Mark Richard: "House of Prayer No. 2"
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Mark Richard: "House of Prayer No. 2" MS. DIANE REHM
11:06:55
Thanks for joining us. I'm Diane Rehm. Mark Richard was considered a "special child." In the south, where he grew up, that was meant there was something wrong with him. He endured painful surgeries for deformed hips and was told he'd spend his adult life in a wheelchair. Some teachers labeled him slow. But he overcame many challenges. He worked as a journalist and he's written a novel, and award-winning short story collections.
MS. DIANE REHM
11:07:34
His new book is a memoir, it's titled "House of Prayer No. 2." Mark Richard joins me in the studio and I'm going to ask you, Mark, right off the bat, if you would read for us from the start of your book?
MR. MARK RICHARD
11:07:55
Well thank you. It'd be my pleasure. "Say you have a "special child," which in the South means one between Downs and dyslexic. Birth him with his father away on army maneuvers along East Texas bayous. Give him his only visitor in the military hospital his father's father, a sometime railroad man, sometime hired gun for Huey Long with a Louisiana Special Police badge."
MR. MARK RICHARD
11:08:30
"Take the infant to Manhattan, Kansas in winter where the only visitor is a Chinese peeping tom, little yellow face in the windows during the cold nights. Further, frighten the mother, age 20, with the child's convulsions. There's something different about this child, the doctors say. Move the family to Kirbyville, Texas, where the father cruises timber in the big woods. Fill the back porch with things the father brings home, raccoons, lost bird dogs, stacks of saws, machetes."
MR. MARK RICHARD
11:09:11
"Give the child a sandbox to play in, in which scorpions build nests. Let the mother cut the grass and run over rattlesnakes, shredding them all over the yard. Make the mother cry and miss her mother. Isolate her from the neighbors because she is poor and Catholic. For playmates, give the child a Mongoloid girl who adores him. She is a society doctor's child and is scared of thunder."
MR. MARK RICHARD
11:09:46
"When it storms, she hides and only the special child can find her. The doctor's wife comes to the house in desperation, 'Please help me find my daughter.' 'Here she is, in the culvert, behind a bookcase in a neighbor's paper teepee.' 'Please come to a party,' the doctor's wife sniffs, hugging her daughter. At the party, it goes well for the nervous mother and the forester father until their son bites the arm of a guest and the guest goes to the hospital for stitches and a tetanus shot. The special child can give no reason why."
REHM
11:10:28
And this "special child" is five years old at the time?
RICHARD
11:10:34
About five, yes.
REHM
11:10:37
You know, as I look at you, Mark Richard, one would never know you had deformed hips. One would never suspect that you were "special" in the way that the South defined it. What happened?
RICHARD
11:11:00
I think that maybe part of the reason you don't see it today is because I became very adept at hiding it. I know in New York I would only cross rooms at parties when I was sure not many people were watching. There are ways to navigate yourself through a crowd so people can't see you lurch and limp around. Cosmically, I think the special-ness made me who I am.
RICHARD
11:11:35
I've become a writer instead of a lawyer. I wanted to, I was in pre-law and the things that made me interested in law, I turned them over to writing and I think I mentioned it in the book that an old girlfriend said, "I think your hips are a good thing for you because without them, you would've been a bigger ass than you already are."
REHM
11:12:09
(laugh) Now, there were surgeries?
RICHARD
11:12:12
Right.
REHM
11:12:13
There were multiple surgeries to correct what was called deformity. To what extent did they help the situation?
RICHARD
11:12:28
I think they may have helped to a certain extent but they seem to have been temporary and led to further complications. This was in the days before total hip replacements.
REHM
11:12:38
Replacements, sure.
RICHARD
11:12:40
And as you know, you know a lot about medicine yourself, orthopedics is carpentry and it's only been within my lifetime that they've done a lot of advances, they've had a lot of advance treatments. So they were doing things with, you know, grafting and nails and plates and pins and they were just figuring it out.
REHM
11:13:08
So the surgeries went on from when until when?
RICHARD
11:13:12
I think I went in when I was about nine and 10...
REHM
11:13:16
First.
RICHARD
11:13:17
Yes, and then every year or so until I was 17 or 18.
REHM
11:13:21
Whoa. That's a lot of surgery.
