By 1859, the pretty public square in the center of town had already been cleared of unwanted stumps, but with plenty of elms left to spread their dappled green shade over anyone strolling across to Elk Street from the United States Hotel or the courthouse. As the county seat, Franklin already had a population of 936, and a settled, respectable air. It looked rather disdainfully on hovel heaps like Cornplanter, six miles up the Allegheny. As a mark of cosmopolitan elegance, Franklinites could even rent a long-trotting sulky at Pinney's Carriage Repository. Several daughters of local merchants and lawyers went to Olome Institute for Young Ladies at Canonsburg, which cost $56.50 a term, with pew rent seventy-five cents extra, and "Each lady will find her own light."

Jimmy Lamberton, one of the half-dozen dry goods merchants in town, advertised such citified ware s as Fancy Cold Taffeta Eugenie, Black Shotted Silks and Lace Vizettes, along with Curry Combs. He enticed farmers in by announcing, "Highest Prices Paid for Sheep Pelts." Jimmy was a fine figure of an Irishman, flamboyant as a shamrock, with the shiniest silk hat and fastest twirling cane around. It is claimed that when he first came to Franklin, he pointed his cane at a turtle ambling along in the mud and roared, "Shure, and what manner of country is this, where a cow turd walks?"

--from The Great Oildorado (1959)

She kept saying, "But if you have any suggestions at all...so easy to change...lots of other scenes that just cry out to be illustrated." I didn't know how often she let art directors fling her last-minute jobs with too-tight deadlines, or how often they wanted changes, partly because Lolly was so over-eager to oblige. But as I listened to her, I felt vaguely exasperated by her girlish attitude toward her work, and I thought suddenly, She should never have lost her amateur standing. I remembered a literary agent saying about a mutual acquaintance of ours who had brought him a manuscript, "She's too nice and good-natured to be a real writer." The same thing was true of Lolly. Her small pleasant talent, with no integral drive behind it, no pivoal core of self-center-- I was frankly astonished that it had ever got her so far from home.

-- from A Growing Wonder (1957)

When an old lawyer in Franklin died and his office furnishings were being sold, Mother said to my father: "Cliff, if you can get those office chairs of his at fifty cents apiece, I want them." My father thought Mother was daft to want the homely old things, but she persisted, until all eight chairs were in our dining room. Recently a man who's a decorator came to my apartment in New York, with some friends. He saw two of the same chairs, which mother had sent me years ago in a generous truckload of furniture from home. "Where did you get those?" he asked, in the tone one would normally use to inquire after the crown jewels. I told him what I remembered of the original transaction, while he scrambled around the floor on his hands and knees, examining the chairs' bottoms.

"Hand-doweled," he muttered, lying with his chin hooked on a chair rung. "Too marvelous." He used a lot of other adjectives I've deliberately forgotten, due to the fact that decorators' phrases, if taken internally, have a tendency to make my stomach rumble. However, I do remember that he offered to buy the chairs at forty dollars apiece, whenever I felt like selling. "Early Pennsylvania Dutch," he said. "Practically museum pieces." Since then, I've viewed the chairs with proper respect, as a nest egg in case of emergency. Every free-lance writer needs a couple of early Pennsylvania Dutch chairs to fall back on.

-- from We Shook the Family Tree (1946)

As a writer...

As a writer, I'm procrastinating and moody, with the added disadvantage that I have to think, or at least some editors expect me to think, which is equally debilitating. I am also hogtied by knowing at least a few of the rudiments and hazards of my profession, so I'm continually stuck with such artistic problems as "If the magazine said they want a thousand words, will they count 'a' and 'the'? And if I switch the first paragraph to the end and the last paragraph to the middle and the middle to the first, will that improve the story line?" But as an amateur painter, I merely keep going till the paper is covered with color. During the entire process-- about twenty minutes for a painting-- my most serious problem is: "Shall I wash the brush or make the dog purple, too?"

-- from "Look! I'm Framed" (1949)