Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. They’ll help me plan out the distribution of my upcoming novel, “Bend In The River,” which should be released in September 2025.
How do you consume books?
Category: Uncategorized
From Kentucky to North Carolina: A Personal Reflection
When I’m asked “Where you from?”, these are the people and places that come to mind.
For the past 25 years, Iโve lived in North Carolina โ minus a 15-month sojourn to the Mississippi Delta, where I believe I rediscovered the writer living within me.
Prior to my move to Gaston County (NC) that last week of September 1999, Iโd lived my entire life — now counting 58 years — in Kentucky. Western Kentucky to be exact.
Thereโs a town within Union County, not far from the Ohio River, and surrounded by coal fields and corn and soybeans, where I grew up and spent a good portion of my early career in newspapers.
Morganfield is my hometown and my maternal grandparents lived across the road and my uncles and cousins are sewn along Highway 130, which we called Grove Center Road for most of my childhood.
I attended college at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green and spent nearly two years working at a newspaper in Murray, Ky., and another in Calhoun, Ky.
I know that part of Kentucky โ its topography (rolling hills interspersed with fields of grain) and its people. Oh, the people.
Iโve done a bit of looking into the Banks and Robinson family trees and discovered, for the most part, my people came to Kentucky in the late 1700s and early 1800s from Virginia and North Carolina. Maybe that notched wedge of land — not far from where the Wabash River dumps into the Ohio — was their very own land of milk and honey as not many of my relatives have left.
I’ve discovered those woods and creek beds and thickets of my youth often find their way into the stories of that I write today. The ballfields, taverns and courthouses of my later years also linger and serve as background in those same stories.
Itโs the same with the people that Iโve interacted with during my time on earth. There are bits and pieces of many of them mashed together to create delightful and, often, confounding characters who fill my scenes. Their dialogue and the tales they spin are the ones Iโve heard from the lips of others or imagined so.
Iโm every bit Kentuckian.
Outside my window, the redbuds are in their early stages, heavy with purple. Mockingbirds, searching for a mate, squawk and defend their turf. The days are longer and I stay seated when the morning sun slants through the window and its warmth lands on my shoulders.
I think of the first Saturday in May and the crash of the starting gate and hooves hitting the dirt as they near the first turn at Churchill.
โHave you got your Derby horse,โ theyโll ask.
โSoon. Very soon,โ I reply.
When the 20 horses and their riders take the track, the band plays โMy Old Kentucky Homeโ and New Yorkers and Californians and Texans in their pastels and linen will tear up and raise their frosted glasses and toast that โold Kentucky home, far, far away.โ
But for us, who truly know Kentucky, itโs a lot more personal.
Itโs spring and pulling up old barn wood and digging up fat earth worms and flinging them into country ponds lined with green moss and waiting for the smallmouth to strike.
Itโs walking the first rows of a corn field in late July, enduring the slice of a sharp leaf, to find the sweet corn and how it will taste when its boiled and the butter and salt will stick to your lips.
Itโs the sounds of old hymns sung by others before us and incantations of the traveling preacher man filling the pews at Bethel Baptist, the harmonies and spirit pouring from the open window and weaving among the headstones covered in autumnโs rust.
Itโs winter and it’s dark and the hawk — that brutal wind — roars from the north and we gather by fires and sip bourbon and tell stories from days warmer and know that more await.ย
Editor’s Note: Work continues on my novel, tentatively titled “Bend In the River,” that includes many of the places and characters compiled from my days and nights spent in Kentucky.
Waiting at the Depot
The waiting game at The Depot Tavern would often set a mind to wandering about the future.
Puddles form at the base of the bottle of Coca-Cola. If you tilt the glass, the brown sugar water runs and you see etched on the bottom far-off places like Little Rock, Arkansas; Jacksonville, Florida; or Rocky Mount, North Carolina. In your hand, the Coca-Cola warms, and more sweat runs, staining the worn tabletop.