RICHARD
11:13:26
It was a lot of surgery, it was a lot of time out of the school and I had a tutor, which was a good thing. You know, I look back on it now, I'm not displeased by the experience. I lived in books. My mother would go to the library and bring grocery bags of books, I read the entire library and I had a tutor who, you know, was just my own personal teacher and it also gave me a peculiar world view that I think writers need to have to do their work.
RICHARD
11:14:08
A sort of a sense of detachment from the world that, and I've just realized this recently, you know, the book is told in the second person...
REHM
11:14:16
Exactly.
RICHARD
11:14:17
...and this was a suggestion earlier this week that maybe that's why that second person voice might be more successful because of this sense of detachment in the book.
REHM
11:14:28
Allows you to write about yourself...
RICHARD
11:14:31
Right.
REHM
11:14:32
...in a way that perhaps becomes a little more objective. What were the signs that teachers picked up thinking you were slow? Was it because of the physical problems?
RICHARD
11:14:48
Probably the slowness, you know, I couldn't run, was awkward, but then there were some strange, not strange things, but I remember in third or fourth grade they said, draw the pilgrims. You know, having the first Thanksgiving dinner, and I'd just finished reading a stack of old National Geographics, so my depiction of the first Thanksgiving were these Chinese drunks arriving at this dock where Indians were selling bait and beer.
RICHARD
11:15:23
And the pilgrims were getting off the boat and they were getting gasoline and beer and, you know, those were the types of markers that the teachers were going, there's something very strange this child.
REHM
11:15:36
Strange, yes.
RICHARD
11:15:37
Strange and quote, unquote, "special," which in the South is a term that can cover a wide, you know, anything, like I just read from to Downs to dyslexic to being slow to being, you know, what they used to call retarded. So those were some of the markers.
REHM
11:16:00
Mark Richard, his new book is titled "House of Prayer No. 2." Why do you call it "House of Prayer No. 2?"
RICHARD
11:16:11
There's a real House of Prayer No. 2 in Franklin, Va., which is where I grew up. My mother goes to a white Episcopal church Sunday mornings and then she goes to a black Pentecostal church Sunday afternoons. And we've been going, she's been going for 20 some odd years, and when I'm home, I take her. And she had gotten to know this church when she worked at the local hospital for over 30 years and ultimately in the terminal care ward.
RICHARD
11:16:48
But originally when she was switchboard operator at midnight after my father left the family, that's how she made a living. She was a housewife of the 50's so she had no real skills and that was the job that she could find. She found a community of faith among the other people who worked the late shifts, some of the nurse's aids who were prayer partners and prayer warriors.
RICHARD
11:17:16
And they would meet in conference rooms, hallways and pray for each other. She began going to this church and taking, you know, Bible classes and when I was home, I would take her to the services. So she would go the Episcopal Church in the morning and this church in the afternoon. And I became involved in the church when I would take her, and the pastor, Pastor Ricks, who's one of my best friends and spiritual mentors.
RICHARD
11:17:50
Well, here's what really happened. I'm sitting in the church one cold afternoon and some of the services go on three and a half hours. And we come out and my mother says, oh, wasn't that just great? I'm so uplifted. And I go, actually, no. It's cold, the pews are hard. They have outhouses. It's white cinderblock whitewash, and she said, well, did you like the sermon? It was about tithing and I said, you know what I'll do? I will tithe my next check 10 percent so that they can buy a space heater. And I was, you know, being very snarky.
RICHARD
11:18:31
Well, about this time, I was working on a movie, and I got a check for the movie and it was something that I had to decide, is it 10 percent of net or gross? And that started us into the new House of Prayer remodel.
REHM
11:18:45
"House of Prayer No. 2," Mark Richard.
REHM
11:20:04
Welcome back. And in fact, the author's name is pronounced Richard. Mark Richard is with me. His new book, "House of Prayer No. 2," is subtitled, "A Writer's Journey Home." Do join us, 800-433-8850, send us your e-mail to drshow@wamu.org. This book is the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and I congratulate you on that.
RICHARD
11:20:40
Thank you.
REHM
11:20:42
Someone asked whether, in fact, had you been in the North, you would've been labeled as special. Do you think that the South had that particular method or approach?
RICHARD
11:21:01
I think in the South, the designation is -- was mainly gentle and I think that it was not -- to be called special...
REHM
11:21:17
Was not to be hurtful.
RICHARD
11:21:19
It was -- exactly. It's not to be hurtful and to almost prepare -- I remember we had the Baptist minister in our neighborhood. They were always having visitors. And general -- there were a couple of families that would come and my friend's mother, who was the Baptist minister's son, said, so and so, they're coming and, you know, one of their children is special, which means put away the things that may get broken. You know, be aware that you may have to spend more time with this child.
