Announcing Marjorie’s New Memoir
“A Southern Belle In Paris: Bikinis, Bombs, de Beauvoir & Billy Bob”
THE HEART IS OUR REFUGE
As I sat down on this beautiful August morning on Maui to finish this newsletter announcing my new book, a memoir called A Southern Belle In Paris: Bikinis, Bombs, de Beauvoir & Billy Bob, I centered myself by first listening to a good friend’s profound dharma talk online. She spoke of many things but the one that resonated with me was “the heart is our main refuge.” May we all feel the peace that taking refuge in the heart brings us.
Marjorie at 4 years old
WHAT’S MY MEMOIR ABOUT?
Like most memoirists who weave stories from their childhood into their narrative to show how it shaped their lives, mine portrays what it was like to grow up in the Deep South of the 50s and 60s where girls were trained to be pleasing in all ways as befits a culturally-defined Southern Belle, where racism was a way of life and everybody went to Church. The story comes full circle when I end up in my early thirties back to the Deep South, a very different person than the one who began the journey decades earlier.
LIFE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC: Bombs, Babies & Bikinis
Author’s babies on Kwajalein
Like most young people from small towns, I could hardly wait to leave my life in middle Georgia. While working a summer job in Alabama, I fell in love with an Army officer, a damn Yankee and against everyone’s objections, we married. Marrying young to a career military person meant we lived our life in a military world, one defined by a military industrial complex of bombs and warfare whose ambition of becoming the world’s greatest nuclear power as begun in the South Pacific, had left a trail of devastation behind, poisoning Pacific Islanders on Bikini Atoll and our own child, when we came to live on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands.
VIETNAM
Career military men like my husband went to fight in the Vietnam war by the thousands, leaving behind grieving families who suffered, too. Staying in Alabama, we military wives comforted each other through the many ordeals. One day out of concern for us American wives as well as the Vietnamese women, I went to see the Army Post Chaplin; instead of offering any reassurances, he patted me on the head, saying “don’t worry your pretty little head about it!” It marked a turning point for me in regarding men as sole or ultimate authorities in the world! Later, when hearing Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, I had an epiphany that I was a racist and it was time to wake up to the rights of all people, not just whites.
WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, NEW MEXICO
Author’s children at White Sands
A move to the remote desert of White Sands Missile Range, only a short drive down the road from Trinity Site where the first Nuclear Bomb was exploded, continued our assignments to areas focused on missile defense systems & weaponry. The solitude & mystery of the desert brought many personal awakenings, challenging my fundamentalist Baptist upbringing and my first introduction to feminism when I returned to university to complete my degree.
PARIS
Author With Children in Paris
From open desert vistas canopied by cerulean blue skies, came an assignment to the US Embassy in the beautiful city of Paris where life was expansive, explosive and demanded change…Paris, the City of Light, that had birthed and awakened countless artists, activists, writers, repressive leaders as well as visionaries, philosophers and women whose fame was to be found in their rebellion….from Joan of Art to Simone de Beauvoir…. 
There, in Paris, I had a reckoning inside myself, with my family, with my marriage partner; experienced an awakening triggered by the beginnings of a Second Wave of Feminism that had exploded onto the world’s stage once again, continuing the fight for women’s rights begun by Suffragettes at the turn of the twentieth century. The City, the Women’s Movement, the radical feminists, the arts, the rebellion that was the air one breathed…all converged into a compelling urge to explore all aspects of myself: What did I think? What did I want? Did god exist and if so, did she wear a feminine face? Was I a selfish person…a good person…a witch…a hellcat…a dedicated feminist and good mother? The memoir ends in the late 70s when my marriage dissolved and I left my life in Paris where I’d embraced feminism and become an activist, returning to the South to re-invent myself, taking on the persona, not of a Beauty Queen as before, but as a Steel Magnolia.
THE EVER-PRESENT PAST
Because of the sliding backwards in so many of our social policies & personal freedoms, my memoir A Southern Belle in Paris: Bikinis, Bombs, de Beauvoir & Billy Bob, which deals with many of these same issues of racism, sexism & women’s rights, is more relevant than I could ever have imagined or desired! Although I’m thrilled to be putting my book out into the world for you and others to enjoy, there is a sadness that wells up when I consider the years of hard work good women and men have given to achieve & overcome the barriers to social equality and a woman’s right to choose and are now watching as they slip backwards. As mythologist & author Clarissa Pinkola-Estes tells us in Women Who Run With Wolves, however, endurance is a quality to be appreciated and honored for what it teaches us about ourselves & our world; and she goes onto say that “we were made for these times!” To that end, here’s an excerpt from A Southern Belle In Paris showing how my warrior woman or Steel Magnolia kept getting up again and again, each time choosing life, no matter how difficult the situation. I hope you will be inspired and enjoy the humor!
