My Towels Talk

In my 12th grade year, after taking my SAT’s and receiving my scores, a counselor spoke with me, she asked me what did I aspire to become? My answer was, “A WRITER”. She discouraged my pursuit, however it fueled my fire. By the time, I finished my senior year, I was really beginning to listen to my heart, I loved writing. Words began to flow from me. I graduated from high-school, and our family moved from West Virginia to Ohio, where I began to write even more. My mother encouraged me to read to the family after dinner especially on Sunday evenings. My family questioned me as to where did these words come from? My mother’s answer was, “they come from GOD!” I began to hide the poems under mattresses, and I lost several when I moved out. I remember two of my poems, they are An Evening View and Feeling Needed.

Later that year, I moved to Virginia, got my first job at a linens service, and enrolled in beauty school. My reading helped me greatly in cosmetology. I bought a little pink typewriter, and an old tape recorder to talk into. That was the beginning of my adult writing career.

I never stopped writing. My creative ideas came at different times. While working at the Hair Cuttery, during lunch, I pick up an alphabetical soup can, I began to make words from the alphabets while spinning it around and around in my hand, I remarked as to “How much, we Americans eat!” “There should never be a time, when we are feeding our stomachs, that we should not be feeding our minds.”

After a year, I opened my own beauty salon and I continued to write on everything, napkins, open envelopes, brown paper bags, hosiery board, church programs, many composition books, journals, and the bottoms of my appointment book. While my children went to college I continued to work in my salon. For the next thirteen years, I worked through good times and bad times. Poems, from every struggle and any situation, I wrote poems for friends’ funerals, and baby’s births. A customer’s visit was not complete until I shared a poem to help them ease their pain and reflect on God’s ability to solve it.

Every great idea I had, involved words and writings. Every struggle became fuel for the fire! I love writing: I sleep with it, I eat with it, and I am inspired by every facet of life. I credit my sons and daughters, for professional input and their assistance during the conception of several poems. I have finally gotten there!

You can read Bobbie's full history here.