[legendsport]

Author’s Note:
This brief interlude bridges the 1970 and 1971 chapters of Same Song, Different Tune. As Paul Crowe begins his follow-up to The Ballad of the Brothers Barrell, he returns to the Barrell family’s ancestral home in Georgia to seek out the woman who, for better or worse, has carried that family’s voice into the modern era. What follows marks both a reckoning and a reunion—the spark that reignites the story in a new time, with new truths waiting to be told.

Intermission - The “WOH”

Barrell Farm, Effingham County, Georgia
October 2025

It was still warm in northeastern Georgia, and Paul Crowe had the top down on his rented convertible. He had only a day to spend in the state—the World Championship Series was about to begin, and he was covering it. Luckily, the television-imposed break in the action gave him a couple of free days.

He pulled up in front of the farmhouse built nearly 120 years earlier by Rufus Barrell. He always felt a sort of reverence when visiting this place. Rufus, surprisingly, had left the farm and the lands attached to it to his grandson, James Slocum. James had developed most of the acreage, but he left the farmhouse, the old barn and ballfield, and the even older barn of the former Patterson farm down the road. In the distance, Paul could see the south stands of the Effingham County Superspeedway—the centerpiece track of NARF and still the headquarters of both Slocum Racing and the National Automobile Racing Federation itself.

The farm now belonged to Brenda Slocum, eldest child of James and Rose Slocum. Also known as “Carolina,” and—less famously—as the mother-in-law of Paul Crowe.

Paul got out of the car, resisting the immature urge to vault over the door instead of opening it. He was in his mid-fifties now, and Cheryl was always chiding him about acting his age.

He walked up the steps and had a feeling no one was home. He knocked anyway. The only response came from a tabby cat perched on the back of the sofa, visible through the large living-room window to his left.
“Well, I guess I need to move up the road a piece,” Paul said aloud.

Back in the car, he began to drive carefully down the unpaved dirt path that wound past the Barrells’ barn and the old, now mostly overgrown ballfield. The path jogged slightly to the right past the barn and continued toward the former Patterson property. Paul saw the bare patch where the Patterson farmhouse had once stood and, beyond it, a weather-beaten old barn in desperate need of not only paint but also a skilled carpenter.

He parked in front of the half-open doors, got out, and walked into the dim interior.

He marveled that the ramshackle old thing was still standing. The air smelled of red clay, oil, and hay—earth and gasoline, memory and time. Then he heard a guitar from the back and strode toward the sound.

Brenda Slocum, now seventy-five years old, was sitting with her back to him on a rickety stool, softly strumming her aged guitar.

“Hello, Paul,” she sang without turning around. Her voice was still strong, clear, and ethereal—the same voice that had briefly made her a celebrity.

“Hello, Brenda,” he replied.

The guitar stopped, and she turned on her stool, her cool blue eyes drilling into him, one eyebrow cocked accusingly.

Paul sighed. “Sorry. I meant, ‘Hello, Carolina Moon.’”

His mother-in-law nodded. Then she exhaled deeply and asked, “How’s my baby?”

“Cheryl’s fine,” Paul replied.

“That it? She’s fine? Too fine to come visit her mama?”

“Carolina… she hasn’t forgiven you yet. For, you know—embarrassing her in front of her coworkers.”

Brenda shook her head, muttering, “That right there’s the story of my life. Perpetual embarrassment.”

She gave him a level look, and he took her in. She looked good for seventy-five, he thought. Her long, unbound hair was silver; her mostly unwrinkled face still pretty; and those knowing, ice-blue eyes still entrancing. She wore a peasant blouse and blue jeans—her usual attire—and was, as ever, barefoot.

“So what do you want, Paul?”

He’d already told her—he wouldn’t have shown up unannounced. “I’m working on my new book,” he said.

“Right,” she said slowly, nodding. “A follow-up to that book about my great-granddaddy and his family.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I never told you this, but I think you did a fine job with my grandma Claudia,” she said.

“She was a fine woman,” Paul said, though he’d never met her. He knew Cheryl adored her, too.

“The finest,” Brenda agreed. “I look just like her, I’ve been told.”

Paul nodded. “You do—at least based on the photos I’ve seen.”

Brenda fell silent for a moment, gazing at her guitar. Paul knew Claudia had given it to her.

Brenda stood. “See that dark spot over there?” She pointed to a patch on the dirt floor near the center of the barn.

Paul nodded.

“That’s where my granddaddy Jimmy Barrell kept his secret racing car.”

Paul nodded again. He already knew this—but he also knew not to interrupt. Dealing with Carolina was like dealing with a particularly moody volcano; she could flip from flower child to hellion in a heartbeat.

“That tomfoolery is what set my daddy, and my brothers, and their kids, on this foolhardy, money-chasing, bad-for-the-environment stock-car-racing—” She paused, then spat out an epithet.

Paul braced himself. “Still a liberal, I see,” he said—instantly regretting it. Paul himself was liberal; Brenda was… something else.

She chuckled. “Hell, son, I passed liberal, turned left, and walked a couple miles further.”

“Right,” Paul said. “I almost forgot.”

Brenda waved a hand. “I know you’re not here to talk politics.”

“No, I wanted to interview you for the new book. I’ve reached 1971…”

Brenda frowned. “1971?” She chewed her lip, then picked up her guitar and played the opening bars of The Human Cost—the song that had made her briefly famous in ’71 and caused her family no small amount of anguish. “A good year… and a bad year,” she said.

She eyed him keenly. “You gonna record this with your whatchamacallit?” She still refused to acknowledge the existence of smartphones. Like most things technological, she distrusted them innately.

Paul held up his phone. “Yep. My days of using tape—or a notebook and pen—are over.”

He looked down to start his voice-recording app. When he looked up, Brenda was staring out the open barn door at the stadium-like southern stands of the track.

“Sometimes,” she said quietly, “I wish a meteor would hit and wipe this all out.”

The sound of her words seemed to hang in the air, echoing faintly against the wood beams. The low hum of engines from a distant test session drifted through the open door, blending with the final vibration of her last guitar note—a single, mournful E string fading into silence.

Paul glanced at the glowing timer on his phone screen, already ticking upward. He swallowed and slipped it into his jacket pocket, feeling the weight of the story forming in his hands.

“1971,” he murmured. “Guess that’s where the heart of it begins.”

He sighed again. This was going to be a tough day.