Other Regular Characters at the house
Annie Laurie
One of Donna’s best friends, Annie Laurie, was an excellent chef. She could decern every ingredient, and the proportions of any culinary dish, by tasting a small spoonful. Her skills were the stuff of legends and were put to good use as the two of them started a lunch club in Donna’s formal dining room.
Accordingly, people would make reservations for the limited seating and were always delighted at how delicious it was. Annie would try out her new recipe ideas on the attendees. For the limited time it existed, the luncheon club was a hit!
Kroger Porn
She was also an incredibly funny lady! She regularly baked cookies to send to the troops in Iraq and struck up a friendship/pen-pal relationship with one soldier. They began exchanging racy photos. She would then take the photos he sent her to the local Kroger store and hide them among the vegetables, i.e. cucumbers, long neck squash, corn, etc. for the old shopping ladies to find. I’m curious how many of those photos are in some old lady’s collection hidden in a drawer somewhere!
Edmond
Edmond, a big black rock and roller, was a regular on her couch. He didn’t like to go home to his grandparents with whom he lived when he was too ‘buzzed’ so Donna’s safe house sofa had his name on it. His band was called “Blondes and Blacks” which was raucous, loud, and rocked hard! Donna had met Edmond at a charity art event.
Cock sure with a dynamic personality, he figured himself to be quite the lady’s man and so, that night he approached a group of cute, young, blonde girls and began to flirt with them. Donna looked over from where she was to see the big rocker ‘hitting’ on her daughters and wandered over to quietly join the group.
Fox in Charge
Edmond, checking her out, decided to turn his moves toward her. She smiled and said, “These are my daughters.” He reacted in shock and apologized. She checked him out during the conversation, and before parting, she said, “If my girls are ever at a club where you are and you see they need help, you are their protector! You take care of them!” Later, as she relates the story she adds with a smile, “I put the fox in charge of the chickens!” Edmond lived up to the challenge and became a good family friend.
Real-Life Rocker
Lance had met Edmond rocking in some of the clubs around Nashville before meeting Donna, so they were already friends although it had been a few years since they had seen each other. Edmond was a real-life rocker and one of Nashville’s great undiscovered musicians. He seemed to know everybody, and everybody thought they knew him. As rough as Edmond looked, he had a big scar across his neck where someone tried to sacrifice him in a Satanic ritual… he somehow escaped and survived, he was equally sweet, charming, and caring.
Rusty
We met Rusty and immediately hit it off. Rusty had moved to Nashville to try and make his mark as a musician and songwriter. He was a really good songwriter and I was a good player and person to bounce ideas off of to improve his great ideas. We really helped each other to shine.
He needed a place to stay and we had space so we asked if he would like to become a partner in the studio in exchange for helping with whatever needed doing, and said he could take a room free of charge. We made a lot of music together. A contest was entered to write a promotional song for Atlanta, it was really good but they didn’t take it. We had a band playing Dead covers and original tunes called Otterblot. Rusty’s songs were really good! With this in mind, we recorded several of them. Life was great! Until…
No Idea What Happened!
One day we had a potential client coming over to take a look at the studio. In order to impress the client, we were busy cleaning it up. Rusty was asked to help with the vacuuming and he just flipped out, ran up to his room, cleaned it out of his things, threw all his belongings into his truck, and drove off! We had no idea what triggered that! That was the end of our connection with him for some time! (We are friends again) We were in shock, stunned! All things considered, I thought everything was going quite well! Little did we know what was to follow……
Annie Laurie ❤️