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Kathie
Farnell’s wry, laconic memoir Duck and Cover: A
Nuclear Family, available from The University of
South Carolina Press, is told from her perspective as a
smart-mouthed, unreasonably optimistic white girl
growing up in Cloverdale, a genteel and neatly
landscaped neighborhood of Montgomery, Alabama, in the
late 1950s and early 1960s. During those decades
Montgomery's social order was slowly—very
slowly—changing. The bus boycott was over if not
forgotten, Normandale Shopping Center had a display of
the latest fallout shelters, and integration was on the
horizon, though most people still thought the water in
the white and colored drinking fountains came from
separate tanks.
Farnell’s household, more like the Addams family than
the Cleavers of Leave it to Beaver, included socially
ambitious parents (both lawyers), two younger brothers,
a live-in grandmother, and Libby, the disgruntled family
maid. |
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Her
father was a one-armed rageaholic given to strange
business deals such as the one that left the family
unintentionally owning a bakery. Mama, the
quintessential attorney, could strike a jury but was
hopeless at making Jell-O. Granny, a curmudgeon who
kept a chamber pot under her bed, was always at odds
with Libby, who had been in a bad mood since the bus
boycott began.
Farnell
deftly recounts tales of aluminum Christmas trees, the
Hula-Hoop craze, road trips in the family’s
un-air-conditioned black Bel Air, show-and-tell
involving a human skeleton, belatedly learning to
swear, and even the pet chicken she didn’t know she
had. Her well-crafted prose reveals quirky and
compelling characters in stories that don’t ignore the
dark side of the Silent Fifties.
Kathie
was featured at the Southern Festival of Books in
October, 2017. You can see a clip of the panel she
appeared on BookTV here.
To
order a copy of Duck
and Cover, contact Kathie at farnell@centurytel.net
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Kathie
Farnell's second memoir Tie Dyed: Avoiding Aquarius,
follows Kathie's attempts to survive high school and
college during the late 60s and early 70s, a time which
has lingered in the public imagination as a hellhole of
unbridled sex, drugs, war, violence and rock 'n' roll
inevitably accompanied by a soundtrack of "All
Along the Watchtower" (scenes from Viet Nam) or
"Sympathy for the Devil" (rock concerts and/or riots).
During a time of frightening, ridiculous, and
occasionally just plain weird change, families like
Kathie's still coped, however cluelessly, with mundane
concerns.
It's the late 60s and Kathie has a wardrobe
problem: her mother doesn't think her skirts
are short enough. Meanwhile, at enormous Sidney Lanier
High School (football team: the Poets), the
administration is ignoring the fact that somebody has
planted marijuana in the library's ficus,
and the official response to integration is to announce
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students will
no longer shower after PE.Kathie has PE first period. Do
the math. On the home front, Kathie's brothers have
started a pot plantation on the carport roof and Granny,
though dead, is in no hurry to vacate the premises. What
a relief to escape to small University of Montevallo,
suspended in Jello since the 1950s, where there's
no violence on campus and not much of anything else,
either. Kathie may be missing the whole flower power
vibe, but she stays pretty busy coping with hippies,
Miss Poultry, and Jeb Stuart Magruder, not to mention
answering all those Star Trek letters.
Tie Dyed: Avoiding Aquarius has been called "equal parts
dramatic and hair-on-fire hilarious" (Alan Samry, author
of Stump the Librarian: A Writer's Book of Legs)
and "fine social history...as clever as it is
witty" (Wayne Flynt, author of Mockingbird Songs: My
Friendship with Harper Lee).
Tie
Dyed: Avoiding Aquarius is available from Amazon.com and through
local
bookstores.
Personal
Appearances:
Attend one of
Kathie's Book Talks!
May 25, 2022:
Fairhope Public Library
June 25, 2022:
Spanish Fort Public Library
August 2, 2022:
Satsuma Public Library
August 24, 2022:
Foley Public Library
November 8, 2022:
Gulf Shores Public Library
Watch this
website for updates.
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