THE STEEL MAGNOLIA MEETS BILLY BOB
Burning with a fiery urgency to help in the liberation of women and children from destructive stereotypes, I set off one day after work, folder of evidence tucked under my arm, foreshadowing my lawyer-self, I imagined hopefully, and headed to the local PBS television station where I planned to present my case to the program director for better local programming addressing these issues in a more balanced and equitable way. Driving my yellow VW bug up the mountain that overlooked the town of Huntsville where all the television stations were located, I turned into the driveway belonging to PBS, which was actually the driveway to the ABC television affiliate, either a coincidence or another of Carl Jung’s synchronicities that would soon reveal itself.
Remembering my training in Southern Belle and Beauty Queen contestant school on how to make yourself appealing, I’d decided to go all out in trying to make myself look good. No jeans and black blouses. Nope! I was back in the South now and a women needing to be pretty was still a value. Sassy in silk but smart was the look I was after. Wearing a beautiful purple silk blouse and paisley design silk skirt I’d bought in Paris, stylish shoes and gold jewelry, I acted every bit the role of someone who knows who she is and what she wants, my own imagined version of the heroine Martha Quest in Doris Lessing’s novel “The Four Gated City.” It must be working, I thought, as the receptionist with a thick southern drawl like the one I’d worked hard for years to eliminate, immediately showed me into the Program Director’s office. “Have a seat and Mr. Smith’ll be right with y’all, okay?”
So far so good, I thought, pressing down my short skirt and re-positioning myself in the chair so my underwear didn’t show. Oh, my god! Did I put on any underwear? Like my not-favorite Southern Belle heroine Scarlett O’Hara had so poignantly said after Rhett Butler told her to go to hell, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.” Nothing I could do about it now except keep my legs crossed! God! Women have to worry about so many things, don’t they?
The moment Mr. Smith appeared in the doorway, I launched full on into my passionate presentation regarding the need for better local programming addressing women’s and children’s issues in a more balanced and equitable way. “My question is, Mr. Smith,” I continued in my adrenaline-pumped, non-southern drawl voice but most certainly channeling my own recently re-discovered Steel Magnolia persona, “are these programs dumbing down kids or are they challenging them in positive, self-affirming ways through art, music and self-awareness processes and learning situations?”
About halfway through my impassioned testimony on behalf of women and children, I happened to glance at some of the plaques displayed on the wall. No way! This is an ABC affiliate network, not PBS? What the…? By now, it was too late, same as the no underwear situation. Besides, I reassured myself, the major networks also needed to straighten themselves up and get current with the way they presented women and children on the airways.
Buz, as Mr. Smith asked me to call him, must have caught some of the heated Steel Magnolia passion I was beaming out, because before I could catch my second breath and continue, he had called in the station manager, a gentleman named Mr. Dempsey. What followed was an act of destiny aimed at causing me to choke on all my prior condemnations of Southern men as being mostly variations of “Gone With the Wind’s” Rhett Butler or even worse, Ashley Wilkes. Right on the spot, the two Southern men of generous proportions offered me a job as co-anchor on a daily morning television talk show!
“But gentlemen,” I stammered in pure amazement, praying that I was indeed wearing underwear because I felt sure I was going to wet myself, “I don’t have any experience in front of the camera. I brought all this in,” I said, holding up my stuffed folder of evidence, “to give to someone who already works here.”
“You can learn everything you need to know in two weeks or less,” the two men agreed, nodding to each other and dismissing my protests as nothing to be concerned about.
“What? I don’t think … I don’t know … this is all so sudden. Well, if you say so … but I don’t know, I mean … this is most unexpected,” I said, struggling to comprehend what they were saying, hardly daring to breathe, thinking I was surely going to faint. Oh, my god! How Southern Belle would that be? Bring on the mint juleps, someone please.
“When would you want me to start, I mean, if I did accept such a position, which I’m not sure I can?”
“As soon as possible.”
Some fifteen minutes later, with feet only slightly touching the ground, I left the television station, clutching my evidence folder of notes and clippings in one hand and a piece of paper in the other with a date written down to report to work for my new job as co-anchor of a morning television talk show program on the ABC affiliate channel in Huntsville, Alabama! Well, kiss my Southern Belle butt, I said out loud, and with shaking hands, put the key in the ignition of my yellow, $1,000 Volkswagen the kids had named Herbie, pressed my shaking foot on the gas pedal and, still in a complete state of shock, let Herbie the magic car drive me back to my dark apartment with its dirty brown shag carpet and hand-me-down furnishings, all the while repeating, “I’m going to work in television! I’m going to work in television!”
Funny the things you can find in hell when you’ve more or less given up and least expect it.
******
“Come on in Miss Beene and meet your co-host, Billy Bob,” Buz said, inviting me into his office on my first day of work at the television station. Since I had never watched the morning show that I would be co-hosting with Billy Bob, I had no idea what he looked like. There, sitting on the edge of Buz’s desk, like a rooster on his perch, sat Billy Bob decked out in cowboy attire with alligator boots and a cowboy hat to finish off the look.
