Art, Faith & a 21-Foot Jesus

A second-grade blessing. A kitchen table crowded with paint. A 21-foot Jesus mural

Kym Garraway-Braley joins us to share how a childhood shaped by artists, a brave grandmother, and a winding Mississippi creek became a life of color, calling, and community.

We trace Kym’s early start, brush in hand before age two, and the generations of creatives who came before her. She opens up about crooked teeth, tin-foil braces, and how art became a refuge when school felt hard. In college, a professor warned that faith wouldn’t fit inside the art department. Kym stayed, prayed, and proved that excellence can quiet the loudest doubts. Surprising wins, from hand-painted concert portraits to campus recognition, built the confidence that would shape her career.

After a season of teaching, Kym reimagined work to fit the family she wanted to raise. One magnolia print sold out, then another, and soon she was leading a thriving independent studio - without missing ball games or field trips. We explore the ripple effect of her murals in pediatric clinics, where nature scenes and playful worlds help children overcome fear and bring comfort to parents. Then we climb to St. Fabian, where Kym painted a 21-foot Jesus whose open arms welcome a congregation week after week.

Warm, funny, and grounded in faith, Kym reminds us that setbacks can become stories ... and work can become worship.

If you’re a creator, teacher, parent, or anyone chasing a calling, this conversation is a field guide: match your schedule to your values, treat small wins like fuel, and let service guide your next wall.

Press play to hear how a life in art can lift a town, a family, and a weary heart. If this episode encouraged you, subscribe, share it with someone who needs courage, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Subscribe, share with a friend who loves radio, and leave a review to help more listeners find these stories. Your voice keeps this community strong.

Links to Stephen's incredible novels:

The Death Letter
The Bondage of Innocents

Transcript

Welcome To Cold Springs

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to Stories from Cold Springs, where we dig into storytelling and creativity with real life characters from various walks of life. I'm Jay Stephen Bean, author, former physician, and educator. I'll be your guide through the winding roads of this fictional Mississippi town. Each episode, we'll sit down with storytellers, artists, and everyday eccentrics to explore the heart, humor, and humanity behind their fascinating journeys. So, settle in. Cold Springs always has another story to tell.

Meet Kim Garaway Braille

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Our guest today is all of those things and more. She's very creative, a wonderful storyteller. And I made just a short list of the things that I could think of off the top of my head, but this is not going to be nearly everything about her. She's an artist, a muralist, a public speaker, a positive thinker. She's an uplifter of other people. She's a very spiritual person. And you're going to find that she's many other things rolled in the same little person. If you've listened to our podcast before, you know I always like to get something of the early life to give us a feeling of uh our guests. So we'll start with that. But first, our guest is Kim Garaway Braille. Welcome, Kim.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Hi there.

Early Roots And Family Of Artists

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Ah, there you go. See, she's already uplifting me.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

You're adorable. Tell us a little bit about your childhood. I sure will. I got some funny stories about that. And they kind of integrate the art. I was born and raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I've lived here all of my life. Greatest place on earth. Love it, love it, love it. My parents unfortunately got divorced when I was 18 months old. And we had to move in with my grandmother and my granddaddy. And I didn't call them mama and papa. You know how you do. I called them Mina and IDaddy. That was their names.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

I love it. I know. And Mina was an artist. Her mother was an artist. And her mother was an artist. So if you go back, the top one was an artist in New York and had back in the very, very, very close to the 1900s, a really good following of her artwork. And then her daughter painted baptistries all across the South. We just discovered one not too long ago. And her name was Lulu. I come from my Lulu. I'm so excited. It's all making sense to me. It's all making sense to you now. And then it went to my grandmother, and then it jumped to my uncle. Now, my mom is extremely creative and she can decorate like crazy, but she can't draw stick man. But my uncle, who was Uncle Bodie Beard, graduated from Hattie's Burke High as well, and he was a well-known artist in Houston and blended his artistic talent with real estate. So it went really great. And then it was just kind of passed on to me. But we got started at the kitchen table. That's where we got started, the kitchen table.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

So I'm imagining you as being a three or four or five-year-old at that time. Oh no, I was two.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

My grandmother put a paintbrush in my hand a little just before I turned two. My mom had to go work and we lived with her, and she was a stay-at-home grandma. And so we painted and we drew and we played with clay and we made sugar cookies and sculptures and we did everything you can think of. We rescued animals. We just did it all. And then when my mom got off work, she chimed in and continued the process. And so by the time I was four, I was drawing and painting pretty well. I have some of those drawings and paintings. I like them. I was like, wow, okay. I just felt like that was my niche. That was my thing, you know. So my grandmother sat me on her knee one day and she said, Baby, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, Mina, I know exactly what I want to be. I want to be an artist and a grandmother just like you.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

And I now am a grandmother. I have two beautiful little granddaughters and five grandsons.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Well, congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

I just love all my grandkids, and we got number eight on the way. She kind of helped mold me. My mom, you know, help helped to mold me. And I don't know, you know, when you're born in the l early 60s, there's just not a whole lot to do. We didn't have what there is now. There wasn't, you know, ballet and dance and theater and you know, there's so many things kids can get involved in now. There's five or six things per child that they do now, and we just didn't have that. I walked to school. And I crossed a creek when I walked to school. And I would often rescue the turtles and the different frogs and things when I crossed the creek. And it was just, it was Gordon's Creek. If any of you are from

