Chapter 1

1975 - August

The weather was beginning to get cool at night. The days were still warm and glorious. It was going to be perfect weather for the Harvest Festival, and Amanda Griggs was very happy about that. KDEF was sponsoring the event, in coordination with a number of other businesses. She was responsible for the nightly concerts that would take place at the State Fairgrounds.

It had been an obvious choice, for the group of businessmen who gathered in a smoky room, to cuss and discuss the festival. Amanda ran the best radio station in the area, and had the connections, so they thought, to find and recruit some good talent.

Amanda felt the same way, until she started trying to contact agents of big name musical talents. She found out that being the general manager of a radio station in a town most big time agents had never heard of didn’t get her much.

In fact, it had gotten her nothing, thus far.

She sighed and sat back. Belinda Snokes, who had hired on as a college kid, to do odd jobs around the station, stuck her head in the door of the office.

“I got all those tapes organized. Three of them were bad, so I re-recorded them.”

“Thanks, Belinda,” said Amanda.

“Why so glum?” asked the girl.

“The festival,” sighed Amanda. “I can’t get any agents to talk to me in Nashville, or Hollywood either,” said Amanda. “Everybody’s already booked up. I had no idea they scheduled these things so far in advance. Where am I going to find somebody to put on concerts at the festival?”

“Who have you tried?” asked the girl.

Amanda reeled off a list ... a long list of names of well known musical groups, in various genres, from rock and roll, to blues, to country and western.

Belinda nodded. “Yeah, all of those are good, but they’re big names. They won’t come to Hutch unless the money’s really good.”

Amanda scowled. “This is Hutchinson. The money will never be really good.”

Belinda just grinned. “Then you have to go for somebody less well known.” She thought for a moment. “Like that new girl, Misty Compton. We just started playing some of her stuff on the country segment you dreamed up.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” growled Amanda. “Country is getting more and more lively. It’s beginning to allow cross-over from other genres. I hear a lot of rock and roll influence in some of the new artists.”

Belinda held up both hands, palms outward.

“Hey, I’m just telling you. That Compton girl is going to go far. I love her myself. But she’s only put out one album, and it hasn’t been out long enough for people to make up their minds about her. I think she’ll hit it big. Maybe you could sign her before that happens.”

Amanda sighed. “Find me a number. I’ll give it a whirl.”

The artist being discussed in far-off Kansas, was currently cooking pasta, for macaroni and cheese. Six months ago, Misty Compton would have been doing that in a fifteen year old trailer, in a run down trailer park nestled in a wooded valley, near a town called Hog Holler.

At twenty years of age, Misty had spent her whole life - save the last six months - as a resident of Hog Holler, and had only recently seen enough of the big, wide world to understand just what it meant to be from a town named Hog Holler in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

People had been nice to her, as she was invited to record her very first record album. Everything had been shiny and new, and the people had seemed shiny and new too. Misty had been around long enough to have run into a variety of “sorts of fellas”, as she thought of it. She had no trouble recognizing a snake in the grass when she saw one. Or three or four.

And Nashville was full of snakes.

She’d been discovered by a talent scout whose car broke down right in front of the Hog Holler community center, where there just happened to be a talent contest going on. He had walked in to find a phone, and heard her singing.

Since then it had all been a blur. The very active and very talkative man had assured her she’d be a big star, and had her sign papers that would enable her to be whisked away to Nashville, where an army of people listened to her, and handed her all kinds of music to play and sing.

That part was no problem. She’d been playing the guitar since she was five, and could play the fiddle too, as well as a number of instruments that didn’t exactly have names the average American would be familiar with. That she was already a big hit in Hog Holler helped to fuel hr hopes that the hyperactive talent scout might just be right.

He had been.

After recording the album, she’d been offered more papers to sign. She took them home and showed them to her Uncle Travis, who had actually gone to college, and owned three businesses in Hog Holler.

He told her not to sign them, and explained that, if she did, everything she wrote would be owned by the record company for-almost-ever.

“You can do better than that, pumpkin,” he had said. “Once that album of yours makes its way around, they’ll up the ante. Trust me on that.”

The record company had not been happy. All those smiling people stopped smiling. The record had already been released, though, and had sold some ten thousand copies. Several radio stations had picked it up, and were giving her a little air time. So she stuck to her guns and said she was still thinking about things.

When her album sold its hundred thousandth copy, they did up the ante. Uncle Travis suggested to wait a little longer.

Since she wouldn’t sign a contract to make more records, they offered her a chance to sing at concerts ... to open for better known singers. “It will give you exposure,” they said. “You can have your own crew,” they said. “It will be fun,” they said.

