Diamond in the Rough Read Online Free Page A

Eaton’s Department Store—a navy blue wool skirt and a green, orange, and navy striped sweater vest. I reveled in my good fortune for a scant year, but Dad burned my little playhouse down when he announced we were moving again, to Carbondale, Illinois, where by the middle of seventh grade, at the age of twelve, I would become a bag lady.
    Carbondale is a funky town in southern Illinois whose claim to fame is its large university, where my father opted to finish his degree. Carbondale held no charm for me; I’ll just come right out and say it. None of us liked it very much. We made fun of it. The way people talked and their accents and even the name were so … unpoetic.
    The town bordered Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee and had the humidity and summer heat to prove it, which I vividly recall because we arrived in July. We took up residence on a cul-de-sac called Norwood Drive, situated on the outskirts of some woods that separated us from the upscale part of town. I’d never been around strip malls, Walmart, or Arby’s before. Vermillion was too small, Canada too smart. And I’d never experienced a southern accent either, which to me just sounded stupid. Now, having lived in Texas awhile, I’ve changed my mind, but Texas and southern Illinois are a bit different culturally, trust me. Of course, I made friendships there that would last a lifetime, a lesson worth noting. During some of the unhappiest times of my life, I’ve made some of my best friends.
    None of this was obvious to me that blazing-hot summer, and I dreaded my first day of school. I had discovered a Top 40 radio station called KXOK out of St. Louis and was deeply immersed in the hits of that summer, such as “Everyday People,” “Gentle on My Mind,” “Get Back,” “Honky Tonk Women,” and “Just Dropped In (to See What Condition My Condition Was In).” But the unlikely song, if you can call it that, that stands out in my memory, the song that brought me to tears every time, was a jingle for Thom McAn shoes:
    Yesterday they took away my window,
    But I can still see things my way.
    Don’t let them tell you what you can do.
    Do your own thing, do your own thing today.
    To this day it’s one of the only jingles I’ve ever heard that was not only plaintive but in a minor key, surely a misguided notion by someone at Thom McAn, but it worked for me, especially the sentiment that “yesterday they took away my window.” Which was Canada.
    I do remember finding something good even in the isolation I felt after we moved to Carbondale that July. I knew absolutely no one, and the prospect of school terrified me, but in those two remaining months of summer, before I was to start school, I discovered how much I loved to be alone in the house. It was the time I could really sing, whether it was along with Lulu on “To Sir with Love,” or the words I made up to the classical pieces I knew on piano. “Minuet in G,” for example, went like this:
    When the Minuet in G is played,
    People dance and parade.
    When the Minuet in G is played,
    Watch the people dance and then parade.
    What I’ve heard of this song
    It is very good,
    Good for listening.
    When the Minuet in G is played,
    People dance and parade.
    So I guess even way back then, at least part of me wanted to write songs, even though I hadn’t yet heard my songwriting heroes, the ones who would define the genre I would come to want to inhabit.
    I could easily entertain myself for hours while alone at home, just singing and playing and blasting the stereo or the radio. It was always terrific news when the rest of the family would head off to Walmart and I was allowed to have my own, private world of music.
    But soon the wretched day came when it was time for me to start school. What had happened to me? I’d managed the transition reasonably well in Canada, but I felt as if only a limited amount of luck had been allotted to me thus far and that with the move to Carbondale it had run out. I had no