rod Stewart. My momma, Miss Johnnie Claire Whitlow and Daddy George Wesley Whitlow owned a second hand junk store in the old one room school house where momma went to school in Clarks Louisiana in Cardwell Parish. Through the years momma gave me all of the Norman Rockwell prints that she found in the store. I would look at one of the prints and make up a story to tell about the picture. Almost all of the Norman Rockwell prints like The Runaway with the cop and the little boy in the drug store reminded me of a story that happened in my life. I did run away down the railroad track. Daddy did find me and picked me up on his 3 wheel Harley police motorcycle, and then we went to the drugstore for ice cream and a cherry vanilla coke.

I would look at these prints and tell the story. When I wrote the story in 1998, I traveled a lot doing maintenance work for Louisiana DEQ all over Louisiana. The stories just came to me as I was driving from one town to another. It was almost as if I could hear the characters talking to me. Most of the characters were people that I knew during my early life. I just used find and replace to change the names to protect those who got away with it. In the beginning I actually wrote the stories on a napkin in truck stops along the route to a maintenance job. After I realized I was writing a book, I started using a notebook to replace the napkins. Later I typed the stories on an old Underwood typewriter. Then Catherine got a computer and she typed and organized all of the stories into a novel. The process from writing the stories on a napkin to getting the book printed took 10 years. We searched for years for some one to print the novel but never did find one. I discovered Iuniverse. Com and they printed it as a self printing service.  

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