Barely able to contain my shock, I walked over and we shook hands while he gave me the up and down once-over look. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. My co-host was a “thank-god-I’m-a-country-boy,” guitar-pickin’ Alabama-born-and-bred, redneck!
“First week you’ll be observing your co-host, Billy Bob,” Buz said as I sat motionless in the chair with the stuffed deer head hanging above me. It was a Daniel-in-the-lion’s-den moment of knowing that this wasn’t going to end well for me.
From the moment Buz introduced us, guitar-pickin’ Billy Bob hated my guts! For over a decade he’d been filling up the early morning television airways in the northern part of Alabama and southern Tennessee with his two-hour show featuring his circle of cronies and other good-ole Southern, guitar-pickin’ boys!
Billy Bob was outraged that the television suits were treating him without the dignity he deserved. Hiring a woman who was one of those feminist weirdos to do the show with him? He, Billy Bob, who’d been the big name at the station for over a decade? “How could y’all do this to me?” he’d asked, having stormed into the manager Mr. Dempsey’s office after Buz had broken the news to him.
It was no surprise, then, that in less than a week’s time on the set observing Billy Bob, we were all sitting together again in Mr. Dempsey’s office. With cigarette ashes dropping on white shirts and bad ties, the big bosses carefully and forcefully outlined the reasons to Billy Bob for their strange and otherwise unfathomable action. “Ain’t nobody watching your show anymore, Billy Bob! The advertisers are dropping like flies and don’t want to sponsor you no more. You’re old news. Done. Worn out. Nobody likes your music and guitar-pickin’ anymore. Bottom line? The show ain’t making us money. You either do the show with Miss Beene here or you got the highway.”
Nobody ever said those good-ole boys aren’t tough sons of bitches, right? I didn’t know what to say as I watched the scene unfold, so I sat still and said nothing. I knew I was watching a facsimile of the war of the titans, Southern-style.
After that second meeting, Billy Bob tried to make my life hell. He didn’t tell me anything about the show’s set-up and ignored me as much as possible. It was the engineers, producers, camera people and numerous others on the set and at the station who got me up to speed and running. Billy Bob and I both got to choose the guests whom we would interview … fifty/fifty. We weren’t two days into the new show with me as his co-host when our differences exploded.
I had invited the sole woman on the Huntsville police force to come and demonstrate self-defense techniques for women. Before I could relish the thrill I felt that such great information to help women was being sent out on the airways, Billy Bob jumped in. “I don’t reckon a woman would be needin’ any of that self-defense stuff if she didn’t dress in those mini-skirts girls are wearing these days. A girl’s asking’ for it if she dresses like a prostitute!” My policewoman guest and I … mind you, the cameras are rolling since it was a live show … were so shocked, we weren’t able to speak. When I snapped to, my almost forgotten warrior woman, now having taken on the persona of a Southern Steel Magnolia, kicked into high gear and verbally set into my Alabama redneck co-host Billy Bob with a vengeance.
“Nobody says anything about men when they wear those ridiculous tight-assed polyester pants suits and strut down the street like peacocks,” I said, emphasizing the “cocks” in peacocks. “Nobody accuses them of wanting some, do they? No, they do not! Women should be able to wear anything they want without the threat of rape or verbal abuse from pistol-toting, ignorant male chauvinist pigs! And furthermore, I think you owe the police officer and myself an apology!”
“Cut to commercial. Cut to commercial!” the show’s director yelled. Then, more yelling on the set, which had by now become a scene of total chaos. It was a call-in show for the first hour of the two-hour show, and suddenly the phone lines lit up like a Christmas tree! During the extra-long commercial break, we got enough control of ourselves to finish the show.
The moment the show ended, the director called out over the studio set, “Billy Bob and Miss Beene, you’re both wanted in the Manager’s office.”
I knew they were going to fire me, but I didn’t care. Billy Bob deserved all he’d gotten from me. I would take back nothing! I deliberately straightened my shoulders as I marched towards Mr. Dempsey’s office, biting my lip, determined not to cry. Dammit, I thought, I can’t cry. No crying. No crying. I repeated all the way to his office on first floor, plopping down on his large, fake-leather chair, like a schoolgirl who’s been sent to the principal’s office and knows it’s not going to go well.
Once we were all seated in Mr. Dempsey’s office, I began to squirm thinking that my life had annoyingly begun to resemble that of Alice in Wonderland when she’d remarked that her adventures down the rabbit hole were “getting curiouser and curiouser.”
Without a prelude or any warning, the bosses exclaimed, wearing what could only be described as ear-to-ear Cheshire cat grins, “We loved the show!”
HERE’S THE LINK TO PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY OF MARJORIE’S MEMOIR “A SOUTHERN BELLE IN PARIS”
Aloha! Please let me hear from you: stclair@writersadventure.com
Marjorie St.Clair
A special thank you to designer & artist Denise Weaver-Ross for the book cover and book set up. I couldn’t have done it without her expertise. See more about her at deniseweaverross.com