My name is Jan Ballard, I was born in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, on November 27th, (you can put the year, if you must) 1957. I was raised a country girl, and I grew up on our small 10 acre farm, chopping cotton, picking cotton, and doing all the things we had to do to get by back then. The earliest years of my life, we had no electricity, or in-door plumbing. Later, I remember thinking we had moved up in the world because mom and I washed clothes with an old ringer-type washing machine, was extremely happy to have it, and hung everything out on the clothes line to dry. We grew a garden, raised hogs for our meat for the winter, and we canned tomatoes, and other vegetables. My mom was an excellent seamstress and she made most of my clothes from flour sacks, or old clothes we were given. Life was not always easy, back then, but, it was our life, and we lived it as best we could. It seems like that was a hundred years ago, now, and my life has changed more than I could have ever believed it would have back then, but I was raised with love through it all.

I now live in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and currently work as a cashier for the Kum & Go Company. I love living in town, near my friends, and all my favorite shopping places (Wal-Mart included), and if I had to work out in the field again, I probably would not last very long. I have gotten used to the comforts of central air and heat, instead of the Wood King we had back then, and I wouldn’t know how to begin to can anything now. I have changed a lot, but, I remain, and always will be, Lucy Maud, and Willie’s girl. I try to live my life in a way that they would always be proud of me, and live by the standards they taught me.

I have always loved to write, and I remember writing poems from the time I was about six years old (probably not very good ones, but I wrote them). I have always loved music also, and some of the best memories of my childhood are when a bunch of us would get together, and have a good ole jam session. My mom’s sister Ilene,(played the guitar and sang like Patsy Cline), their brother Richard (who also played the guitar and sang), and many other members of our family would gather together and we would all sing, and have a grand ole opry of our very own. I really miss those days.

I have worked at a lot of jobs in my life, everything from being a DJ (for about 15 minutes-ha), a cleaning lady, a factory worker, a donut cooker, selling advertising packages at a radio station, doing concert/record reviews, and (years ago), writing some for a magazine called, “Rock”, I also worked as a collections person for a used car dealership (which I was terrible at), and most recently/currently, a cashier: but, I have always used writing as my outlet of self-expression. I remember that, even when I was very young, whatever emotion I was dealing with, I usually could sit quietly, write it out of my system, and feel a kind of relief, or release from whatever bothered me. It is not that I consider myself a great writer, by any means; it is just that I can express myself better in written form, than I can verbally.

I have been through some rough times, I have lost both my parents, lost many of my precious family members, lost my job (several times), and I will probably never be wealthy, but, I have a wealth of friends that I love dearly who have supported me no matter what I was going through, and I feel I am very blessed to have them in my life. My friends have become my family, and I treasure each of them.

I write, pretty much the way I talk, and I may not always use the the exact, standard of the English language, but I can usually get my point across. I once asked a customer I waited on, “where you from, you don’t talk Arkansas, do ya”? So, as far as writing flowery fiction, or imaginative stories, you will probably not find my name at the bottom of such a creation. What I do write about is true, real life situations I live through, and stuff that happens to me on a daily basis. I am fairly sure, that what happens to us in real life, every day, is really stranger than fiction most of the time, and probably funnier.

Anyway, I welcome anyone who enjoys what I write, to be part of my crazy, frustrating, sometimes fun, semi-normal life. I feel sure there are some things that bring us all together, as a human race, and one of them, is laughter. I hope I can make you smile.

Jan Ballad

Jan Ballard