‘Back Porch’ column writer hears the ‘Call of the Wild’
By RICK LAVENDAR, The Times
GAINESVILLE – He has a God-given talent to create, cherished roots that reach into the very bedrock of the Northeast Georgia community and a bad habit of snacking at the breakroom vending machines.
Oh, and yes he is half-nuts. Maybe more.
That’s the Jim Chapman regular readers of his weekly column in The Times know, or suspect.
But here’s something many won’t: Chapman now has a book, his first.
“The Call of the Wild Wasn’t Long Distance,” a selection of his “Back Porch” columns, surfaces this week at Mule Camp Market, an annual downtown Gainesville festival that begins Friday.
The paperback is a 191-page slug of pure Chapman, a Lula son with a story for almost every situation and easy way of telling it.
With all the predictability of a flea market, the columns range from an imaginary redneck wine sampler (“eat some white bread an hour before you go crossways with this stuff, and you won’t get sick”) to the last hour of a beloved uncle.
Author and friend John Egerton of Nashville, Tenn., says Chapman has a natural writing style and an eye for the unique.
“He finds something interesting in the most unlikely places,” says Egerton, who wrote “Speak Now Against the Day,” an award-winning look at the South in the 1930s and ‘40s.
It also helps that Chapman has a resume rich with such entries as peach picker at Jaemor Farms in East Hall, Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa and galley hand on a gas rig in deep south Texas.
And don’t over-look a half-cocked humor livelier than water drops skittering on a hot skillet. In any office, Chapman would be the prime suspect when a whoopee cushion turns up under the boss’ chair.
He’s a no-airs, down-to-earth rumpled kind of guy with hair that occasionally looks in need of a stiff brush.
But he is as adept at going deep as having fun. With a clarity that slices to the bone, his writing reflects on people and the human condition (“Those Who Live By Heart Aren’t out of Their Skulls” on page 114, for example).
Some readers have compared him to Lewis Grizzard, a popular Atlanta columnist and author who died in 1994.
Though appreciative, Chapman says his tastes lean more toward Flannery O’Connor (“Wise Blood”), P.J. O’Rourke (“Give War a Chance”) and Hunter S. Thompson (“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”), gritty writers whose work is more likely to make you wonder and wince than laugh out loud.
To 72-year-old Phoebe Vickers, the column that graces the Lifestyles front in each Sunday’s Times is worth clipping and saving for her memory book.
Vickers, who lives in Flowery Branch, mails some to a sister in North Carolina.
“He touches so many areas of life…and he seems to pick the good parts from every person he’s seen,” she says.
All of which Chapman, 43 and as humble as they come, would deem as high praise.
He considers the Times-sponsored book as a next step, though he’s not sure where, if anywhere, it might lead.
“I’d just like to see it get out there,” he says, “There’s something more permanent about writing a book than a newspaper clipping that ends up in the bottom of a bird cage.”
The desire to begin writing wasn’t even kindled until six years ago. Chapman’s background, from classroom to career, had been as an artist.
When that inner demand hit like a lightning bolt, he was working as a graphic artist at The Tennessean in Nashville.
Yet write he must.
“I knew there’d be no peace until I did,” says Chapman, his clear green eyes serious.
The newspaper published his first try, a piece on his father trying to locate a World War II buddy.
More columns and even news stories followed. Chapman asked Egerton, who was on a feature-writing stint at The Tennessean, to look over his shoulder.
The first column, Egerton says, “had a little stamp of his.”
“It sounded like he talks. That’s something sometimes you never get. And it’s really hard to get in newspapers.”
When Chapman and his wife, Marta, moved to Lula in late 1998 to be closer to his parents, Bill and Gwen Chapman, after they were in a serious car wreck, he hired on with The times as the newsroom artist.
Soon after, editors agreed to his request to add a column.
Chapman knew he had defied the odds. “You just don’t start out as a columnist,” he says, noting he has no journalism degree and limited reporting experience.
He has since written about 250 columns. More than 100 are in the book.
The title refers to one on Marta’s previous work with animals for a science museum. On the cover, Chapman is mugging with a cell phone and a mule.
“A lot of my stuff is serious in a silly wrapper,” he says.
The double edge comes honestly.
Chapman is a watercolor-painting redneck. He’s a North Georgia hillbilly as comfortable with sushi as chewing tobacco, with riding dirt bakes as raising ruffled pheasants.
His small office has a wall of awards anchored by a “Mummy” movie poster. There’s a staged photo of wrestler Sid “Vicious” Eudy jerking a wide-eyed Chapman up by the collar. Another pictures “HeeHaw” star Junior Samples.
Plugging his mix into a weekly column is rare talent.
“I’m a shameless eavesdropper,” Chapman says. “I think the ear is the best tool the writer has.”
Underlying all, he says, is a Christian faith. There’s also an obvious devotion to family, community and friends.
Even one who wears a fez for fun and packs a 45-caliber pistol he calls “Big Ugly” for their annual get-togethers.
When Chapman left Nashville, Egerton knew he was going to work as an illustrator.
“I told him I hoped he’d keep writing,” he says.
Chapman did.
It’s in the book.