Zeek Taylor had a childhood that seems straight from a novel.
He was raised in Marmaduke, a tiny town of 650 in the northeastern Arkansas Delta. His father ran the branch bank -- working as manager, teller and janitor -- and his mother had a hair salon in their home -- very "Steel Magnolias," Taylor admits. By the time he was 5, he was picking cotton with his grandmother, putting it in a "pick sack" made from an old pillowcase and making 3 cents a pound at the cotton wagon where it was weighed. He also started school when he was 5, but he didn't like leaving his dog, Jigs, behind. So Jigs attended class, too, sitting in a chair next to the slender blonde boy.
FAQ
Book Signing
With Zeek Taylor
WHEN — 6-9 p.m. Nov. 4
WHERE — Caribe Restaurant in Eureka Springs
COST — Books will be available for $18
INFO — Email zeek.taylor@cox.net
BONUS — “Out of the Delta” is also available at Amazon.com.
FYI
Also Inspired
Eureka Springs artist John Rankine also recently published a book inspired by a Facebook phenomenon. He took pictures every morning for about a year with his smartphone and posted them online, finally gathering the collection into “On My Morning Walk: An Ozark Photo Diary.”
The book contains 57 photographs chosen from the original installation of 300 images in Basin Park for the 2016 May Festival of the Arts.
The book retails for $15 and is available at the Eureka Fine Art Gallery at 2 Pine St.
"It was," he admits, "sort of like being Opie Taylor in Mayberry."
Taylor might not have kept all those memories fresh in his mind had it not been for the Facebook phenomenon of "Throw-Back Thursday." Participants post photos and stories about what happened last week or several decades ago, and he says he thought "it might be a fun thing to do." He started sorting through old pictures, and as the memories surfaced, he started telling his tales.
The response was overwhelming.
Of course, Taylor is well known. An artist and Eureka Springs resident for nearly 30 years, he is a recipient of the Arkansas Arts Council's Governor's Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement, has seen his work hung in the Governor's Mansion and sold in the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art museum store, had solo exhibitions around the state, given a TEDx talk and appeared several times on the "Tales From the South" radio show. Surprised as he was at the interest in his written words, when fans started encouraging him to collect his stories in a book, he started saving what he wrote. The result is "Out of the Delta: A Collection of Short Stories," which he'll debut at a party and signing Nov. 4 at Caribe in Eureka Springs.
The book begins with a picture of Taylor at the age of 4 and his "protectors," a sock monkey, a sailor doll and a Sad Willie clown doll. It ends with pictures from May 10, 2014, when Taylor and Dick Titus, his partner of 42 years at the time, were among the first same-sex couples married in Arkansas.
Taylor says growing up in Marmaduke, "everyone knew each other and took care of each other. Everyone was like an aunt or uncle." He was a "rough and tumble" little boy, he says, and always wanted to make his parents proud. Yes, he says, he knew he was different, and he knew there were men in town who had male "friends." "But they were part of the community and accepted," he remembers. "I certainly never felt bullied or felt out of place."
Most of the stories' fans have connected with Taylor based not on that part of his life but on shared memories of growing up in the 1940s and '50s: Picking cotton or working in the field as a child, having a grandmother loved with all that child's heart or just the joys of a rural youth. Taylor remembers what a lot of money 300 to 400 pounds of cotton could yield at 3 cents a pound, for instance, and what it could buy -- a horse at the age of 12, a motorcycle at 14 and, at 16, a 1952 Ford. He was also the first in his family to attend college -- at age 17 -- majoring in art and journalism at Arkansas State University. It was his work as a teacher during that time that kept him out of Vietnam.
While Taylor is pleased with the book's success so far, Throw-Back Thursday fans needn't worry.
"I think I've still got some stories to tell."
NAN What's Up on 10/28/2016