REHM
11:21:54
Hmm, interesting.
RICHARD
11:21:55
Be gentle with this child. Be prepared for an outburst or something like that, so.
REHM
11:22:01
Mark, you talk about a show and tell...
RICHARD
11:22:07
Mm-hmm.
REHM
11:22:08
...in the fifth grade class.
RICHARD
11:22:09
Right.
REHM
11:22:10
And a boy brought something extraordinary into that class.
RICHARD
11:22:16
Yes. I had just gotten out of the hospital and I was on crutches. And I was entering, as I had often during that time, in the middle of the school year. And a boy brought a short board in that had something that looked like a piece of leather with carpet tacks and it had been shellacked or varnished or whatever, passed it around and we had to guess what it was. It looked just like a piece of leather on a board. Well, it turned out that it was a piece of Nat Turner's skin. And Nat Turner led the Slave Insurrection, 1831, in that county in which I grew up. I could not get my head around that as a fifth grader and had not been able to get my head around it to this day.
REHM
11:23:08
Exactly. I was feeling precisely the same way. And you look as though you're almost in tears thinking about it.
RICHARD
11:23:19
Well, yes. I mean -- and I think the visceral response from me immediately, as a fifth grader, was I had just come out of this hospital where most of the other boys were from -- you know, white children from Appalachia and a lot of black boys from inner city Richmond, who -- and we'd all been cut and stitched. And so I had a double whammy of having this piece of skin and then having come from a place where skin was being routinely cut and sewn and...
REHM
11:23:54
Grafted, if you will.
RICHARD
11:23:55
Grafted, that's right.
REHM
11:23:56
Yeah.
RICHARD
11:23:57
And I think that was the basis for the book because as I went through growing up there, I realized that there were other people who had little pieces of Nat Turner as well. And -- because what happened was, when they finally caught Nat, they hung him, they cut his head off and piked his head in a black part of town. They skinned him and then they boiled him in fat. And then they made -- some people made trinkets out of the skin and -- book covers, et cetera.
RICHARD
11:24:35
My original thought for this book was try to possibly not reassemble Nat Turner, but I would -- I wanted to track down as much of the -- you know, the artifacts and the -- I knew his sword and the rope from which they hung him was in the courthouse in Courtland. I knew a lady in Virginia Beach had his Bible and I would've loved to have seen that. His skull was somewhere in Chicago. And I kind of -- and I thought in my own community, I wanted to find the pieces of Nat Turner and talk to people and how did it come into their possession. Obviously, that would -- that's nearly impossible because I think that the boy who brought it for show and tell, I'm sure his family didn't know...
REHM
11:25:21
That he brought it.
RICHARD
11:25:22
That he brought it to school. It's not something to be proud of. And I remember the principal and the teacher having a conversation out in the hall, who were both horrified, as to what to do about this. And I think they quickly sent the artifact home with the boy. But, yes, you're right. Again, I can't -- I can't get my head around it to this day.
REHM
11:25:46
Mark Richard, the book we're talking about is titled, "House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home." Tell us about your mother early on in the book. She is depressed, she misses her family and then, of course, your father leaves the family. There's quite a journey there.
RICHARD
11:26:14
My mother, who just called me yesterday, she had read the book and said she's very proud of me, found out some things she didn't know after reading the book. And I didn't ask her because I didn't want to embarrass either one of us because there are some personal details. But she said something that I thought was interesting when she said, I didn't -- she said, the book was so sad, you know. And I don't -- I didn't -- I didn't set out to write a sad book and I thought it was interesting my mother thought it was so sad.
RICHARD
11:26:49
My mother found her way through her faith, that she's been on a spiritual path for at least the last 40 years and calls herself a prayer warrior, has an extended prayer warrior network of friends and women that she prays with. And because she worked at this hospital, she went from -- I was very proud of her -- from midnight switchboard operator to working in the terminal care ward where people of our town would bring them -- would bring their dying or the elderly for whom they could no longer care and would, you know, place them there almost in my mother's hands and go, here's our loved ones. And knew that my mother would take care of them and to, you know, look to their needs. I mean, she's that type of person.
