Tracking Happiness: Chapter 3

This is CHAPTER 3 in our series offering gossip, novel backstory, and personal confessions about TRACKING HAPPINESS: A SOUTHERN CHICKEN ADVENTURE. We’re working our way through a novel here. If you’re just now discovering us, you can jump in now or go back to the first entry and catch up. If you jump in, I can’t promise you it won’t be confusing, but it might be interesting too.

Ok. Chapter 3. Last we left off:

Lucinda Mae had been touring the train’s dining car, when she stepped into the passageway that ties the cars together. This is truly an odd space. It’s enclosed, but very wiggly. Here, Lucinda finds herself with a man she immediately dubs “the Movie Star.” Their eyes lock, and the new chapter opens. 

This chapter has lots of true stuff from my own life in it. I’m not gonna tell you what the true bits are because, you know, it would be embarrassing. We also get into Lucinda Mae’s fashion sense and how it plays in her small hometown. Of course, I have no sociological degree that qualifies me to offer opinions on the psychology of small towns. Ok, I do have a sociology degree with an emphasis on urban sociology. Still, my opinion on small Southern towns and fashion is my own. BTW, we will wait and see whether Lucinda’s experience of her hometown as an albatross around her neck evolves. If you want to read more about my own fashion sense and how I turned one of the most devastatingly mortifying moments of my life into a published essay, go to my website and read “The Dress” which was published in Skirt! Magazine. The url is in the footnotes.

A very small aside. Katharine Hepburn brownies make their appearance in this chapter of the novel. A dear friend at my church brought Katharine Hepburn brownies to a church event. They were the best brownies I ever put in my mouth. I’ve included the recipe from the New York Times in the footnotes. I am not a cook (my husband keeps us alive every day), yet I could make these brownies. The skill level is low, the product good. 

Finally—because I know you’re getting antsy to get on with the story—in this chapter, we begin to understand how important chickens are to our tale. Yes, the novel’s tag (“A Southern Chicken Adventure”) is a clue, but you might’ve thought I was just being funny. Chickens are funny, but they’re also under siege. I mean, commercially under siege. I’m sure you’ve heard all about the hormone-induced lives of the modern chicken. What we are doing to chickens these days is not something Lucinda Mae’s dad would’ve condoned. Bill Watkins’ chicken-raising motto was “No One Here Is Mean to Our Chickens.” Remember that. It becomes important. 

Okay, I think that’s enough preliminary information. 

HELPFUL TRAIN HINT: Trains might seem like something out of the Old West, but they aren’t. On Amtrak, which is the amazing US passenger train, you can use your PHONE to board the train. Just show the conductor your ticket on your phone, and he’ll wave you on board. At least that’s the way it works in Memphis. The conductor does wear one of those little hats, though. Not all train things are modernized, thank goodness. 

Now go read Chapter 3 of TRACKING HAPPINESS: A SOUTHERN CHICKEN ADVENTURE

NOTES for Chapter 3: 

For Katharine Hepburn Brownies:I got my Katharine Hepburn Brownies recipe from a friend. I lost the recipe. Fortunately, there are many recipes for KHB online, including this one from the New York Times. https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/10782-katharine-hepburns-brownies If you want to search for your own recipe, note she spells her name: Katharine. 

For more on my devastatingly mortifying fashion moment, read “The Dress”:

The Dress