Uncle Travis was gone on a business trip at the time, and everybody else got so excited that she’d be singing at concerts in big cities, that she agreed to do them.

They did, in fact, give her her own crew, which consisted of Josh, who drove the bus, and Twila, who handled all the myriad of arrangements. All Misty had to do was get dressed up, and go out on stage and knock ‘em dead.

It was fun. She loved being around some of the stars at those concerts, even though most of them didn’t actually talk to her, at first. But dropping names of people like Linda Ronstadt, Pure Prairie League and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils made her famous in her home town.

And she did knock ‘em dead. A few of those stars who wouldn’t talk to her, and who heard her warming the crowd up, nodded their heads, tapped their feet, and started talking to her after that. Within six months, her album went over the three hundred thousand mark. It wasn’t spectacular, but the record company was salivating, based on those sales, and the reports they got back from Twila.

Somebody back in Nashville had wanted her signature on those papers bad, and, even though there seemed to be all kinds of expenses associated with the bus, and with Twila and Josh, and with the clothes she was provided to wear, she started receiving royalty checks.

Those checks had changed everything.

The thirty cents she had been told she’d get for every album sold amounted to ninety thousand dollars.

Even Uncle Travis was impressed.

It had meant she could say goodbye to the trailer, and to Hog Holler, and to the boys she had grown up with, and who now tried everything in their power to get into her sexy new panties. Only one of them ever had, and she hadn’t been all that impressed that time, so she had no trouble “resisting temptation” as her mother put it.

Now, as she stood in what she thought of as her Mamma’s new kitchen, and cooked up what she was used to cooking up, it all seemed like some fairy tale dream that had come true.

There were still snakes all around her. She knew that, and was trying to be careful. But the bags of letters her agent gleefully turned over to her, and which there was no way on earth she would ever be able to read, much less answer, made it all seem real.

She was a star.

Oh, there were much bigger stars out there. She knew that. But the crowds loved her, and they bought her record. The studio was already talking about another one - just as soon as she signed those papers - but she hadn’t had time to write very many songs, and she hated singing other people’s songs for money. It just seemed wrong, somehow. It was fun to sing them ... but not for money. She wanted to sell her own songs.

The problem was that the studio was making money on her too, and their appetite for it was voracious. Her concert schedule was crammed, and she only got back home once every fourteen or fifteen days if she was lucky. Even then, she only got to stay there two or three days and then she was off again.

The house she had bought her mother required that she accept that concert schedule. Even ninety thousand dollars hadn’t bought a whole lot of house. Not in Nashville. Not one that she felt like her Mamma deserved. But the one she’d bought would have to be paid off, and that meant keeping to the schedule.

Everything was going fine. She had six more concerts to do in the south central part of the U.S. Maybe after that, during the break, she could catch her breath and write some songs.

Betty bent over to pick up a throw pillow that she’d knocked off the couch ... on purpose. She knew that Bobby, who was sitting in the easy chair, watching TV, couldn’t help but see her bare butt as the T shirt rode up. If she held her feet just so, he might even see her pussy. Matilda was in the kitchen, baking cookies. Betty had been helping, but had gotten bored, and so decided to go tease Bobby some more.

The sharp crack of Bobby’s hand landing on the bare butt she had flashed him was followed very closely by her howl of dismay. He hit her so hard that she stumbled forward, and only barely managed not to fall onto the floor.

“Damn it bobby!“ she wailed.

She stood, and twisted, trying to look at the spot that felt like it was on fire on her backside. This time, she didn’t lift the shirt to show him her pussy. She did it to expose the bright red handprint on her otherwise creamy white skin.

“Don’t curse,” said Bobby, grinning. He was standing now, having gotten to his feet to put that handprint on her ass.

“Why’d you do that?!“ she yelled. “That hurt!“

“You were flashing me,” he said, grinning. “You were acting like a slut.”

“I am not a slut, you turd!“ yelled Betty.

Matilda came almost running into the living room. Mirriam was over at Prudence’s house, and the twins were alone with Bobby.

“What happened?” asked Matilda anxiously.

“Look what Bobby did to meeeee!” cried Betty, showing her sister the handprint.

Matilda gawked, and turned a murderous stare on her brother.

“She had it coming,” said Bobby, folding his arms. “You do too, running around without panties and showing off. You’re both acting like sluts.”

Matilda was dressed almost identically to Betty.

“You’ve seen the others with less on!” Matilda stuck her chin out.

“Is that what this is all about?” he asked. “The others?”

“Well why not?” whined Matilda. “You did it with them. Why won’t you do it with us too?” She took a step towards him. “We broke up with Chuck. We’re used to having some fun. That’s all we want to do ... have a little fun. And you did it with the others.”