RICHARD
11:27:52
And even after she's retired, to this day, people show up at my mother's house that she -- people that she doesn't even know and says, will you pray for me? And she gets, you know, phone call -- when I call her, the phone lines are often busy with people she doesn't even know calling her, you know, to talk to her and seeking some type of prayer on their behalf, for their families or for themselves, so very strong spiritual woman.
REHM
11:28:22
Your father.
RICHARD
11:28:24
A strange cat. As I'm a father now, have three boys, understanding a little bit better. Super smart guy, top of his class, was being groomed by NASA to go to the space program in the late '50s. Toward the end of his college decided to transfer into forestry so he could be in the woods by himself all day. Was not a very social person and moody, had kind of a dark side.
REHM
11:28:58
How was he with you?
RICHARD
11:29:02
We did not engage much. Yeah, we -- and again, I cut him a lot more slack now that I have my own sons -- we didn't engage much, but his father didn't engage with him, either. That's just how it was at that time. And what I thought was interesting about my dad was he did provide for us and he took me to the hospital when I needed to be taken. And he also had another life, which included doing standup comedy in -- I mean, a man at a post office told me, he said, your dad is a real crackup. I said, well, that's interesting.
REHM
11:29:41
What? Yeah.
RICHARD
11:29:43
He would go to hunt clubs and social clubs out in the county and do standup comedy. He would listen to Justin Wilson Cajun humor records, memorize them and go perform. And he would do a little theater. We had no idea about this at first and it kinda came out that he had this acting, standup comic life.
REHM
11:30:04
And how were he and your mother engaging at the time?
RICHARD
11:30:09
You know, when my father came home, I generally scooted out the door.
REHM
11:30:14
Really.
RICHARD
11:30:15
There was a Baptist parsonage across the street. They had four boys and that's where I spent -- and I wrote about that in the book -- the Reverend Hutchins -- well, the preacher, we called him -- that was my home away from home and...
REHM
11:30:31
A refuge.
RICHARD
11:30:32
A refuge. And they were rowdy boys, let me tell you. When there was things happening in the town, the police called their house first, maybe my house second (laugh). So we weren't -- and all clichés are true, you know. The Baptist preacher's sons are some of the rowdiest in town.
REHM
11:30:48
So you would leave the house when your father came in so that he and your mother could engage or not engage.
RICHARD
11:31:00
Yes. I mean, I think we all kinda cringed when we heard his car pull up out front. He was just moody and dark. And I think -- I mean, looking back now, must've been very frustrated. He maybe realized too late that he'd thrown away a career. I think he became bored with the forestry. You know, he rose to the top of that fairly quickly. And maybe that's why he went into performing. I don't know.
REHM
11:31:33
How old were you when he left?
RICHARD
11:31:38
I was in my 20s and I had a sister -- I have a sister who was a teenager when he left. And it was ugly. And we didn't speak for 20 years.
REHM
11:31:52
You and your father.
RICHARD
11:31:53
My father, that's right. We had a pretty ugly separation in the front yard of our house. And then a mutual friend, an Episcopal priest, called me up when I was in California and said, your father is dying in a small hospital in North Carolina and he wants to see you. And, you know, you get a call like that, you have to go, you have to go. So I went and went down to Rocky Mountain, N.C. and walked in, hadn't seen him in 20 years. He was dying. And he shooed everybody out of the room and said, now, I want you to come sit down here and hear my confession. So we spent a couple of weeks together, but as you know, nothing gets resolved in two weeks. I mean, 99 percent does not. And the most important thing that you can do is just be there.
REHM
11:32:54
Just that connection. Mark Richard, we're talking about his new memoir, "A Writer's Journey Home." It's titled, "House of Prayer No. 2." And you're listening to "The Diane Rehm Show." We're going to open the phones now, 800-433-8850. First to East Lansing, Mich. Good morning, Jason, you're on the air. Go right ahead.
JASON
11:33:27
Thank you, Diane. Mr. Richard, when you were first reading from your book, it was some of the most moving writing, it made me cry.
RICHARD
11:33:36
Oh, well, thank you so much.
JASON
11:33:38
I worked with people with disabilities. I drove them on a bus for 21 years. And one day, my boss called me into the office and he said, Jason, why do we get so many compliments from -- of all the drivers, you get all the compliments. And I said, you want me to give you an honest answer? He said, yeah. I said, because black people and handicapped people have something in common. You know, we know what it's like to be thought of as the other. We got that sensitivity. And I got fired for saying that 'cause he took it wrong, you know.
RICHARD
11:34:21
Oh, no.
