By Teri Blair
I thought this directive, this encouragement, this heed applied only when things were going badly. You know, just keep going even though the chips are down on all fronts – when you have nothing to write in your notebook but garbage, when you just keep getting rejection letters from publishers, when you feel like the biggest fraud in the world trying to be a writer.
Now, I see it applies to the flip-side – continue under all circumstances even when things are going well. Because I see (in a string of days that are going well), that I am just as apt to toss myself away when abundance is coming into my writing life as when the horizon is bleak. It’s like the discovery a few years ago that I feel the same if I have 50 cents or 500 dollars in my wallet. I have the same sensation either way…always broke, never enough money. It has nothing to do with any dollar reality. Just the pounding voices in my head.
I’m in Holcomb, Kansas. I’ve returned for the 2nd time in six months to the setting of Truman Capote’s 1965 masterpiece, In Cold Blood. The first time I came out of curiosity, the 2nd from a series of serendipitous events that led me to discover forgotten and lost and distant cousins. Cousins who were raised here. Ones who knew the Clutter Family whose murder brought Truman Capote and Harper Lee back here to Kansas again and again to research their book.
And this time, instead of looking at the town with the eyes of an observer passing through, I am being introduced to people, one after another, who lived through the tragedy of ’59. Any one of them is a story. But there are too many. And it makes me want to hide under blankets or run away and definitely not continue under all circumstances.
But I will. Only because I was taught how. I will feel the bottom of my feet when I walk to feel grounded. I will sit still and not talk whenever I can. I will listen. Listen deeply. And I’ll try hard to remember that I don’t have to know anything. Be dumb. Just show up without the answers to any of my questions and listen.
To Janice, who sat next to Nancy Clutter in band. And her telling me about Nancy’s new clarinet that played like a dream, and how she was a little jealous that Nancy was going to get to go to college with that new clarinet.
To Sandy, who worked in the court room during the murder trial. And because she was so photogenic, she was asked to play Harper Lee in the first In Cold Blood movie.
To Marlene, who said she doesn’t want to keep reliving the tragedy over and over again.
To Eddie, who described to me Truman Capote’s pecking order of friends here, and what it did to the people when some were invited to the Black-and-White ball in New York City and others weren’t.
To Wanda, who looks very old and tired, who kept telling me she was far too young to remember any of the Clutters, but kept producing one yearbook after another from the library shelves for me to look at from Holcomb High School.
Continue today. That’s all. Just keep arriving in the next minute.
Continue Under All Circumstances is a writing practice written from the road while researching a story in Holcomb, Kansas.
About writing, Teri says: I began writing in a Quonset hut on a farm in Minnesota, dragging hay bales around a blue window to create a little haven where no one could find me…alone with paper and pencil. I was often bundled up in several layers in desperately cold weather. I guess on some level I was really serious, even back then. I wrote in journals and diaries faithfully, always finding refuge in the written word. Instead of sitting up and taking notice of these tendencies, I spent years investing time in things I didn’t care about, like taking piano lessons and jogging. It finally became too tiring to fight what I really want to do. So on most days, I’ve stopped saying writing is for someone else, and I let myself do what I love.
Upcoming pieces this spring will appear in Nursing Spectrum, Teachers of Vision, Liguorian, Senior Perspective, and Mushing.
I think you’ve hit on something, Teri–the notion that we can also get tossed away when things are going well and there is momentum. (And maybe that’s monkey mind, always lurking.)
I am fascinated by the story of the Clutter family and the In Cold Blood killers. And the story of Truman Capote and Harper Lee. That one of your cousins was asked to play Harper Lee in the original–wow. And that your other cousin is sick of reliving it. And here we are, wanting to relive it over and over.
Thanks for sending this in from the road. I hope you send in more as the project progresses.
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I, too, am fascinated by the story. When the original movie came out with Robert Blake, I went to see it on the big screen. It scared me to death because it was filmed in the actual Clutter house. I re-rented it early this year and watched it again. It stands the test of time. And after the movie, Capote, and reading In Cold Blood last year, I got even more out of the film.
I don’t remember Harper Lee in the original In Cold Blood and now that you mention the woman that played her still lives in Holcomb, I want to rent it again to see where Harper Lee crops up.
