Well, if you showed up for Thanksgiving dinner in MacAlester as I suggested last month, you didn't find my sister-in-law, Betty Moss, nor me. Betty had a heart attack just a week after last month's newsletter came onto your screen. She went to the hospital and then home where she was cared for by her daughter, Monette and her grandchildren. She's up and about now.

I had a lovely after-thanksgiving dinner furnished by writer friends, Nancy Huff, Linda Overton, and Karen Hardin. Linda delivered boxes of all the regular good stuff of the holiday, enough for a week of dinners.

I celebrated with all that good food and a little diet Dr. Pepper. Hope not too many of you were disappointed that Betty and I didn't show.

Of course, Jackie King asked me to share Thanksgiving dinner and her family. I was slightly upset that her ex would not be showing up. I'd like to see that old boy. What can he possibly have been thinking to part from Jacqueline?

Her children are all golden giants. I expect she is bursting with pride whenever she looks at them.

I made speaking and signing arrangements for Charles Sasser and me. We went to Drumright and Olive, Oklahoma. On the way there we passed through Oilton. My heart clenched to see that beloved, art deco high school building gone and our house gone as well, so the only things I saw which looked the same were the First Baptist Church where I spent many hours of my life and the little off road space below river hill where I spent quite a few hours.

I told Chuck he was seeing the two sides of my teenaged self, goody-two-shoes at church and school and naughty girl in the night with several boys at the river hill.

Now, no, not that kind of naughty girl which you immediately envisioned. No, no. When I was a kid it was considered daring to kiss and hold hands. Had I said "yes" to the opportunings of the boys who sat with me in their cars at river hill, I could never have shown my face at school the next day. My reputation (though spotted with kisses) was reasonably in line with what was expected of a girl then. I left for college at fifteen and rarely looked back but I do remember "river hill!" with a certain bit of warmth... and I told Chuck Sasser that as we passed the very spot.

Chuck looked great in a new tweed jacket. He was to sign his new nonfiction book HILL 488 and I was ready to sign my new book, BARBARA.

Well, do you want to hear all this? As we sat down in the Drumright Library in came a large man wearing a ball cap. He walked straight to my side and leaned over me.

"Don't you know me?" he asked.

"Robert," I shouted, then I had to laugh. "Here Chuck, this was one of the boys that I went to that parking spot with one night. We kissed a lot and I remember it well because Robert was so nervous."

I liked Robert a lot. He was (is) redheaded and I admired that and he behaved well in class and I doubly admired that. The boys who created classroom disturbances were never appealing to me... nor I to them, I suppose.

And then came Margaret (Not her real name). She came bearing a double whammy. Her oldest brother was the first boy I dated in a car. The whole thing seemed so glamorous... dating a guy years older, at least five or six years older, and in a car! Zane took me to several Tuesday night movies but never to the spot at river hill. We often kissed goodnight at my backdoor.

But... are you sure you want to hear the rest of this? Margaret married a Drumright boy. She said his name as we chatted across the table and just before we left it dawned on me. She had married Mick. Now Mick was not only a Drumright boy, he was dark male beauty on the hoof, and VERY good at the naughtiness of river hill. We went out a lot. I was crazy about the boy but he finally told me he wouldn't come around any more unless I'd "go all the way," so I lost the gorgeous Mick (not really his name). Marriage just wasn't in the cards for me at that age. So, Margaret has had him all these years. Well. Lucky girl.

Chuck and I and Robert and Margaret and two plump strangers sat and chatted for two hours. None of the four, Robert, Margaret, or the strangers ever looked at our books or touched them in any way. It was as if the table were completely bare.

I entertained with stories of Robert's naughtiness on that one night on river hill. He blushed but he laughed and listened. Then they all left. We drove to Olive, once again passing through Oilton and right by the turnoff at river hill.

Ah, Oilton. I was a gazelle in those days. Short, but a gazelle nevertheless. I felt the urge to run all the time everyday, so I did. And I took a miles long solitary hike every Saturday morning... once in awhile to river hill, no boys in tow.

Olive was a different story. Plenty of readers and wannabe writers there. We took turns talking and then we sold some books. One of the women in our audience wanted me to write her story. I asked her if she'd gotten lost with her friends and finally eaten them to keep from starving. She felt my question to be very strange. I explained. A book about an ordinary person in an ordinary place who got into some ordinary trouble would not make a great sale to an editor in New York. No. Not even if she held the gun. It has to be cannibalism at the very least.

I was charmed by her teen-aged son. He bought BARBARA with his own money.

Joyce Tomanek of Clarksville, Georgia, won last month's contest. Clever thing. She guessed it to be my birth month. My brother and I had near Halloween birthdays so Ms. Hazel let us throw a huge party on Halloween.

I know now mom was keeping us off the wild and surging Halloween streets. We invited everyone in our Sunday School classes and just so we hadn't missed anyone, we invited everyone in our BTU (Baptist Training Union). We pushed all the furniture against the walls and played games or ran screaming and giggling through the house and yard like wild demons. We never called it a birthday party so we got no gifts but we didn't care. The only things Jack and I loved were our parents, each other and books. We didn't need anything else.

Joyce has her copy of BARBARA by now but she hasn't let me know what she thinks of it.

People who have BARBARA as a first, second or last name are winners this month. Send a copy of your library card or report card or some official paper with your name on it via US mail to Box 50347, Tulsa, OK 74150. Also send your mailing address with it and I'll send you a copy of the UFO book. Go to the website books page if you want to see what BARBARA is about.

CHIK~LIT was turned down by Random House but it is still being considered by Kensington. The editor at Avalon has asked to see my Regency Romance novel, MAKE BELIEVE CURATE. Of course no one works in New York until after new years so I probably won't hear soon.

See you then. Is 2003 really almost over?

Love to all of you, my good readers. Peggy