JASON
11:34:22
And I want you to respond to that and God bless you and thank you.
REHM
11:34:26
I'm so sorry about that experience.
RICHARD
11:34:27
No, no. You should never -- you should never be fired for telling the truth.
REHM
11:34:31
Wow.
RICHARD
11:34:32
No, that's awful. And, you know, you're absolutely right. I think -- and beyond that, there's an empathy and a sympathy that I think we all share when you are the outsider, when you are disenfranchised, when you are the special person or race. You're absolutely right. I'm sorry that happened to you.
REHM
11:35:01
Here is a caller in Dallas, Texas. Hi there, Frank, you're on the air.
FRANK
11:35:08
Hi, Diane and hi, Mark.
RICHARD
11:35:10
Hey, Frank.
FRANK
11:35:11
I'm a psychiatrist and I'm used to working with stories of abuse and deprivation. And, of course, everybody knows that Oprah publicizes stories like that a lot. And people look at dissociative defenses as an outcome of childhood deprivation and abuse, but sometimes the story is not about sexual abuse. Sometimes, if you withhold judgment, you find out that the child had to have multiple surgeries or something of similar nature where their parents have to stand by. And even though it's for a good cause, it still hurts and the child doesn't understand why the people that are supposed to protect him don't. And they're repeatedly subjected to this. And it seems that their only escape, really, is dissociation.
RICHARD
11:36:09
Right.
FRANK
11:36:10
And it serves its purpose and it allows the child to survive, really. But the injury to how they relate to other people is going to be very similar to children in the other circumstances. And so I was curious if you'd ever read the writings of Milton Erickson, a great psychotherapist who focused on using hypnotherapy. Because he had had polio as a child and was in the iron lung and about as dissociated physically from the world of other children as you could get.
REHM
11:36:50
Interesting.
RICHARD
11:36:52
You know, I have not read those writings and I would like to. Yeah, you raise a good point. What do we do with this after we've been through these experiences? And, you know, part of my -- and I'm not here to complain about these things that have happened to me. I think that I'm at an age now where I can look back and see how they shaped me as a person. And there was a grace note my -- you know, I have a son who needs some help. And my mother said, maybe you've been through all the things you've been through to help your son who needs to go through some things that he needs to go through.
REHM
11:37:34
Mark Richard, the book is titled, "House of Prayer No. 2." Short break and we'll be right back.
REHM
11:40:03
Welcome back. Mark Richard, just before the break, you were talking about your son and the difficulties he is having now. He's 13. Tell us about those difficulties.
RICHARD
11:40:19
Well, you know, I -- wanting to respect his privacy, but he does wear -- he wears a brace and his -- there's something going on with his spine. And, you know, he's going through the same things that I went through a little bit earlier at his age, you know, taking him to clinics, taking him to doctors. And I said just before the break that my mother put her finger on it, she said, maybe everything that you went through was in preparation for being a father to this boy right now. And, you know what? I'll accept that. I'll take that. And if that's the grace and if that's what it's been about, I accept that.
REHM
11:41:09
You were pushed as a child. For example, the high school baseball coach.
RICHARD
11:41:18
Oh, coach, yeah. Again, here's a situation where our schools were suddenly integrated and it was not a happy experience for anyone, for anyone, really. And there were problems in the locker rooms and the restrooms. And there was a coach at the black high school, Coach Sandage.
REHM
11:41:43
Where you went.
RICHARD
11:41:44
That's -- well, some genius in the school board said, okay, what we'll do first is it will have -- we'll have the kids go to the white high school in the morning and the black high school in the afternoon and they'll bus -- I mean, it was these crazy ideas. They were trying to integrate by not completely integrating.
REHM
11:42:01
Right.
RICHARD
11:42:02
And Coach Sandage -- I'd gotten a free pass at the white high school. I was on crutches, canes, you know, you skip phys ed. Well, when I went to the black high school, the coach -- you know, I went to walk over and sit in the stands where play baseball. Coach Sandage said, where do you think you're going? I said, well, I'm, you know, obviously walking on a cane. And he said, well, you're gonna play some baseball today. So I said, well, there's no way I can run around the bases. He said, that's no problem. He said, all you need to do is learn how to hit the ball over the fence and then you walk around the bases. So he had a couple of friends from the old negro leagues who came and taught us how to field...
REHM
11:42:45
Hit the ball.
RICHARD
11:42:46
...and hit the ball. And pretty soon...
