Spencer Road
Subtitle: a short story sequence
By: Morris Smith.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Knoxville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 148
Description: In pre-World War II Georgia, change comes in uneven doses. The Spencer family lives in a sprawling house at the end of a sand and clay road where, to all outward appearances, life goes on as always. Worn sofas, chairs, and tables fill the shady rooms, and the wallpaper is peeling. But there is always help in the kitchen, where the same pots and pans have been in use for three generations.

Yet each year the surrounding fields yield less cotton and fewer cantaloupes. Some of the acreage is gradually sold off. The mother's disappointments deepen, as does her prickliness. The father grows more remote. The three children, meanwhile, enjoy their freedom in the country, but they, too, catch occasional glimpses of the accumulating losses.

Their stories tell of the pain brought on by the firing of a beloved cook, of furniture being divided among relatives, of the impact of a tragic death. There are smaller losses as well: the son, returning from a frog-gigging expedition, tears the interior of the family's brand-new Studebaker. Other stories tell of the fun of early-morning hunting, of the excitement of attending a prom party in town, of the daughter's secret flirting with a good-looking German prisoner of war.

In one story, Bird, the cook, encounters an insensitive doctor who crowns her during an office visit with a bouquet of white camellias. The stories reach into the 1950s. As the Spencer children meet or blunder through unstoppable changes, their voices grow stronger and more knowing.