Compiling ‘wandering thoughts’

CLINTON — Longtime Sampson Independent columnist Mac McPhail finally got around to doing something his readers had begged him to do — create a compilation of his favorite and most notable columns.

“It’s just a bunch of my columns from the past 10 years, just pulling it together,” he said. “Some of it’s politics, some of it’s local, some of us growing up, and some of it’s faith.”

Faith, he said, has been a pivotal part of his life, and at the forefront of many of his columns.

“It came together, and it has come together,” he said. “And also, maybe, for down the road, somebody, you know, grandkids who could care less now, might care later.”

In some ways his book, “Wandering Thoughts From a Wondering Mind,” is a time capsule, a smidgen of his life here in Sampson County in the Clement area.

“It’s from my growing up, and some of it has been about this past 10 years, the way I see things in different ways. The fortunate thing is that I don’t try to come from it from the same angle.”

“I want to continue doing this as much as I can. You know, the brain’s getting older, but I’ll keep at it the best I can.”

McPhail saves his columns and compiling the book was a matter of pouring himself back into his old compositions and culling through them.

“I was really fortunate, because I’ve been able to save all the columns over the years. And it was basically just working back through them looking back and saying, ‘Yeah, like this column,’ pull it aside, and then just keep pulling aside and start pulling it together.”

He said that in this process he’s had a lot of folks come share their experiences with getting published. Hearing those stories helped relieve a bit of the anxiety and uncertainty around the project.

“I was really fortunate, because I ran into people that had used publishers,” said McPhail. “I got help from several people as far as directing me in the way to go.”

During this process there was a bit of back and forth collaboration between him and the publishers. He said that he has been very pleased with the process.

The book is a blend of all different styles of his columns. Some of them are intensely personal and family related, and others are about things that have happened in the community. Others have concerned local or international politics.

“I think along the way, what I tried to do is, if you read the book, you’re gonna pretty much know what my worldview is after you get done, because there’s 10 years of columns. And I come from a Christian worldview, and I look at things through that framework.”

For him, creating the book wasn’t extremely difficult, since he had the columns already in place. But he still has some advice for someone who wants to write a book.

“The best advice I can give somebody is thank goodness for saving documents on the computer.”

Using that resource made things much easier for him, as he was able to pull things together that way, create the book, tweak it and rewrite a few things here in there. Sometimes it was hard. He said he was often concerned about how he was saying things, and worried about something he said being misinterpreted.

“Probably the hardest columns for me, is when you’re dealing with subjects where you’re scared you’re gonna be taken the wrong way. And these days, it’s got to be race. When I bring up something about race, you know, you want to get the point across … that’s difficult because you want to share how you feel, but you want to make sure you’re taken the right way.”

“… Rather than worried about what I feel, sometimes we need to be concerned about how other people feel, or how they would feel,” he continued. “I think that’s what we miss in a lot of this.”

Among his favorite columns are those about his grandmother and when she went through the Great Depression. His aunt, who is in her 80s now, told him about his mother growing up then. That led him to research even more, digging up old records.

“She was a single mother raising four kids in a Depression, and when I pulled that together, I was like ‘Yeah, I like that,’” he said. “Then, there’s some funny ones in there.”

Another moment that stuck out in his mind was an experience with Clinton native Mikayla Boykin who went on to play for Duke basketball and just transferred to the Charlotte 49ers. He was working as a referee, and one of the other referees didn’t show up. Boykin stepped in as a young teenager to referee that rec ball game.

“And it just impressed me that a young teenage kid, who didn’t have to do it, chipped in and helped out. And I’m there thinking, ‘She’s going to go far.’”

McPhail’s book, “Wandering Thoughts From a Wondering Mind,” from Bookstand Publishing, is available online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and also in The Sampson Independent office for $15 a copy.