At the Depot Tavern, bottles of PBR rest on beer guts that strain the buttons, gripped by the grease-stained, gnarled-knuckled fists of the mechanics at the Chevy dealership. The beer never warms as they order a round and another and another, chasing that buzz between the 5 oโclock punchout and the 7 oโclock chicken pot pies with the old lady and rug rats.
He asks if you want another Coca-Cola. You lift the bottle, but the drink is warm like spit and you donโt swallow.
Why donโt you go outside, he says. I wonโt be much longer.
Thereโs an old train station across the street. Deserted and gray like the crumbling concrete steps. You stand on the rust-covered tracks and look east down where they cut open the pigs, their blood sopped by sawdust. To the west is colored town and then nothing else.
You think of Little Rock. And Jacksonville. And Rocky Mount.
The trains donโt run
where dreams bleed and gutted,
the long walk back home
Editor’s Note: This piece of Haibun poetry was prompted by a recent Pen to Paper Live session hosted by the Charlotte Lit organization. Charlotte Lit hosts the free sessions weekly. You can register here.
The session was led by Kathie Collins, who said Haibun is a Japanese form popularized by the renowned poet Bashล in the 17th century. “Think of it as a mini-lyric travel essay finished off with an insightful postscript in the form of a haiku.”
Once a Brave, always a Brave
These 2024 Braves are a special bunch who are carrying the hopes of a school, an entire county and all those who have gone before them.
Writing is a funny thing. One can never be certain what will resonate with folks.
In some ways, itโs akin to coming across a rain-filled ditch. You may have a good idea of what awaits, but you never really know if that first step is going to be free and easy to the other side or leave you underwater, gasping and spitting as you try to climb to the surface.
When I first started to put down the words Friday morning to the โGhosts of Baker Field,โ the work was fed by the very stark realization that itโs now 40 years since I played my final game of football. And as Iโve gotten older, the memories are more and more persistent, often tapping on my brain in the early hours just before dawn.
I was quite surprised with the response. More than 1,200 visitors read the story and hundreds more liked and shared the article via Facebook with many offering kind comments that were most appreciated.
Former players from far and near, old and young, shared their memories of their final games and their lifelong bonds with their teammates. Family members told of how they were unsure of what to answer when their son, defeated and dejected after a season-ending loss, sprawled out on a patch of torn turf in some faraway town, looked up at them and asked, โWhat am I supposed to do now, Momma?โ
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย But the highest praise came from Union County head football coach Derek Johns who said he read the column right before the team took the โBrave Walkโ down the hill at Baker Field Friday night, where later they would celebrate a dominant, mistake-free 43-21 win over Belfry that sends them on to the state championship game.
That comment really hit home.
In a way, Johns allowed the ghosts of Baker Field into that locker room one more time when he shared those words. The Thin Twenty from 1972. The 1976 and 2008 teams that had stood exactly where they were only to come up just short. And the 5-6 team from 1984 of which I was a part of.
โOnce a Brave, always a Brave.โ I heard that from so many.
These 2024 Braves are a special bunch who are carrying the hopes of a school, an entire county and all those who have gone before them. Theyโre now 12-2 and will play for the Class 3A state title when they take on Christian Academy of Louisville next Saturday at the University of Kentuckyโs Kroeger Field.
This band of Braves has gone where no other Union County football team has ever gone before. Theyโve already established their place in local lore. What awaits is a place in the state record books.
But, perhaps most prominent in their minds, is the guarantee that they get the chance to lace up the cleats and put on the pads. Theyโll pound their fists upon their teammateโs shoulder as they huddle at midfield, eyes locked, breath heavy. And, at the end, when the final horn has sounded, theyโll form a circle, take a knee and come together as a brotherhood one more time.
You see: Itโs just one more game.
One more game.
Editor’s Note: Michael Banks was a member of the 1982, 1983 and 1984 varsity football teams at Union County High School. He is once a Brave, always a Brave.
