Seasons in Beulah Land

Since this book has sort of a religious title (Beulah Land comes from an old gospel song and is another name for Heaven), Billy Blackman has a confession: The majority of these chapters, these true adventures in an ordinary life, were written from behind bars... No, it’s not what you’re thinking. He has yet to be convicted of a felony, thus he’s never been in jail. He has jailhouse experience since he used to stand outside the county courthouse in Wewahitchka, Florida and toss cigarettes up to a waiting hand protruding out of a barred, second-story window. The other end of the hand was attached to his cousin, who spent quite a bit of time in the county jail. During the time Billy wrote most of these stories, he was making a living in bars (southern honky-tonks) as a professional, country-and-western musician. During the breaks, which came every forty minutes or so, he would go out to the car and work on his stories that appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat for five years. He always parked behind the bar, so thus, the stories were written from “behind bars.” Why Beulah Land for a title? It’s simple. This place where Billy and his family live, at the end of a crimson, clay road shaded by mothering oaks, on a block of land where he raised his garden, chickens, geese, dogs and horses, and where he and his wife raised their children in this ever-complicated world, this place he writes about in his uncomplicated humorous style that reads like updates from home, this place is truly heaven to him.