~ From Newnan Times-Herald
The back book cover and Amazon’s description of my books read: “Lee St. John is a rogue Southern Belle, a high-jinx expert, and mayhem confessor. You’ll see. Twisted, uproarious, revealing, delicious, quirky, surprising, warm, humorous, heartfelt, or scandalous. Take your pick. You’ll find them all in these true stories about family, friends, co-workers, and others whose names she cloaks when telling her tales. Well, she had to.”
Of course I had to but they are the only things that aren’t real. Even I operate in disguise. Lee St. John is my nom de plume. I am a MAVERICK which by definition means: an unorthodox or independent-minded person. Synonyms: individualist, nonconformist, free spirit, original, eccentric. I’ll take any of those.
My high school conduct grades support this notion. When my husband married me he stated that he wanted a challenge. Well, he sure got one. Bless his heart. Rules don’t apply to me. Where other teachers hung a behavior chart on their classroom wall with line-item rules, my chart just said “Behave.” When a 4th grade teacher once told me to put my second child on a behavior chart at home, I stated, “I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?” she asked.
“Well, I tried to do a chart with my first son. It just didn’t work. Not so much for him, but for me. I tried to follow-through doing things on a set schedule. I really tried. I had stickers for accomplishments, rewarded him with activities or special food, etc. but I personally just couldn’t do it. And my way of thinking is what kind of example am I setting if my children saw that I had set goals of some kind and couldn’t carry them through? I thought that display would be worse. ‘Do as I say, not as I do’? What kind of precedent would I be setting?”
I only behaved for my parents out of shame. My mother knew how to work me and I’ve said many times she should have been a travel agent for guilt trips.
I like mavericks. One of my favorite authors was one. This winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was as unorthodox as they came in the 1920’s. She was an average college student and did not excel in any of the area academics. She was a working woman at a time women didn’t work that much and decided to pursue a career in journalism. She began writing feature articles for The Atlanta Journal where she received almost no encouragement from her family or “society”.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
She was flamboyant, wild, and unrestrained but because of her family’s standing in Atlanta, she was asked to join the Atlanta Junior League. For her debut at the Georgian Terrace Hotel, she prepared to dance with a friend from Georgia Tech the ‘Apache’, a provocative Parisian street dance of the Jazz Age. It was a sensational (from what I read, SINsational for her day) performance and afterwards she was denied membership.
She collected erotic Parisian postcards. She smoked. She drank. She married. She divorced. She remarried.
And she authored Gone with the Wind which was the top American fiction bestseller in 1936 and 1937. As of 2014, a Harris Poll found it to be the second favorite book of American readers behind the Bible. More than 30 million copies have been printed worldwide.
Margaret Mitchell again displayed her non-conformist side when decades later the Atlanta Junior League hosted the jubilant citywide premiere party for the film “Gone with the Wind”. Everyone who was anyone associated with the film would be there. Gable, Howard, Leigh, deHavilland, Selznick, and their just as popular dates or spouses. Stubborn, gutsy, and defiant, she declined their invitation.
Maverick Margaret Mitchell. Maverick Lee St. John. I like it.