Ghosts of Baker Field
Ask a former football player what’s their one wish and often the answer is: One more game. Just give me one more game.
Forty years ago, on a cold November night, I played my final snap of high school football.
The Bermuda grass at Owensboroโs Rash Stadium had turned a muddy brown and it was a meaningless football game between two .500 teams. There was really nothing memorable for the scattering of fans โ mostly family and friends — spread out along the metal bleachers. The game was one of those โthree handoffs and a puntโ and the final score was 7-0.
But the memories of that game, and others before it, remain all these years later.
Tonight, on a cold November night, my alma mater will try to do something thatโs never been done in the schoolโs 60 years of existence: advance to a state championship football game. Not just win a state crown, but to actually make an appearance in the title game.
Thatโs pretty heady stuff for a Western Kentucky community of 16,000 mostly made up of farmers and coal miners. Good country folk, you see.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย From afar, Iโve followed the fortunes of the 2024 Union County High School football team as theyโve marched to an 11-2 record and an appearance in the Class 3A state semifinals. Many could argue tonightโs home game at Baker Field vs. 11-2 Belfry is the biggest in school history. You can view and see the game live via local radio station WMSK’s Facebook page.
You ask a former football player whatโs their one wish and most will answer quickly: One more game.
Just give me one more game.
Thereโs something about football that sticks with you. Something that makes those hot August practices, that cleat drug across your shin, a dislocated finger, all worth it. Maybe itโs that smell of fresh-cut grass, that rhythmic drum beat from the marching band, the feel of the leather football on a crisp fall night.
Itโs pure adrenaline. The Calloway Special. A pancake block and a hole wide enough to drive a tractor through and 45 open yards to the endzone. Itโs an airborne opponent reaching for an errant pass and you poised and ready to deliver the hit.
Itโs a feeling many of us will chase long after weโve played that final snap.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Any one of us former players would love to be in that locker room tonight. Fingers and feet tapping in anticipation, stomach in a knot. Forty years later and I can still see my own teammates, waiting, ready. Frenchy. Big Tim. Duck. Barry. Word. Burgoo. Danny. PeeLo. Jarrod. Omaha.
You see. Itโs not just yourself youโre playing for. But itโs also for a community, a school, your teammates and all those ghosts of Baker Field who put on the pads and walked the turf you walk tonight.
Go, Braves, go!
Editor’s Note: Michael Banks was a member of the 1982, 1983 and 1984 varsity football teams at Union County High School. None of those teams advanced to the state playoffs, but he made some lifelong friends along the way.
Reel Life
Anastasia Patterson, a rising star in the US angling scene, finds her bliss in the serene waters of Lake Marion at sunset.
She’s one of the top up-and-coming anglers in the US
Anastasia Pattersonโs happy place is on the water, especially during one of those early-autumn, cotton candy sunsets on Lake Marion with a jig hugging a water-logged cypress waiting for a bigmouth bass to strike.
โI really donโt know myself without fishing,โ says the Sumter, S.C., native whose Southern drawl is as smooth as one of her casts. โIf I didnโt have fishing, Iโm not sure what Iโd be doing, other than a whole lot of hunting. From a young age, I was out on the water. My first love was not a boy. It was fishing.โ
Patterson got that love of fishing from her father, Wendell, an avid outdoorsman who would bring her along on duck hunts and put her in a deer stand. Her confidence comes from her mother, Patty Jaye, who was the first black woman to serve as the City of Sumterโs chief of police, a position she held for 10 years.
For many of her first 19 years, Patterson balanced being โjust one of the boysโ with competing in beauty pageants.
โOne time, I killed a deer in the morning and then had to go straight into hair and makeup,โ she recalls. โMy dad is like, โIf you kill it, you have to clean it.โ He had the deer hanging for me in the freezer when I got home from the pageant.โ
Patterson is not afraid to step out of her comfort zone and compete in a male-dominated sport.