I think writers are drawn to the dark sides of life. We aren’t afraid to go there, peer in, and try to make some kind of sense of everything. We like making connections.
I remember last year when you first drove through Holcomb on the way to Taos. You loved the town and were amazed at having made the journey. And that was even before you found out you had relatives there. There is a whole new layer for you with small towns and the very real and wonderful people that live in them.
I can’t wait to read more of your story. And see where all this is leading you. I’m glad you gave up piano lessons and jogging for writing! I have no doubt you will continue under all circumstances.
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Thanks for your comments. It is really helpful to hear the thoughts of people outside of Holcomb who have read In Cold Blood and are familiar with Capote. Although I am back from Kansas, my mind is constantly working over everything that happened there, everyone I met. After I did this writing practice, I had the opportunity to interview people who were mentioned in big and small ways in the book. It was absolutely stunning to be sitting across a table from them, 48 years later. I felt wildly fortunate.
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Teri,
I imagine you on a dusty plain in Kansas, staring off into the distance, maybe at a barn or some cows, with your honest Midwestern eyes, your feet solid on the ground; I’m thinking now of all the rain and tornadoes that threaten to pound the people in the sunbelt. How great that you honor their stories and their lives. Don’t we all want to tell someone how it was? And how lucky they are to have you listening. So good to read your writing again –
Motek (aka dzvayehi)
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Hey Motek,
Good to hear from you. Kansas was really windy this time, I couldn’t help thinking about the Wizard of Oz. I noticed the trees in Holcomb, they are very wind-battered…leaning a bit to one side looking exhausted. They are like many of the people I met there. Weary somehow. Crushed spirits. Not all. But many.
Teri
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Teri,
Why do you think that is? The crushed spirits, I mean? When I think of Minnesota rural people, I don’t think of crushed spirits. Why would that seem true in Kansas?
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Dear QM,
I was with my cousin John for literally every formal and informal interview in Holcomb. He was hot to help me get as much information as possible, and had no problem initiating conversations that began like this: “Hi Joe-Shmo, this is my cousin Teri from Minneapolis, and she is very interested in learning more about the Clutter case and what you remember about Truman Capote and Harper Lee.” At the sound of the name “Clutter,” people had strong and instant reactions…mainly sadly discouraged. The whole episode in 1959 seems to have reverberated through decades. If I had met people under different circumstances (and with a different opening line than John’s), I may have seen something different.
And still, there is also something very harsh about that dry wind that constantly blows.
Teri
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Teri,
Ah, I understand more what you are saying. A little bit tempered with memories of Capote and the Clutters. A little bit from the landscape. I had a friend in art school that grew up in northern Minnesota, Thief River Falls. I used to tell her I loved the wind in my hair. She said, “You wouldn’t if you grew up where I did. The wind never stopped blowing.”
I took a trip up to the Red River Valley with her to visit her grandmother one winter. She was right. The wind never stopped blowing. And it was pretty desolate in winter. For me, an outsider, it was hard to imagine growing up in that landscape. Maybe it’s that way in Kansas. I’ve never spent much time there.
It sounds like introductions are important. I like thinking about that for my upcoming trip South. Will you go back to Kansas again? Or do you have everything you need?
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One of the phrases I heard from several of the students interviewed after the Virginia Tech tragedy was “I don’t want my life (or college experience) defined by this event.” Every time I heard that I thought, How can it not? How can this tragic event not be with you as perhaps the most memorable (because it is un-erasable) in your life now? Teri, when you described the common reaction by folks in Holcomb, I had that flash to V-Tech. How could that brutal murder not in some ways shape that place–Holcomb, KS–from then on? And even as everyone fades away and the people who remembered it pass on, the stories and the need to understand them will carry it forward.
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Hmmmm. That’s a good connection ybonesy. Kind of like the Dallas school book repository. Maybe the whole city of Dallas.
I often think of places as having lives of their own. Kind of like friendships, writing groups, even the earth. It’s like we are all moving through time together on parallel maps.
Places have spirits and lives that affect the people that live in them. Remember that conversation in one of our blog pieces about places where spirits roam? How we can feel it? Yes, it makes sense that a town would carry the spirit of what has happened there.
Place is powerful. And the history of a place carries its legacy. I guess the people who stay there do, too.
