Velda Brotherton

Being born in a log cabin probably started my journey toward historical writing. My Dad being a storyteller mapped out that journey. The tales he told of his growing up following his Dad throughout Texas. My Grandfather Goodgion worked as a powder monkey, which meant he went anywhere that blasting was needed for roads or other building projects. At sixteen, my Dad came to Arkansas to help his Dad in the blasting out of rocks to build Jefferson Highway through the Boston Mountains of the Ozarks. Here he met my mother, one of the beautiful Smith girls, and that led to my being born in a log cabin in the beautiful Ozark mountains.

Have I wanted to write since the age of three? Not hardly. But I did begin to read and write very early, and so Mother insisted we move to town (Mountainburg) in a house with my great-grandparents across the highway from a public school. Then she promptly dragged me by the hand at the tender age of five and insisted that I begin first grade. Since I could read and write, and under a great deal of pressure from my indomitable mother, I started school with the dire warning that I would fail before I reached sixth grade. I didn't, and for the remainder of my schooling I was a year younger than my peers. Nothing too unusual about that. Only that this little Arkie girl born in a log cabin and raised up to the age of five by parents who had neither one finished school, was on her way to becoming a writer, whether she knew it or not.

Needless to say, I didn't "fall back" even though I attended schools in Missouri, Colorado and Kansas before we settled down in Wichita after World War Two. I attended East High there and graduated three months after my 17th birthday. I married that December. We moved to New York when our two children were three and five. In 1972 we returned to Arkansas where we have lived ever since.
That's where I began to paint and write and teach piano, not simultaneously. I also raised a huge garden, canned produce and fruit, helped hubby tend a few head of cattle and milk one which meant I learned to make cheese and butter from my mother, who lived near us. We've had a wonderful time here in Arkansas, and I've made lifelong friends in the writing field.
Writers are some of the nicest, most intelligent, down- to-earth people in the world and I wouldn't trade my time with them for any other life. I've made no trips to Paris, taken no cruises or safaris, nor have I climbed any mountains. But I have done all that in my writing and accomplished exactly what I wanted. A full life with friends and an interesting and compelling profession. That of writing, in all its forms.
My biggest problem, I think, has been trying all types of writing. Maybe if I'd stuck to one I'd be famous and/or rich by now. But I wouldn't have had near as much fun.