โItโs intimidating a little bit at times,โ Patterson says. โBut just because you donโt see people like you doing it or women doing it doesnโt mean that it canโt be done. Donโt let the voices of other people stop you from your full potential. You may be just one day away from your one big thing.โ
Itโs her goal to compete at the highest levelโBassmasterโs Elite competitionโbut sheโs also fine with wherever the Lord takes her in life.
โI just really enjoy fishing,โ she says. โTen years from now? Hopefully Iโm married and a mom out there fishing with my kid strapped to the back of my bass boat. But I really donโt know. Ten years ago, I didnโt think my life would be where it is right now.โ
Getting to know Anastasia Patterson
Birthday: March 19, 1996
Hometown: Sumter, S.C.
Claim to fame:ย Sheโs one of the top up-and-coming female anglers in the U.S. and was featured on the cover ofย Bassmasterย magazineโs October 2022 issue.
Founding member:ย She helped start the fishing team at Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C., and soon after won a college tournament. โThatโs when I saw that this was something I could do for the rest of my life.โ
Biggest catch: A 12-pound-plus bass that she pulled from a lake in Florida.
Not just fishing: When sheโs not competing in up to 60 tournaments a year, Patterson works as an event planner and makes jewelry. โYou make every minute of every day count,โ she says.
Co-op connection: She and her family are members of Black River Electric Cooperative.
Editor’s Note: A version of this SC Stories profile was featured in the February 2024 issue of South Carolina Living, a magazine that is distributed 11 times a year to more than 1 million South Carolinians by The Electric Cooperatives of South Caroline.
57 birthday candles can light a fire
Looking ahead as to what awaits after 57 years can be both terrifying and thrilling. I have absolutely no idea how this story is going to end.
Today, Jan. 23, 2024, I turned 57 years old.
And, if I give it great thought, perhaps my mindset is not much different than that 5-year-old boy who sat at a kitchen table in rural western Kentucky and blew out five wax candles on a cake dripping in chocolate.
I have absolutely no idea of what the future holds for me and that is both as scary and thrilling as a black spider that falls upon my bare arm and starts to inch its way upward.
Thereโs been plenty of living in those 50-plus years between. Iโve experienced great joy and profound sadness. My heartโs been broken and itโs also found a love like none other. There have been moments when I thought I was at the very top of the heap and a few days when this man didnโt think he could sink much lower.
Itโs called living and Iโve done it.
I think of the 2008 movie โThe Curious Case of Benjamin Buttonโ in which the main character is born an old man and proceeds to age backwards. The film is based on the short story of the same name written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published May 1922 in Collierโs Magazine. Fitzgeraldโs story challenges the idea that life would be better if we could erase its hurts.ย
In one scene from the movie, a tugboat captain, Mike, says, โYou can be mad as a dog at the way things went, you can swear and curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.โ
That sentiment took me a good while to fully understand and be willing to embrace, but Iโve done it and believe itโs made me a better person and improved my relations with others.ย
Another theme from the story is one of new beginnings.
โItโs never too late, or in my case, too early, to be whatever you want to be,โ Benjamin says. โI hope you live a life youโre proud of. If not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.โย
This matter, I am knee-deep in. There are things I am proud of and a few misdeeds I’d just as soon forget.
For most of my life, I worked as a journalist. But thatโs no more and now I write for others and myself. I continue to work on two novels and various short stories, but thereโs no certainty as to whether the work will be completed and if others will want to read those words.ย
Itโs a great unknown. Itโs something that will keep you up at night and also kick you out of bed when a new day dawns.ย ย
Even so, I still like chocolate cake and thereโs still the air within my lungs to blow out the candles and hopefully extinguish the past and light the future.
And Iโm all right with that.
WRITER’S NOTE: These words were the result of a writing prompt hosted by the Charlotte Lit organization on Jan. 23, 2024. Instructor Megan Rich challenged the participants to think of birthdays and consider the two shifts — time and seasons — and how they have affected one’s birthday through the years. The one-hour Pen to Paper sessions are free and held online via Zoom most Tuesday mornings at 9:30 a.m. EST. To sign up for the session go here.
