By Linda G. Shelnutt
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Customer tags: bakery(3), women in business(3), business(3), women(2), linda g shelnutt(2), coal country(2), donuts, authors, bear claws, bread, al hudnall, chop suey rolls
Review & Description
I have always admired my mother's bull dog determination as a divorced, single woman supporting herself and two kids through a business of her own as a professional baker. Against various types of odds for a woman in 1949, when my brother was around five years old, and I was two, our mother, Marge Hudnall, borrowed $6,000 from a local bank in her small town of Florence, Colorado (around 3,000 population at that time), opened a bakery, and repaid the loan in two years.
Through that venture, she accomplished more than earning a living, as I discovered when I interviewed her for this story, and she automatically began recalling events which were news to me and almost news to her. I typed furiously, in my personal shorthand, as my Mom began talking, seeming to fall into a trance of her personal and professional history. For several nonstop hours, the interview flowed on its own so freely, I didn't have to pause typing to ask more than a few questions. Within the historic ambiance which Mom described in our interview, Sloppy Joes were originated in the 50's in The Malt Shop Bakery and Bus Depot in Florence, Colorado. Margie's bakery story, “COAL & COCA-COLA” proves the origin or that juicy sandwich and more. Read it while it steams, as an upgraded KINDLE edition with a photo essay included, placing it into the present and counting of our New Millennium.
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List of Linda Shelnutt’s VISCERAL HISTORIES*
A Mining Series based around Florence, Colorado:
1. The Price of Black Diamonds
2. Coal Dust in Their Hands
3. Dark Diamond Twilight
(Upgraded from an Amazon Short into a KINDLE edition w/photos)
4. The Last Lunch Box
5. I Worked
6. This is Someone’s Loved One: An Undertaker’s View
7. We Work All Our Lives and What Do We Get?
8. Coal & Coca-Cola
(Upgraded from an Amazon Short into a KINDLE edition w/photos)
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The above 8 stories are currently available as Amazon Shorts.
Linda Shelnutt is upgrading (slowly) each of these stories for KINDLE publication. As currently planned, the Kindle editions will have newly designed covers, and photo series added (with corrections made of any typos spotted in the Shorts versions at the time of Kindle publications).
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VISCERAL HISTORY is my term for true stories told from the gut, usually featuring the perspective of the author in addition to one or a small number of individuals. Rather than attempting to give cool, detached accounts of historic events (whether panoramic public accounts or private biographical vignettes); the focus is purposely placed on emotional reactions (of the subjects, and the author’s in empathy) to what has been lived through, experienced, or observed.
The purpose is to show the subjects in a heroic light, no matter how seemingly simple their lives may be.
No life is simple.
A philosophical treatise could be written on the ways history can be recorded, from the coolest clarity and accuracy of trained historians; to the warmest skewing and heart healing dramatizations of salt of the earth men and women. Sometimes the coolest records are innocently (or purposely) politically skewed; while the warm stories, told and retold, are so gut level honest, they remain uncannily close to the truth of life.
Does anyone ever see a true picture of reality? Does a true physical reality exist beyond conscious experience of it? These questions are posed by philosophy, metaphysics, and quantum physics..., i.e., if a tree falls in the forest, does the tree actually fall if no one is there to observe it? Is the forest there?
Fortunately for me, I’m not an investigative reporter assigned and paid to dig for dirt.
I’m a literary mirror for the good and the true in the human heart.
That, I believe exists.
Respectfully Submitted,
Linda G. Shelnutt
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