"From Mudville to Joy Ville" by Mary Alice Dixon

 – You’re not gonna get any last words from this one, Honey.”

At the words “lusty yell” Doc opens his eyes.

Mary Alice Dixon is a Pushcart nominee, award-winning poet and former finalist for the NC Poetry Society Poet Laureate Award. Her writing is in five PSPP anthologies, in Braided Way, County Lines, Kakalak, Main Street Rag, Pinesong, and elsewhere. Her poetry will appear on NC Poetry Society posters in 2024. Mary Alice lives in Charlotte, NC where she teaches a Hospice Grief Writing Workshop for the bereaved. Her course includes found poems, tears, laughter, peppermint candy and plenty of blueberry scones. She also collects old stories and loves old hats.

Author’s Talk

Mary Alice Dixon

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,” Maya Angelou says, “but by the moments that take our breath away.”  

The experience I recount in From Mudville to Joy Ville involves a dying man named Doc and a poem he loved. It’s an experience I never thought I could write about precisely because it took my breath away. 

I couldn’t explain what happened. Still can’t. For years I buried what I witnessed deep in my heart.  

But pondering Now or Never reminded me that if I didn’t at least try to tell Doc’s story, it would never be told. In putting pen to paper, I realized I don’t have to explain what happened. After all, mysteries are stories, too.  

Some say dying is like falling in love: You can’t explain it, it just happens.  

I think my hero, Doc, would agree. He fell in love, as he was dying, with a place of joy, a place of joy he found in an old rhymed verse about baseball. I think Doc would also agree with Yogi Berra that, whatever the score, "Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” 

I’ve always believed in the healing power of poetry. But what I came to learn in writing about Doc and the poem he loved is that healing is a long, slow process. I will always miss Doc. But writing about him let me learn he is with me in the healing glimpse I got of his mystery. 

Listeners, I hope, even if you’re not a baseball fan, you will feel a kinship with Doc and hear echoes of his voice in my 6-Minute Story.  

I also hope an image of Joy Ville will comfort you the next time you strike out. Or the next time you land in the mud. And maybe, even for just a moment, you’ll remember Joy Ville the next time mystery takes your breath away.  

Thank you, Randell Jones, for being a story keeper. Thank you for making The Personal Story Publishing Project a family in which sharing stories is what keeps them alive. —Mary Alice Dixon