“Calling on Gabriel” is a winner
Flash fiction winner takes me back to the Delta.
Happy to announce that my story, “Calling on Gabriel”, was selected as the first-place winner of the 2023 Ruth Moose Flash Fiction Contest held by the Charlotte Writers Club.
Flash fiction requires you to tell a story within a certain amount of words, this one being 500.
Me and my wife spent 15 months living in the Mississippi Delta. It’s a warm, wet place where cotton and writers emerge and thrive in the rich, black soil.
The Delta is where I found my voice as a writer and its people and places remain with me.
This is a story of the prodigal son, the one forgotten and the day when death comes for momma. It’s called “Calling on Gabriel.”
Judge Matt Dube said: “An overlooked daughter watches her mother waste away waiting for the return of her prodigal. Too late, the daughterโs patient attention is acknowledged in this spare story that brings together a series of small, isolated worlds from just a few words, a snatch of melody.”ย
Photo by Caroline Kenna
Bringing the heat
Three Marines the leadership team behind The General’s Hot Sauce.
Trio of Marines head up South Carolina-based hot sauce business
When Marine reservist Dillon Cox was finishing up his business degree at the University of South Carolina in 2016, he figured heโd soon be working at a Charlotte bank. Stephen Osegueda was nearing the end of a second deployment to Afghanistan and unsure of his future.
Neither Marine thought theyโd soon be spending their days and nights grinding jalapeno and cayenne peppers and churning out a variety of hot sauces that are now sold in all 50 states and 23 countries while helping out fellow veterans.
The idea for forming a business to benefit veterans came at an Army-Navy tailgate in 2012. One of those company founders shared a class at USC’s Darla Moore School of Business with Cox and pitched him the idea. Cox became the companyโs first full-time employee when he was hired as the head of business development. Osegueda, who was living with Cox, then came on as head of operations. Chris Behling was a reservist in Coxโs unit and became the companyโs head of finance in 2020.
Their sauces โ which can be found on shelves at Harris Teeter, Publix and Lowes Foods in South Carolina — are unique in that 86 percent of the peppers used in their sauces are grown in Lexington, S.C.
The sauces come in a glass container resembling a grenade with labels ranging from Grunt Green to Hooah Jalapeno to Shock and Awe. When customers see that grenade, Cox says theyโre thinking of โthe explosive heat and flavor and it also leads you to what is really important to us: our mission of donating to veterans.โ
Since the first sauce was bottled in March 2016, Behling says, the company has donated more than $750,000 to organizations aiding veterans, including the Warrior PATHH project at the Big Red Barn Retreat Center in Blythewood, S.C. โI hope someone would do the same for me if I was in need, and thereโs something rewarding about helping those who have already given so much.โ
Osegueda agrees. โYou put one foot in front of the other and take care of each other.”
The men are proud of their time as Marines and say the can-do attitude of the Corps is the secret to their success.
โThe brotherhood is what bonds us,โ Osegueda says. โI donโt see why it should change just because my uniform consists of a beard net now instead of bloused boots.โ
โThe mission is going to get accomplished,โ Cox adds, โregardless of 9 to 5.โ
Getting to know Dillon Cox, Stephen Osegueda and Chris Behling
Claim to fame: The leadership behind The Generalโs Hot Sauce, a veteran-owned, Columbia, S.C.-based business whose product is sold worldwide and provides jobs and funds for veterans.
Ages: Cox, the head of business development, is 31, while Osegueda, head of operations, is 32. Behling, head of finance, is 24. All three are Marines and graduates from the University of South Carolina.
Favorite food for hot sauce? Cox and Osegueda are vocal supporters of splashing their signature Danger Close sauce atop slices of Little Ceasarโs Pizza. โI put it on everything except ice cream,โ Cox says.