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The weird part is that we accept being human even though it is frought with the imprints of massacres. As humans it can devastate, it can enrich, it can make us sour sweet and bitter.
As writers do we sit in and absorb this human part but also keep a distance? Is this how writing perfects our spiritual practice? How writing is holy?
I am enthralled by all that Teri lives, how she shares her perceptions and builds a view that becomes so real that I feel the wind and the brokenness. But I wake up and see that she is a writer.
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Yes, I think Holcomb (and Virginia Tech and Columbine and Oklahoma City, and on and on) cannot help but be defined by the events that happened there. Now that I think of it, it would make me very angry and frustrated to have this be the case for my own hometown. No wonder why the students ybonesy heard interviewed were already determining it wouldn’t overtake their college experience. Janice (the clarinet player who sat next to Nancy Clutter in band) said the hardest thing for the Holcomb HS school kids was that they completely lost their innocence at such a young age. Think of it, a bunch of farm kids in 1959 living in a very remote area–sort of wonderfully naive to the possibilities of the likes of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock.
I do hope to go back to Holcomb someday. I have a feeling in my gut that I need to. Don’t ask me what that means, I have no idea. The most fascinating person I interviewed in Holcomb last week is writing a musical about a historical figure in western Kansas history. He closed his eyes and sang me two songs from the play when I was done asking him questions. Perhaps I’ll return for the debut of the show.
Teri
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Hi Teri,
One more comment – check out Mike Schultz Paintings (the link is here and in our Blogroll). Click on Recent Work and you’ll see his most recent oil paintings from Kansas. They are inspiring.
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Teri, I felt your writing like a cool breeze on my face, waking me up in the most essential part of my being. and I don’t know, maybe its the part in the writing where you say you learned that, for you, 50 cents in the pocket doesn’t feel any different than 200$, maybe its that but I suspect its more – that makes me say you’re so like me. Thanks for keeping me company for a little bit.
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QM,
Thanks for the lead about Mike Schultz and his Kansas work. Kansas has a really empty feel (in my opinion), but once you get used to it, it is very appealing. It has that quality of helping you simplify your life and thoughts. I enjoyed seeing what Mike has captured.
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bizen,
Wow, that is a huge compliment. I’m glad what I said connected with you. I always find it such a relief to discover I’m not alone.
Thanks,
Teri
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I am 63 years old now. I am a child of migrant farm workers. I to was not to far away at the time of the murders. BUT now all this time later I wish to return to Holcomb Kansas and live out my days. I remember the warm mornings and a great cupm of coffee at the local cafe. I remember freindly smiles and people who were sincere in how your day went. Lets face it…I remember the good old days and even if the murders of those very nice people were a part of it, It was a whole lot better than the lousy big city I live in now.
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Mari,
I am so glad to hear from you. I am not surprised to hear of your desire to return to Holcomb, to your roots. I am from a small town, too, now live in a huge city. I long for, I crave, the quiet life…a place where I know people and am known. I sat in the one restaurant in Holcomb, and several of them in Garden City. Maybe we’ve been to the same places.
I didn’t meet anyone in Holcomb or Garden City who was not deeply impacted by the murders. They, of course, had never moved away, unlike you. Did its impact lessen when you left Finney County?
Hope to hear more of your story,
Teri
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[…] Continue Under All Circumstances by Teri Blair […]
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[…] Teri is an active and valued member of the red Ravine community. Her other posts include A 40-Year Love Affair, about Bill Irvine’s passion for the Parkway, a landmark theater in Minneapolis that closed in 2008; and 40 Days, 8 Flags, And 1 Mennonite Choir and Thornton Wilder & Bridges, both prompted by the August 2007 collapse of 35W bridge in Minneapolis. Teri was also one of our first guest writers, with the piece Continue Under All Circumstances. […]
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I received the news today that one of my old, long-lost relatives in Holcomb, Kansas died this week. I met her when I went to Kansas two years ago to follow in the footsteps of Truman Capote & Harper Lee. Her name was Katherine, she was 90-something, and she was living in a nursing home in Garden City.
When I read her obituary, I was right back there in Finney County. Katherine is going to be buried at the Valley View Cemetery, the same place the Clutter Family was buried after they were murdered in 1959. Alvin Dewey is buried there, too, the investigator who was front-and-center in the case.
