observations, musings and miscellany from an unapologetic sentimentalist.
lint head
Brenda Lee Branch has lived her whole life in the same small town. Sheltered and never married, she lives a predictable, simple existence with her father and bachelor brother, until a phone call from the past opens the door to new possibilities.
Fans of Steel Magnolias will enjoy the banter of the patrons of the Lord and Ladies Beauty Shop, where so many of the textile mill workers go each week to have the blue lint washed from their hair. Brenda Lee never misses standing Saturday appointment. That's where she lives vicariously through the women (and the occasional man) who share their stories and gossip about others.
These characters live their lives against the backdrop of the smokestacks of the West Oaks denim mill and tiny Sumner, a Southern mill town of identical houses, where the citizens work hard during the week, go to football games on Friday nights, buy groceries on Saturdays and go to church on Sundays, and where the train tracks separate Sumner from the rest of the world.