REHM
11:42:48
Wow.
RICHARD
11:42:48
...and my muscles in my arms were strong from the crutches. And pretty soon, I could put my cane down, hit the ball, put the bat down, pick up the cane and walk around the bases.
REHM
11:43:01
Were you hitting it over the fence?
RICHARD
11:43:03
And I was hitting it -- occasionally hitting it over the fence, so there were times when people stepped in who, you know, needed to step in, you know, to kick my butt a little bit and I appreciated it. Coach Sandage was one of those guys who's just a great mentor. I've been very lucky to have good teachers and good mentors in my life.
REHM
11:43:27
What about college? How was college for you?
RICHARD
11:43:31
I went to a little private college in Virginia called Washington and Lee University. Probably not the best fit for me. I didn't go to prep school. I went to public high school, but I had great teachers there. I had a couple of really good teachers again. I had Jim Boatwright, who's editor of Shenandoah magazine, who encouraged my writing and a couple of maverick teachers, Bob Demoria in the Journalism Department. All you need is one or two teachers.
REHM
11:44:05
No question.
RICHARD
11:44:05
That's all you need.
REHM
11:44:06
Yeah.
RICHARD
11:44:06
And I've been teaching now for 18 years and I realize that you can't save all the children, but every once in awhile, you can save one or two that come through.
REHM
11:44:16
And how did you get involved with screenwriting?
RICHARD
11:44:21
It's a strange story. My -- I was teaching at Ole Miss and a woman there was in the writing program. My wife and I moved to Los Angeles and we kept in touch. It turned out she's Robert Altman's script supervisor. And she said, Altman wants me to write a movie. I don't know how to do it. And I said, well, you're a terrific writer. I'll help you break it. So I helped her break a little movie called, "Cookie's Fortune." She said, I can't pay you, can't give you credit, but I can introduce you to Bob. I said, well, that'll be fantastic, he's one of my favorite directors.
RICHARD
11:44:54
He read my first collection of short stories called, "Ice at the Bottom of the World." And he said, the title story would make a great movie, ensemble cast, strong female leads, so I went home and adapted it, brought it back to him. He said, this is fantastic, it'll be my next movie. I thought, well, that's easy. But it turns out Bob always had five or six next projects.
REHM
11:45:18
I'll bet. I'll bet.
RICHARD
11:45:20
So it wasn't quite that easy, but that was my introduction into Hollywood. And I got an agent off of that and used that script as a writing sample and was able to get work in Hollywood from that point on.
REHM
11:45:33
What else have you written for the movies?
RICHARD
11:45:38
I did -- my first television job was, "Party of Five." And then I did, "Chicago Hope," "Huff," recently, "Criminal Minds." And I'm always the -- I'm always the oldest writer on staff.
RICHARD
11:45:56
And I'm the one that has the most problematic scripts. I just got a note. Just before Christmas, I was writing a script and the producer said, Mark, you know, "Criminal Minds," you have an obligatory morgue scene, you know, where they, you know, and he said, Mark, your morgue scenes are too fully realized.
RICHARD
11:46:19
I said, well, you know, if people are looking at a body, there should be some -- you know, it's a great opportunity...
REHM
11:46:23
Details.
RICHARD
11:46:24
...to talk about mortality...
REHM
11:46:25
Yeah.
RICHARD
11:46:26
...you know, what were the images in the eyes. And he said, that's not how these shows work, so.
REHM
11:46:30
Interesting. Do you -- you're animated as you talk about screenwriting. Is that a favorite thing or is what you've done here closer to your heart?
RICHARD
11:46:45
It's a good question and one I've thought about. And I think part of it, I discovered when I was writing the book. In those periods of recovery in my town, there was the library and there was the movie theater. And the projectionist lived on my street. And if I would go in with him to help him open up, I could sit in what they call back then the colored balcony. I could sit for free. So I spent a lot of my time in those two places, the movie theater and the library, which is where a lot of children who are sickly or weak or whatever, they spend a lot of their time, so I'm comfortable in both places.
REHM
11:47:23
That's very, very interesting. All right. Let's go to Reston, Va. Good morning, Jeanette.
JEANETTE
11:47:32
Good morning, Diane. I'm really enjoying your show and your questions are so good. And Mark, I was Jeanette Purington growing up in Franklin, Va. and went to the public high school and then to Hollins College and majored in English. And you and I have a good mutual friend, George Parker, in Williamsburg.