Who is the General? Thatโs top secret, Cox says. The Buffalo, N.Y., native was the โhardest-working guy, frying up his wingsโ at the tailgate for the 2012 Army-Navy game, where the idea for the company was first formed. โSomeone said that guy needs his own hot sauce,โ Cox says and the name stuck.
Co-op affiliation: Cox is a member of the Edisto Electric Cooperative.
Editorโs Note: A version of this SC Stories profile was featured in the September 2023 issue of South Carolina Living, a magazine that is distributed 11 times a year to more than 1 million South Carolinians by The Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina.
They call him Coach
It wasn’t so much about wins as it was life lessons for Gerald Tabor.
It’s been 10 years and I still miss my friend
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published Tuesday, June 4, 2013. It’s being republished here on the 10-year anniversary of the passing of my friend, Gerald Tabor.
I awoke Tuesday morning. Logged into my Facebook account and my spirits instantly fell.
Gerald Tabor had passed away during the night.
Here in North Carolina, Gerald Taborโs name means nothing.
He was a girls basketball coach and taught history at a medium-sized high school in rural western Kentucky, where coal is king and corn runs a close second. I grew up in this small town, attended his history class and swam at the community pool he helped oversee during the summers. After graduation and landing a job in newspapers, I spent many a nights in the stands watching his teams compete on the hardwood.
One very talented squad won a Kentucky state championship and featured a Miss Basketball. And there were several regional champions in there as well. But there also seemed to be far more teams that finished with records of 8-16 or 13-11 during those years he spent working the sidelines at the Union County High School gym.
In Kentucky, basketball reigns supreme. College basketball, especially the University of Kentucky, can be seen on TVs and heard on radios from Pikeville to Paducah. The University of Louisville numbers a large base of fans, and you also have the grads and small school sympathizers who cheer for the other state schools such as Western Kentucky University and Murray State University.
In Kentucky, you are largely associated with โwho you pull for.โ
High school boys basketball has a similar draw. The state remains one of the few in the nation who crown just one state champion and, though attendance has lagged in recent years with college games on TV most nights and other entertainment options, the state tournamentโs Sweet 16 at Lexingtonโs Rupp Arena and Louisvilleโs Freedom Hall were a true spectacle and a โmust-have ticketโ each spring.
But girls basketball? It ranks a very distant third.
And at a rural school on a cold and wet Monday night in late January where you have a junior varsity/varsity girls doubleheader, the stands are littered with a few hardy souls โ mainly family, a couple friends, the team manager, scorekeeper and one unfortunate sportswriter who drew the short stick.
Basically, those who coach girls basketball at this level are not doing it for the money. Nor the fame.
They are simply doing it for the love of the game.
And that was Gerald Tabor.
I was there, off to the side, as Coach Tabor watched the members of his state championship squad cut down the nets in Bowling Greenโs Diddle Arena one Saturday night in mid-March in 1996. There was a smile across his face, but you could almost feel a sense of relief and weariness radiating from him.
This had been a long time coming. There were plenty of times when his squads were on the wrong end of a 25-point blowout. A couple of seasons of first-round losses in the district tournament.
Yet, he remained. Teaching the fundamentals. Teaching teamwork. Teaching loyalty and perseverance.
He truly cared for each member of his team, whether they were a state champion or a squad that finished below .500.
On the day I heard the news that Coach Tabor had died, I read that Louisville menโs basketball coach Rick Pitino was planning to unveil Makerโs Mark bourbon bottles bearing his face and achievements.
Sure, Connecticut womenโs coach Geno Auriemma has won eight Division One national championships and been named Coach of the Year on six occasions. Say the words Pat Summitt, and you instantly recall the victories and national titles won at Tennessee.
Say the name Gerald Tabor.
And the former players and his many friends and family say the life lessons he instilled in them and left them with are far greater than any bourbon bottle or national championship.
Theyโll say he was simply Coach.
Michael Banks 360 