What Kind of Pantyhose Were They??

The Charleston Jail

I just returned from 10 days in the Charleston area. Land of sweet tea, palm trees and Rhett Butler - and ghosts. I knew about the first three but was unaware of The Holy City's (didn't know about that nickname either)status as bona fide ghost country. Ghost tours abound - cemeteries, jails and the sites of infamous crimes, including those of 27 year old Lavinia Fisher whose rap sheet and list of exploits has grown dramatically since she was hanged in 1820 - or did she jump from the scaffold in defiance of the hangman? Did she really wear a wedding dress and say “If you have a message you want to send to hell, give it to me – I’ll carry it” ? Who knew that behind all that Miss Rosemary and Miss Becky (my pal) lay a tumultuous past?

We were there for a Habitat for Humanity build with a team my husband (Mr. Bruce) put together. Shout-out to Mark, Chip, Joe, Angela, Nicole, Maddy, Marianne and Laura, our fellow team members. I can't recommend HFH highly enough - great organization, great work and great fun with amazing like-minded people. The Sea Island Habitat office is on Johns Island, where we built and it was there that Miss Melissa posed the title question.

It seems the church next door to the SIH office moved down the road. Once that happened the issue of what to do with the bodies interred in the church's cemetery arose. Some families wanted them to stay, others wanted loved ones removed to what was now the hallowed ground down half a mile away. Others were long gone and unavailable for comment.

Apparently the moving of bodies is not unusual in Charleston. Sometimes it's a function of much of the area being below sea level. On a bus tour we learned that Vice-President John Calhoun's body "crossed the road more times dead than alive." Reason? His family could not be traced back more than two generations so his status as a "native Charlestonian" was challenged. That required his removal from a Charleston only plot to another across the street. At some point this was reversed and… well, you get it.

But back to the church. Inevitably the day came when the exhumations were to take place. Do you watch? Say a prayer and stay back? Put it on youtube? So hard to know the proper etiquette.

One man's family was removed without his consent - and like John Calhoun - they had to be returned to their original resting places. Now, I don't have a lot of first-hand knowledge about caskets. Although I should. I took MWA's awesome Woodlawn Cemetery tour last fall, but I was more interested in seeing Nellie Bly's grave. And Miles Davis' so I must have missed the part about when coffins fall apart. But, you know, nothing lasts forever and I imagine some of the wooden caskets just rotted away over time. Need I tell you what happened? Bottoms fell out. Bodies fell out. I leave the rest to your imagination. And that prompted Miss Melissa's question - "what kind of pantyhose were they??"

Which, I suppose, lends a whole new meaning to the term, support hose.

© 2015 Rosemary Harris

Every picture tells a story, don't it?

How often do we get to quote Rod Stewart - not often enough IMO. But enough about Rod.

Who are these women? Famous? Infamous? Distant relatives? None of the above.

For my first (and not quite finished) historical novel I did a tremendous amount of research. Sadly most of it is now sits on a clipboard, perhaps never to see the light of day. But it was not time wasted. Everything I read or did related to my time period (1899) was worthwhile - except perhaps the trip to Chicago to see the museum exhibit on the 1893 Columbian Exposition. That was a bust. Should have just re-read Devil in the White City…or waited for the movie.

One of my fave research activities (and way cheaper than flying NY to Chicago) has been collecting old photographs. It's all well and good to read about the whalebone and the mourning jewelry or see it in a museum but it's pretty cool to see real women of the time. To wonder who they were and why they had had these pictures taken. Were they given to sweethearts? Sent off with men going to wars in the Philippines or Cuba? I started to channel the older woman in these pix whenever I wrote about my heroine's stepmother. The younger woman became her best friend. The little girl with the flowers could have grown up to be my heroine.

New technologies - including tintypes - and the proliferation of studios with painted backdrops and props brought the cost of portraits down to a penny a picture. And they took less time than daguerreotypes. On the back of my toddler pic are the words Instantaneous Portraits of Children, A Successful Specialty.

So who were they? I'll never know. That's for me to make up. To be inspired by.

One special find - a stereograph viewer and a box of pictures. Two images side by side on a card but when viewed through the handheld device they appear as one - in 3D. I didn't bite the first time I saw them. Kicked myself for the rest of the day and then went to a second estate sale held by the same company and scooped them up. Endessly inspiring including pix of the Columbian Exposition! That prompted me to check out Pinterest - which up until that point I thought was for pix of shoes and desserts. Wrong. Positively addictive. I was able to search some of the places my heroine visits on her picaresque journey and see what they really looked like. Particularly helpful if they no longer exist.

I'm not even going to get started on the vintage books, maps and newspapers I've been collecting. (My office is beginning to look like my last name should be Collyer. Google Collyer Brothers if you don't get it.) As I said, much of this info will never make it to the printed page but hopefully my total immersion in the time will come across in the writing.

So what non-traditional things have inspired your writings?

© 2015 Rosemary Harris

Girls Gone Wild

Rosemary Harris is the author of the Dirty Business mysteries featuring amateur sleuth Paula Holliday. Her debut novel, the Agatha and Anthony-nominated, Pushing Up Daisies, was followed by Corpse Flower (previously released as The Big Dirt Nap), Dead Head, and Slugfest. She is past president of MWA's NY Chapter and SINC's New England Chapter.

She is a native Brooklynite like some of the characters in her latest standalone novel, The Bitches of Brooklyn, but now splits her time between New York City and Fairfield County, CT. She is currently working on an historical novel — about a Girl.

---

Girls Gone Wild — and I blame Sonny Mehta. Okay, maybe blame is too strong a word, but ever since the legendary publisher of Knopf saw fit to change the name of a certain book from Men Who Hate Women to Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Girls have been running amuck in book publishing. They’ve gotten on trains, gotten gone and fallen to earth. They’ve been lucky, Chinese and rich, and who knows what the fall list will bring. Admittedly, Men Who Hate Women is an angry, downer title. And Bizarro Revenge Fantasy was probably a little too obvious, but who could have predicted the overwhelming appeal of Girl? Mr. Mehta it would seem. He certainly didn’t invent the word but as an unintended consequence to his ingenious decision he seems to have spawned an entire sub-genre of Girl books. (Not all of them are Knopf, btw although Hornet’s Nest and Fire brilliantly and logically followed Tattoo.)

So why Girl and not Woman? Before you think a feminist rant is coming, that ain’t it. A woman who has published a book entitled The Bitches of Brooklyn has no right to throw stones – and I’m not. This is a legitimate marketing question. I have read three Girl-titled books since GWTDT – and not because Girl was in the title. As I recall most of the protagonists (other than tattoo girl) were on the far side of thirty. Not crones, but hardly the quivering, vulnerable young things the word Girl suggests.

Do publishing execs sit around in editorial meetings and try to figure out how to stick the word in every title? Go Set a WatchGirl? (“Listen, Harper, we’ve done a lot of market research…”) The Girls in the Boat? (“I don’t care if they were boys, we’ll sell more this way…”)

Maybe I should have titled Bitches, The Girls from Gravesend, or The Girls from Greenpoint. Who knows? What famous book title would you change to include the word Girl?

(PS, just as I sat down to write this, The Beach Boys’ California Girls came on the iPod. No kidding. It was a sign.)

© 2015 Rosemary Harris
www.rosemaryharris.com