Tag: reader’s digest

My book is in one of my favorite magazines this month.

By Anita Garner

My gospel-singing family appears in the March, 2022 issue of Reminisce Extra magazine.  I’m thrilled.  My parents, Sister Fern and Brother Ray Jones, would be thrilled too.  This excerpt from my book, “The Glory Road: a Gospel Gypsy Life” continues a years-long relationship with the company that publishes this magazine.

It’s from a chapter about Johnny Cash recording
a song Mother wrote.

Our family read every issue of Readers Digest until the pages were soft as tissue then we passed them along to others.  Readers Digest is owned today by Trusted Media Brands, a company that also owns several other magazines.  Years ago I received a gift subscription to one of their publications, “Taste Of Home” magazine, fell in love with it, saw an ad for “Reminisce” and subscribed. Every other month, it’s “Reminisce Extra.”  Which brings us to today, when my advance copy arrived with a story from my new book inside.

Thanks to Trusted Media Brands’ Mary-Liz Shaw, my publisher, University of Alabama Press and UAP Marketing Director, Clint Kimberling for putting this together.

******

Anita Garner’s Website

 

Comfort Writing for Reminisce Magazine

By Anita Garner

The Jones Kids, Arkansas, 1953
from the current issue of Reminisce Magazine

I’m sentimental.  Writing for Reminisce Magazine suits me perfectly.  My family’s in the new issue twice. Each issue includes a theme in addition to their regular departments.  The theme this time is the New Deal and the story of Daddy’s time at CC Camp is included.   Also in this issue is a story about my brother, Leslie Ray’s, unusual teenage rebellion.

That’s Daddy on the left, the future Reverend Raymond Jones in the 1930’s, showing off his muscles at Roosevelt’s C C Camp.

The magazine is owned by the company that also owns Readers Digest.   Reminisce, filled with photos and memories and a nice layout and proper vintage attitude, feels like home, a bit Readers Digest-y, which is comforting.

The last time the magazine published one of my stories, people asked how to get a copy.  Subscribing.  Or from a library.  I see both print and digital versions on Amazon.

These stories I send to the magazine aren’t included in my book, The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life, which comes out next year.  When it was time to trim the manuscript for the book, not everything I wrote fit the length and I share some of this in other ways.  Reminiscing, for instance.

 

******

Lies We Tell Our Kids

I’m borrowing these from Reader’s Digest this week.  Wish I’d thought of these lies we tell our kids.

— “If the ice cream truck is playing music, it means it’s run out of ice cream.”

— “Her Dad said if she looked after a special growing rock and watered it until it stopped growing, she could get a dog. She watered it and while she was at school, her Dad replaced it with a bigger rock.”

— “Toys grow under the weeds in the yard and if you pull the weeds, eventually a toy will pop out.”

— “They don’t sell replacement batteries for that toy.

— And a personal one:  Because my Daddy was a Southern preacher who was often in touch with Jesus, I’m cautious about this one. My brother and I prayed every night for a blue Schwinn bicycle.

Daddy said Baby Jesus provides for all our needs but maybe not our wants and besides it was rude to ask Him for something so specific. My brother said if he had a bike, he could get a paper route.

A bicycle soon appeared on the front porch of the parsonage. It wasn’t new.  It wasn’t blue, but it worked. Daddy never admitted to buying it.

Colin Tribe and grandson, Edward

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbSdymLmocY