- [Announcer] "By The River" is brought to you and powered by the University of South Carolina Beaufort, Learning in Action Discovered.

The ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

Community Foundation of The Lowcountry, strengthening community.

OSHER Lifelong Learning Institute at USCB.

The Pat Conroy Literary Center.

(instrumental music) - Lynchburg, South Carolina, Native Hubert Green, fulfills a lifelong dream and tells a family story.

His book, "Magnolia, Magnolia, Where Are You?"

Honors his mother's love for family by sharing stories of days gone by.

I'm Holly Jackson, join us as we bring you powerful stories from both new and established Southern authors as we sit by the river.

(instrumental music) ♪ It is such a beautiful day here in Beaufort, thanks so much for joining us.

You're joining us for our love letter to Southern writing, "By The River."

It is where we invite South Carolina and Southern authors here to tell their stories, their writing process, and all about their books.

And we're joined today with the author of "Magnolia, Magnolia, Where Are You?"

This is Mr. Hubert Green and certainly a special guest, we are so excited Mr. Green, that you have joined us.

We have a story that dates back quite a while.

If you can start from the fact that we're both Lee County natives.

- Yes.

- And whenever you called me that one time, I think it was almost two years ago, I saw that number that it was Lee County, I thought my grandma was calling, and I answered, and I was like, "Hold on, wait a minute, who is this?"

It's not so often that somebody calls from Lee County.

So thank you so much for coming, here for your first trip?

- Glad to be here, yeah.

- Wonderful.

Let's get right to it, this is really a special book.

And I want you to start with where the idea came from and what we've got to hear, but who this special person is and how this idea came about, what the book is about, go ahead and start.

- Okay, thank you.

Well, as the "Magnolia, Magnolia, Where Are You?"

2001, my mother at the time had Alzheimer's and I knew that she used to tell me many stories, but at this time she didn't tell me anything.

So, what I did is I said, I'm gonna write a book.

And I remembered the day so clearly because I was sitting on her living room couch, and she was next to me in a wheelchair.

And I said, well, what would the title be of the book?

And what would it be about?

So I said a prayer.

And then I stood up from her couch, walked to her front door and there it was, her Magnolia tree, which is still there today.

And I say, that'll be about Magnolia women, Magnolias.

But now that wasn't a full title of the book.

So on my way to work to Florence, I rode down the street and thinking about, what could be the rest of the title?

And I said in myself, Magnolia, Magnolia, where are you?

Looking for a Magnolia tree, and that was it's title.

- Very good.

And obviously she was a very special person in your life, she made the cover of the book.

This was kind of a tribute to her.

- Yes.

- But unfortunately, she probably didn't quite understand what was going on at the time.

What do you think she would have thought of this project that you took over?

- All smiles.

She always encouraged her children, all 12 of us, to see, to do well, to do good.

She would've been very proud.

- 12 Children.

- Yes.

- (laughs) You don't hear stories like that all the time anymore.

And many of you are still remain local and this tree is still there.

Tell me how the writing of this book or whether it did bring a close family even closer?

- Well in the book, the first part of it is a fiction.

As you see on the cover, the bottom portion is two fiction characters that I used to coming from Africa, wind up in Lynchburg, South Carolina, but the last half of the book, is a true story of us being sharecroppers.

My dad was a sharecropper, and I had each one of the children tell me something about their growing up on the farm and being around mom and dad, and they did.

So each child have something in there that they said.

So, now another connection here is that, in the fiction story, Ebony, our Sunamite, she had 11 brothers and sisters.

So just like I had 11 brothers and sisters.

And I had twin brothers, Ebony had twin brothers, Sunrise and Sunset.

- Okay.

- So and Runt, was the younger boy in the family that pictured me.

- Okay.

- I'm the shortest of 12.

- Well all right, and where do you fall in line?

- I'm the 11th.

- You're number 11, okay.

Why was it so important that you tell those true stories?

I mean it's, for one thing it's so nice that you've pretty much kept a family record that can be passed down generations and that we appreciated years to come.

But why do you want readers to hear those stories?

- Well you know, initially when I first started, I had in mind.

I said, "Well, mom used to tell me so many stories."

And when we used to visit like New York or other cities, just to listen to people, "Yeah, I'm up from the south."

And they would tell you so many real stories.

I mean, you could spend all day talking, and I found out that, and said someone need to capture this in writing, and that's why I put that in there like that too, so to be a history.

Just the other day, I was talking to three women a Zoom meeting, and they remember farming, and lemme tell you this, and I won't take her story away.

She was a little older than I am, but she said, "I remembered being in these fields, "hoeing cotton."

She says, "I was four years old, "but I was too small to hoe the cotton, the hoe was too big."

She says, "You know what they did?"

"They broke the hoe in the half and gave me the hoe."

- Wow, so at four years?

- Four years old.

- Oh, my Gosh!

What are some of the stories we don't want to give the whole book away.

- No no.

- But what are some of the stories that really stood out that you said, "Oh, it's got to make the book" from your siblings about that time on the farm.

- Wow, so many.

One was about my brother, Jake.

He just passed away last year.

What happened, my dad was ploughing the field, a garden, I should have said, my mom was a gardener, and there's big mule that he was ploughing with, and all of a sudden, the mule stop with it holding up his foot and he would not put it down.

And my dad would beat it to encourage it to go but it wouldn't go.

So my mom came out of the house screaming.

My brother, Jake, a little toddler was under the mule's foot.

- Oh my Gosh!

- If he had stepped down, he would have killed him, but he wouldn't -- the mule would not move.

- Wow!

- I remember that, that's in my book.

- Talk about that time whenever you interview the siblings, was it all in a group together or did you do each one individually?

- Individually, secretly.

They didn't know I was writing a book.

- Oh, so you were just getting together, talking about old times?

- Yes.

- All right, so whenever the book came out?

- They were surprised.

- Happily - Yes.

- Or like, wait a minute?

- Happily yeah, my brother from Baltimore told me just the other day, "Hube, I read your book," and see, that what happens.

I'll be at the post office, someone to come up and say, Hubert, I enjoyed your book and I'm not even thinking about it.

- Right.

- And they'll bring it up.

You know, people I meet, they asked one lady in North Carolina, "I read your book."

One lady from New York said, "I read your book."

"I laugh and I cry."

- And those are the best kind of.

- Yes.

- very good.

Let's talk about the artwork.

Let's start with the cover.

I love the cover of this book.

And this is all by you.

- Yes.

- Tell me about how you came up with the way this is designed.

- Well, now the first book we see the fiction characters at the bottom.

Now they grew up, they came to Lynchburg, but they wanted to go back to Africa.

They were nurses now Anna and Ebony, because there were a virus in their village.

They wanted to go back to build a hospital, to help with the situations.

And that's what we see on the cover.

The larger book, the nurses outfit, that's their hospital.

They had the money because Anna husband was a goldminer.

He had discovered gold there in Africa, so they had plenty of money.

If you look at their purse, you see gold bars in their purse.

- Oh Yeah, Okay.

Interesting detail.

Now how about the artwork that's inside the black and white pictures, and I want you to tell the story I also was about to tell it, but you tell the story.

- Well, I was at work - It's your story.

- and I wrote the head of manuscript of the book, and my coworker wanted to read them, both books.

So she read the books, and she just drew pictures.

She drew 50 pictures.

She loved it so much.

And there's one picture in there that stands out, now in the second book, it says, "Magnolias that cared about me featuring Thunder."

Who is Thunder?

Thunder is a 800 pound gorilla.

So I told her I want you to put together all your skills in this one picture.

And she did, and Thunder's in the book.

This 800 pounds silver back gorilla.

- Let's talk about your career as a banker, right?

- Right.

- As you were doing, how long were you a banker?

- Well, I went to New York out of high school in '69, and I worked for Chemical Bank for three and a half years in Manhattan for a head teller.

So I wanted to come back to help my parents.

So I came back in '73 about May and I started a bank, People's Bank and I worked there and it changed names so many time, but I was there like, 28 years with the bank.

I retired in 2001.

So I was head teller there as well.

- Now my husband's a banker.

So I know how bankers think, and it's usually not so much with storytelling.

So tell me how your, you know, did you always kind of have this in your mind?

You're always telling stories or this just simply came whenever your mom became sick.

- Well, it's interesting, you know, I used to, where we had family reunions, I remember my niece, she was in high school.

And I wrote a play for her to act out in the gym.

And what I did, I had gotten music together, and I was, I had to record it, so they could hear my voice speaking, that Granny is going to so-and-so.

So I had did different events like that, and it has kept going.

- Very cool.

Now I'm holding three things now, the two books and then this big stack of white papers.

This is something new that I heard about today.

Tell me a little bit about this, what it means and what your hopes and dreams are for it.

- That is my first screen play based on the two books.

And it's... it's special, is amazing high developed because, I met, various people and they told me about writing it and how to write it.

One man sent me a book, "Save the Cat."

That's a book dealing with screenplay writing.

He gave me so many pointers.

I'll be brief on this.

He said, "Okay: The man walked across the room."

"Okay.

What's so interesting about that?"

Now, but that same man, if he stumble and fall and hit his head," you see...

So I incorporated that in the script writing.

- Bring them to details - Yeah.

- They make it, - Yeah.

- They draw the reader or the viewer in a little bit more.

- Yes.

- Let's back up a little bit and talk about your writing process.

You talked about kind of what inspired your writing to really take off, but when did you find, was there a certain time of day, or was there a certain place you would go something that was, you know, maybe something a bad day or a good day with your mom that would say, all right I feel like writing right now.

- Well, again, my mom had Alzheimer's so my sister and I would take turns.

She was stay one night I would stay the next night, because I lived across the field from her.

So that allowed me time to write.

And I would write and write.

And I hand wrote the first book and my niece, she was in grammar school.

She she put it on floppy disk.

- Okay.

- She typed it in for me.

- Right.

- She did that whole summer.

She did that first book.

- Wow!

- Eventually I got a laptop and all that.

But, but I found that as late as, sometimes I stay up 'til two o'clock in the morning writing.

- This couldn't stop once you have that idea going right?

- And I'm gonna take at work, how did I come up with the name of the characters Ebony and Hannah?

and DEPA one's call in, they had to give us their name.

One was named Ebony.

- Okay, so I like that name.

- Hannah.

- Oh that's funny.

That's a neat story of how that came about.

Let's back up even farther to grade school.

You grew up in Lee County.

And I think you said you went to Fleming, was it Fleming Elementary?

- Yes - Okay.

With this whole season, I've somehow started this thing where I'm asking people about their teachers, because it seems that that those years were so important for these writers, because there's some teacher who inspired them in some way, you know whether it be storytelling or just continuing to try with whatever you want, whatever your dream is that you're going for.

So is there anybody that you can think of that really had an influence on you and maybe even your writing and storytelling?

- Yes.

It was one of my teachers at Fleming, it was Ms. Bess.

She was an English teacher and she helped me so much.

She, you had to put you all into it.

And then another teacher was in high school Mount Pleasant High school.

Ms. Hudson.

Now I wasn't good at speaking, but she, encouraged me to memorize, the creation speech.

I don't know if you recall that, but I did do that.

And that encouraged me to do more than just the basic, put your all into it, and she was very influential for doing that.

- Right, I have an eight year old; she's in third grade this year.

And she's always asking me about my teachers growing up, and I love telling those kind of stories, because I love talking about memories, and she asked about the hardest teacher, and I tell her the hardest teacher, and then she says, "Who's your favorite teacher?"

And I named that same person.

She said, "I thought they were your hardest."

I said, "I know, but they expected the most out of me," and later in life, you really appreciate that kind of thing.

- Yes.

- Cause you can see the difference that it makes in you.

Okay.

So let's talk a little bit more about the... We talked about how your mom would feel about this, you believe, and your siblings now too.

Do you all, you're kind of spread out right now.

You said you have some in Lynchburg, but some are in New York and somewhere else up there, - Baltimore - Walterboro?

- Baltimore.

- Oh, Baltimore I was like Walterboro, you passed it on the way in.

Okay, Baltimore.

So, you were mentioned in zoom earlier, do you all do the technology thing?

Or is it more the telephone and do these kinds of stories - - Yes - ...seem to come up a lot whenever you talk to each other?

- It's interesting you just said that, we just had our 47th family reunion last Saturday, on Zoom.

- On Zoom!

- Yeah - Okay, because you showed me the picture where everybody was dressed up in kind of in a cowboy hats.

- Yes yes.

- I love that picture.

Did you, did you all have a theme?

- Yes.

It was Western for that year every year is different.

It's two years in wherever location we go.

We had it in... that time was in Lynchburg.

It was in Columbia the last two years when the pandemic, and then now we go to Atlanta for two years.

- Okay, great.

Let's talk a little bit about your time during the pandemic.

I mean, you and I were like just a hair away from meeting and then that pandemic struck, and we had no idea that it would be so long until we actually got to meet in person and everybody watching me, this is been a long time coming, we've been really hoping for you to be here and glad it's happening, but what have you been doing over this time?

- Have you been writing more or have you been getting any more ideas?

- Yes.

I would say that the script I've been using is more pointing there.

I have another book to bring out later, but asked some things I've been doing basically and trying to reach out to get things moving with the project.

And it hadn't been easy, but I haven't given up.

- Good.

Good.

And listen, at the end of the day, who do you hope reads your books and what do you hope that they take away?

- Well, I hope that husbands, sons, fathers would show appreciation for their wives, mothers, daughters, aunts, their Magnolias.

Just taking the time because each day means so much, and we can take it for granted.

And I could have wrote the story based on a young boy coming out of Africa, but it would not match the theme of Magnolia.

So I went to the two girls and let the emotions come out and then so forth.

So I hope that they will look at it and dealing with this pandemic, I wrote the second book around 2005, not knowing that we will be going through this.

- Right, You bring up the virus there.

- And Ebony had to come up with the cure for the virus, because her two daughters, twin daughters had the virus and there was a close call, but I won't tell you what happened, but it's all in the book and it, it came out good though.

- Very good.

- It did.

- Well, Mr. Green, I'm just so glad that we're here today in person, we've been doing a lot of texting and calling and even the old fashioned pony express, bringing books and pictures, and I've enjoyed that, but I'm glad that you made it here to Beaufort, so thank you so much.

Our time's up.

Can you believe it?

- Wow!

That's fast.

- It does.

Time does fly, - Thank you.

- But we really appreciate you coming by and hey, we look forward to what's next.

This is, this is really exciting.

- I hope it goes on, I'm looking forward to it.

- Well, I wish you the absolute best.

- Thank you for your help, it means so much.

- Absolutely.

And thank you all for joining us here for By The River.

We do always love having you tag along with us.

We're going to leave you now with our Lowcountry, Lowcountry Poet's Corner.

I'm Holly Jackson, and I'll see you next time by the river.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Oyster boats and summer were never meant to be, upside down and knee-high grass waiting for the gray season of salt, grit and croaker sacks, for strong black men in hip boots, dipping oars through the crack of dawn fog soft in the sweet Gullah rhythms of their morning.

No color, but flannel shirts, clusters chinked across the deck solid, but not in August when caked mud sifts away fine powder for dirt daubers nesting in the hull shade.

Wooden tomb stones waiting to be turned, dragged back down the bank and launched and lapped at.

- The beginning, Could big things come from small beginnings?

Well, let's see, but can big things come from small beginnings?

from small city or towns?

Consider Bethlehem, who came from that small town?

Jesus was born there, in the Bible book of Micah, It states at the 5th chapter verse two, and you O Bethlehem Ephratah the one too little to get to be among the thousands of Judah from you there will come out to me, the one who is to become ruler in Israel, whose origin is from early times, from the days of time, indefinite.

Yesterday, all events in the world, could not compare to the greatness of that event in connection with Jesus.

Now, considering part one of the book, chapter one, "Magnolia," "Magnolia, Magnolia, "Where Are You."

No city has just one Magnolia.

We might speak of her in terms of the single Magnolia tree or as an individual.

We have to identify her as a woman, either younger or older.

(upbeat music) ♪ - [Announcer] By The River is brought to you in part by, the University of South Carolina, Beaufort.

Learning in action discovered.

The ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

Community Foundation of the Lowcountry strengthening community.

OSHER Lifelong Learning Institute at USCB.

The Pat Conroy Literary Center.