Truman made that town come so alive for his readers, that years later, the details still take me back to In Cold Blood.
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Teri, that’s really something. I remember when you made that side trip to Holcomb on the way to one of the Writing Intensive weeks. It was a long drive down through Kansas then over to New Mexico. But it really made it come alive for you. Another of those on-the-road writing pilgrimages.
It’s strange to think about everyone in that same cemetery. But also so normal and right. All as equals in the end. What was the prosecutor’s name in the Clutter case? I was trying to remember this morning and couldn’t recall.
When I reread this piece you wrote, it takes me back to your conversations about Holcomb. How the town was forever changed by what happened there. It also is amazing that it was almost exactly two years that have passed between the Bill Holm piece and this first piece for red Ravine. Two long years that went by so quickly.
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I’ve been reading articles today about the couple in Florida who was murdered last Thursday, the ones with 17 adopted and disabled children.
One of the articles referenced the 1959 Clutter murders in Kansas, and the similiarities. Specifcially, it told how these people broke into a home of someone rich, determined there would be a safe full of money…the murder was an afterthought. The article went on to say that Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood based on what happened in Kansas.
I don’t know if these men in Florida found a safe or money, but know in 1959, the two murderers in Kansas made off with less than $50.
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Teri, that is bizarre. I had not heard of that case. But I just asked Liz and she had. It’s so hard to understand how people can kill other people for $50. I think they just want to kill. Anger and rage. And no conscience. Otherwise, if no money was there, wouldn’t you just leave rather than face a murder rap? That’s got to be major rage festering inside. Let us know if you hear anything else about it. I’ll ask Liz to keep an ear out, too.
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Well, Teri, that didn’t take long. Over a few pieces of pizza, Liz had already looked up the Florida story and read it to me. Hey, do you remember how long it was from the time the Clutters were killed until their murderers were caught? I know I read it but can’t quite recall the details or how they got caught.
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I hadn’t heard about these brutal killings, either, until today. Wow, they have arrested about six guys, one as young as 16. Unbelievable that such evil exists. So senseless and so disturbing.
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The Clutter murders happened mid-November, and I believe Perry Smith and Richard Hickock were caught just after the first of the year. I’m glad for the people of this Florida community that these men were caught more quickly.
When I read the article that mentioned Truman Capote, I wondered if it would motivate anyone to read his book. I hope so.
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Teri, Liz and I heard a news report last night that the Florida couple who were murdered might have organized crime ties in their past. Had you heard that? It seems like the story is more complicated than meets the eye (just like that of the Clutter murders). Liz commented that it might indeed make a good book.
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I’ve been seeing lots of news stories springing up this week about the Clutter murders in 1959. This November 15th will mark the 50-year anniversary of the crime in Holcomb, Kansas.
The primary theme of the reports is that the town never recovered, thanks to Truman Capote’s book and all the movies made about the murders. Several townspeople are quoted as saying they’ve been exploited for other people’s profit, and that Truman blurred the lined between fact and fiction.
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Teri, 50 years since the Clutter murders? Hard to believe. It’s as you discovered on your trips there, too. That the town carries the mark of that time, partly due to Capote’s book. Will you ever go back to Holcomb? I wonder if it will change in time.
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When I landed in Albuquerque on Sunday (heading to the Natalie Goldberg workshop), I instantly regretted not driving. I missed seeing the landscape change, and all the wonderful car time. If I come again, I hope to drive. I’ll definitely go through Holcomb and Garden City, Kansas.
When I was in Holcomb a few years ago, I remember how anti-Capote some people were. Duane West (the prosecuting attorney in the Clutter case) couldn’t stand him. Thought he was a little liar.
In the literary world, In Cold Blood is such a sensation…so amazing. Could Capote have told the story without stretching the truth?