RICHARD
11:47:52
Oh, yes, we do.
JEANETTE
11:47:53
And I just wanted to say that I grew up in the Episcopal Church and my parents certainly knew your parents and...
RICHARD
11:48:00
That's right.
JEANETTE
11:48:01
...the comment I wanted to make is that a place like our hometown, I have realized as an adult, has so many stories that are known by those of us who grew up there. And I have found that we really had a sense of intimacy with the people in that small town to the point that when I go back there where my 94-year-old mother lives, I feel a closeness, almost a family closeness to the people that I've -- that I knew there and grew up with.
JEANETTE
11:48:38
And I wish there was some way, maybe you can think of how to do this, to arrange some storytelling facilitated group where people from our small town could get together at the library or at the churches and share some of the stories like the one you told about the coach. That was hilarious, so I'm glad you're such a good storyteller and I really...
REHM
11:49:05
He is.
JEANETTE
11:49:06
...look forward to reading your book.
REHM
11:49:07
Thank you, Jeanette.
RICHARD
11:49:07
Well, thank you, Jeanette. I'm so happy that you called in. I know exactly who you are. And yes, I think we grew up in Franklin in a golden age of that town. And there are fantastic stories, but no one is left to tell them anymore. I actually look to our friend, George Parker, who you mentioned, who has a good memory of those stories. He was actually one of my readers. I had two readers for this book to try to keep me honest. I wanted to tell the truth as much as possible and he was fantastic and keeping me on point with the book and is in the book, as is his father, the commonwealth attorney that lived on our street when we grew up.
REHM
11:49:55
One of these stories you tell in this book is about your mother leaving the Roman Catholic Church.
RICHARD
11:50:07
Mm-hmm. You know, it's almost become cliché that everybody has a priest story who leaves the church. My mother had a priest story. She was on the altar guild to put fresh flowers up on Saturday and went in there to do it.
REHM
11:50:24
At the Episcopal Church or...
RICHARD
11:50:26
Oh, no.
REHM
11:50:26
...at the Roman Catholic Church?
RICHARD
11:50:27
At the Catholic Church.
REHM
11:50:28
Okay. All right.
RICHARD
11:50:28
The Catholic Church. I'm sorry if I was confusing. And she and another lady were putting flowers up on the altar. No one was in the church. And they were wearing culottes, which were like shorts, you know, what they're called at the time, I guess. And the priest apparently came in and saw them up on the altar in culottes and grabbed a piece of rope and chased them out of the church calling them whores. So they didn't...
REHM
11:50:57
Because they had...
RICHARD
11:50:58
Because, I guess...
REHM
11:50:59
...entered the church improperly dressed as far as...
RICHARD
11:51:02
Yeah.
REHM
11:51:02
...he was concerned.
RICHARD
11:51:03
Right. And he -- I think he may have been drinking at the time. So I'm surprised my father didn't go down there and whip some butt, but he didn't. And we subsequently started attending the Episcopal Church after that.
REHM
11:51:17
Was your father a big man?
RICHARD
11:51:19
No, he was not.
REHM
11:51:20
He was not.
RICHARD
11:51:20
Very, very slender, narrow shoulder, but a strong man.
REHM
11:51:26
You talk about the day you spent with him checking out a peat fire...
RICHARD
11:51:33
Right.
REHM
11:51:34
...and you say that that was the best day you ever had with him.
RICHARD
11:51:38
It was a very surreal day, so vivid. We were in the Dismal Swamp and there was a fire. It was -- they called a forest fire, but it was literally burning underground where all the -- you know, because it's a swamp, all the compost. And there was mass confusion. There were people running. They didn't know where the fire was coming from. And it erupted out of the ground, smoke was hanging. And the Dismal Swamp is a very spooky place. Lake Drummond in the middle with the cypress trees and the moss hanging down and these roads that seem to twist and wind and we came across -- they had impressed sailors from Norfolk to help put out the fire. It was out of control.
RICHARD
11:52:19
And I remember my father was just very calm during the whole time. We were driving around in his car and he was giving me, you know, a lesson of history. He said, well, you know, George Washington dug this canal to drain the swamp. And over here is, you know, once where I saw a bear swimming across the canal with a cub on its back. And it was just -- it was so pleasant. And we would come across -- I remember we came across a scene where the sailors were panicking, getting on and off the school bus. And he was -- he told them, he said, there's no reason to panic, you know, gentlemen. He said, the fire is actually burning underneath us.