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I was in Holcomb this past November…in fact on Saturday the 14th evening, I actually stood right on the property, a few feet from the Clutter house and reflected on the events 50 years ago. Being a southern California boy…in fact I flew out of Palm Springs on a Sunny 80 degree morning and landed in a snowly 30ish Garden City….But being on the property was an amazing moment for me….for I have been obsessed with the tragedy since I was 10 years old…1970…..I have imagined a million times while I was so warm and cozy under goosedown what a horrible midnight that must have been for Herb, Bonnie, Nancy & Kenyon….I’m fortunate and not so fortunate to have one of the only two Jesus Paintings by Perry Smith….When I got home, I stared at it for a moment, then took it off the wall and sat it in back of a chair. It made me sick….Perry & Dick were such evil human beings…I still wonder why their photos are still on the IN COLD BLOOD film posters…I have always tried to think about the family…and not the killers. Anyway, I’m home safe and sound…I have watched the movie again three times seeing so much more than I did the first 100 or so times. The mini series also along with reading the book again….This holiday I will be thinking about how Nancy & Kenyon would probably be grandparents….such a loss….
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Jeff,
I can picture exactly where you stood on November 14, 2009. It’s really strange/amazing/surreal to see the actual Clutter home after reading the book and watching the movies, isn’t it? When I was there the house was for sale, but the realtor wouldn’t let us see it. She could tell we were only curious about the murders, not serious about buying the house.
My cousin (who lives in Garden City) told me about the Clutter Memorial that was put up a few months ago in Holcomb. I wonder; did you see it?
You have one of the Perry Smith originals of Jesus? Wow. And eery.
I, too, have thought about the two Clutter sisters who survived. I wonder what their lives have been like.
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I’ve been thinking about your comment, Jeff, since I read it. I thought, Oh boy, I can’t wait until Teri sees this!
Jeff, if you check back in and are amenable to sharing, I would love to know more behind how it is that you have one of only two of Perry Smith’s Jesus paintings.
Also, the mention about it being Perry and Dick whose photos are on the In COLD BLOOD film posters–why the attention and them and not Clutters? That question has been gnawing at me since I read this comment, and I wonder if it’s the same kind of human nature that sometimes drives us to focus on the negative, not the positive (like when getting a review at work and hearing all sorts of great things and then one not-so-great—you can’t let go of the one not-so-great thing). Or is it that we’re just confounded and fascinated by that kind of evil?
And Robert Blake playing the part of Perry in the movie, well, he was such a brilliant actor. I think his portrayal of Perry made me all that more intrigued by Perry, and I don’t mean that in a “What an interesting guy,” but rather it was like getting something stuck in your head and not being able to get it out for a while.
This event, this murder, it just holds our attention. Doesn’t matter how much time passes. It grips us still.
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yb, my first thought about the pictures on the movie poster is, Why would we want to see pictures of the dead family members on a poster about a movie that sensationalized their horrible murders? The pictures of the killers seems much more appropriate to me and SOOOOO Hollywood (despite its appropriateness).
Interesting about the Jesus drawing by Perry Smith. He seemed the more sensitive of the two. I would like to know more too.
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[…] Ravine, but this current piece is a follow-up and closure of sorts to her first guest post here, Continue Under All Circumstances, which she wrote on the road during a 2007 trip to Holcomb, […]
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[…] has written many posts on red Ravine. Her first guest post, Continue Under All Circumstances, was written on the road during a 2007 trip to Holcomb, Kansas. She journeyed back to Holcomb early […]
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[…] first red Ravine guest post, Continue Under All Circumstances, was written on the road during a 2007 trip to Holcomb, Kansas. She journeyed back to Holcomb in […]
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[…] first red Ravine guest post, Continue Under All Circumstances, was written on the road during a 2007 trip to Holcomb, Kansas. She journeyed back to Holcomb in […]
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[…] Teri: Teri Blair is a writer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her first piece for red Ravine, Continue Under All Circumstances, was written on the road during a 2007 trip to Holcomb, Kansas. She journeyed back to Holcomb in […]
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The first time I went to Holcomb I bought a notebook at the general store. At the post office they stamped it with the date, city, and state. I’ve been holding onto this plain notebook over four years, trying to decide what to use it for.
Tomorrow I leave for two weeks on the Southern Literary Trail. I’ve just found the perfect use for my Holcomb notebook. Into my backpack it goes.
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Teri: Can you email me at jefferama@aol.com I would very much like to talk to you. I will give you my phone number then. Thanks! Jeff
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Jeff, thanks for stopping by again. I think you are the same person who commented above in 2009 about owning the Jesus Painting by Perry Smith. I am still wondering how you came to have that painting.
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Harper Lee died today – 89 years old. I stand with everyone to honor an amazing woman.
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