RICHARD
11:52:52
And as he said that, a bulldozer disappeared in the ground because it had -- the fire had burned. And he said, see, he said, just, you know, it's burning underneath us, no one panic. And everyone left and we took our time. And the flames were right behind us, I remember. And we would stop and periodically take pictures. And there was a little railroad car and I got on the railroad car, like one of those hand cars where you pump the handles and it moves along. And my father took a picture of me and I was pretending that I was trying to outrace the flames and I still have that photograph. My sister sent it to me years ago. It was just -- it was a wonderful day.
REHM
11:53:34
Very special.
RICHARD
11:53:35
Yeah.
REHM
11:53:36
And you're listening to "The Diane Rehm Show." Let's go to Chesterland, Ohio. Good morning, Esther.
ESTHER
11:53:45
I just want to say thank you, Diane, for such a wonderful interview. It's just very much of a change from what we usually hear on most interviews. Not yours, yours are all good, but there are subjects that we're so caught up in.
REHM
11:54:00
Thank you.
ESTHER
11:54:00
This is a wonderful man and a wonderful story and thank you.
REHM
11:54:03
And thank you...
RICHARD
11:54:04
Thank you.
REHM
11:54:04
...so much for calling. Have you been back to your own town recently?
RICHARD
11:54:11
I have been. I go back once or twice a year. Sadly, the paper mill that was the life blood of our town is closed. And of a town of 8,000 or 9,000, to lose that just cut -- just gutted the place. And we lost 1,500, 2,000 jobs or something.
REHM
11:54:30
Oh, boy.
RICHARD
11:54:30
So it's one of those stories of America that are all too common. And, you know, when Jeanette Purington had called in about it, yes, we grew up in the golden age when there was money and the town was vibrant. We had a family -- the Camp family had built that town. And now it's not there anymore. When I go back, it's hundreds of houses for sale. It's a typical story in America.
REHM
11:54:56
Where is your mother?
RICHARD
11:54:58
She's in that town.
REHM
11:54:59
She's still there.
RICHARD
11:55:01
She's still there. And she's going to, you know, hang on and hold on.
REHM
11:55:06
How old is she?
RICHARD
11:55:08
Oh, she'll kill me for saying this. I think she's 78. She's young.
REHM
11:55:12
Seventy-eight.
RICHARD
11:55:13
Yeah.
REHM
11:55:14
She still has friends there?
RICHARD
11:55:15
Oh, yeah. She wouldn't leave. I think that her -- I think her network of friends and her network of prayer partners and just her community is so strong there that they won't leave.
REHM
11:55:30
That's quite an attachment. You know, I was born here in Washington.
RICHARD
11:55:37
Okay.
REHM
11:55:37
I've been here all my life.
RICHARD
11:55:39
Right.
REHM
11:55:39
I've watched this city go from street cars to buses to mass transit to crowds on the street. I mean, so different.
RICHARD
11:55:52
Right.
REHM
11:55:52
And it's lost.
RICHARD
11:55:55
Yes.
REHM
11:55:56
You know, though I've watched it all change, as I know you have watched your town change, it's amazing and yet it's sad to see what was.
RICHARD
11:56:12
Very sad. Very sad. And I think we've lost -- when we -- when the paper mill closed, and even before the paper mill closed, it was bought out and, you know, and then outsourced. In its heyday, the great thing about the paper mill is that it brought in people from all over. So for a small town, it was very cosmopolitan. And with people going to New York, people going to Europe, the Camp family made sure that the libraries were well funded and that's all gone.
REHM
11:56:43
Mark Richard and the book is titled, "House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home." Congratulations on the book.
RICHARD
11:56:54
Oh, thank you so much.
REHM
11:56:55
And thank you for being here.
RICHARD
11:56:57
Been my pleasure, Diane. Thank you very much.
REHM
11:56:59
Thank you. And thanks for listening, all. I'm Diane Rehm.
ANNOUNCER
11:57:04
"The Diane Rehm Show" is produced by Sandra Pinkard, Nancy Robertson, Susan Nabors, Denise Couture and Monique Nazareth. The engineer is Tobey Schreiner. Dorie Anisman answers the phones. Visit drshow.org for audio archives, transcripts, podcasts and CD sales. Call 202-885-1200 for more information. Our e-mail address is drshow@wamu.org and we're on Facebook and Twitter. This program comes to you from American University in Washington. This is NPR.
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