Teachers, Braces, And Finding Refuge In Art

SPEAKER_00 5:12

this area, you know Gordon's Creek off Adeline, and that's where I grew up. And so by the time I hit second grade, I started school at four. I was in second grade by six. Back then, there wasn't a limit on when you could start school. So I was ready and I was ready to go. I could write my alphabet and I could draw and paint and all that, so I was ready to go. And I had a teacher named Liz Myers. And if you've ever been to Hattiesburg and heard that her husband's deceased now, her name is Liz Myers, and she looked at me one day in the second grade, and I was just a little video thing, and she said, Kim, I believe God's touched you. And I think you just might be an artist the rest of your life. And I've never forgotten that. And you know, she's in her late nine or mid-90s now, and I saw her not too long ago and spent some time with her, and we just hugged and kissed and cried because I'm 61 years old now, and I still vividly remember my second grade teacher helping to say one positive thing to me that I'm still carrying today.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

You know, many of us have memories like that of teachers. Teachers, good teachers. Good teachers, yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Caring teachers, yes. Are so very important. They put us before themselves a lot of times. So that was really a cool thing. And then I went on through, and in junior high, I have to say, this is funny. Now, this is funny. You're gonna laugh at this one. You know, we never had art in high school. They didn't teach us art. We didn't have it. My first art lesson was when I went to college. We had, I think it was six weeks of art in junior high, kind of a sample class, and I just ate it up, and then we had it again in ninth grade. So I guess that was actually my first encounter with being in a setting that you could learn from. And I had really good art teachers, Miss Abernathy and Miss Stroud. We were having such a good time doing that, but I had crooked teeth when I was a little thing. Big time crooked teeth. And my daddy saved up enough money to put braces on my teeth. Now, I don't know if anybody out there listening remembers in the 70s what braces look like. Now, today, they're all color-coded. You can barely tell a child has braces on. They're translucent, they have invisible wire, and they look good.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

I'm I'm told that a lot of kids wear them even if they don't need them now.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

I know. It's crazy. Well, back in the day, mine looked like I had put tin foil on the front of my teeth and covered up the whole tooth. When you smile, I look like an antenna from the extraterrestrial. And so I got laughed at a lot. And I got bullied a lot because of my teeth. And they had not gotten braces yet. And everybody made fun of me. And my dad told me, my new dad, you know, the one my mom married when I was four. His name was Kim, too, isn't that ironic? He was precious. And he said, Kim, one day, I know you were the first one with braces, baby, but one day you're gonna be the first one with them off. And you're gonna have beautiful straight teeth and you can draw and paint like crazy. So you hang in there because one day you're gonna be an artist. So there again, there's that positive parental encouragement. And I just kind of carried that with me. And so art is where I found refuge. Art is where I found success and acceptance with children. Because when it came time for book reports and bulletin boards and science projects, guess who they called? Moi. And I would help them. And they may not have liked me because of my teeth, but they loved me because of what my hands could do. So I made friends. And some of those friends I still have now, although I was with two of them this morning. I'm a deep believer in the Lord, and I have a very intimate relationship with the King of Kings. And I do believe he had a hand in this from the get-go. He used art to make me feel good about myself and have some confidence. Because, really, to be honest with you, when you take a girl that's got braces and she doesn't make cheerleader, she feels pretty yucky.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Your other classes, did you basically enjoy them okay? Did you mind school? Oh, I loved it.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

If I could have made a career out of college, I'd have stayed 12 years. I went five. I loved it. I loved it. Because I love to learn. I love to study, I love to dig, I love to research, love research. I love to write, I love to draw, I love to illustrate. I just I eat it up. I thought by now I'd be tired of it, and I'm not. I'm full-blown 50, 60 hours a week painting and drawing every single day of my life, and I absolutely love it. I've just started taking Fridays off when the grandkids started being born. We've got a bunch of them are young, young, young, young. And so I've just now been able to take a little time off to be with them, you know, here and there. So pushing toward a goal of maybe part-time in the next few years. But right now, there's just too many things that need to be painted right now. And while they're in diapers, it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Even in our little small town here in Sumral, where we're recording this, you have two masterful murals here, but I see your murals all over. What a gift. Uh I'm not being facetious. I it's hard for me to draw a

Loving School And A Life In Painting

SPEAKER_01 10:24

stick man. So the idea of someone having that kind of talent is amazing to me, even though we all have our own talents. Everybody's got a talent.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

It's not just me. Oh, uh Everybody's got one. Bible says so. Everybody's got one. You just gotta dig and find out what it is and use it for his glory. There you go. That's it. I just found mine early. I found mine early. And I've God's given me the lavishness of time. I I'm so thankful that I've lived this long. I've enjoyed every second of the ride.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Let's go back a little. Okay. What grade were you in when you got your braces off? Eighth. Eighth. And all the other kids were just beginning to break.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

They were just getting them on, and I had white straight teeth. And so it it all kind of came to fruition. You know, by ninth grade, they had like that six-week course of art. No, it was nine weeks. Nine week semester of art. And really made a bunch of friends, and I won most school spirit because of my I think my ability to make the run-through signs probably won that for me. And art became fun. I got to do a lot of fun things. And, you know, I started college at 17. Art's just been my buddy. It's just been a great buddy. It really has.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

You finished high school and started college and throughout your college career, assuming you took a lot of art classes.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

My very first art class, and I've told the story a lot, and it kind of grips people a little bit, and I'll go on and share it on this podcast as well. But the first day I showed up as a freshman, I was 17, and I showed up to USM's art department. And I had had a car accident a few weeks before and I'd become a Christian. It kind of got my attention. I was raised in the church, you know, but I didn't take it really seriously. And when you've had a car wreck and come two inches from your life, you decide, you know, it's time to get your life together spiritually. So I just freshly become saved and I started USM, and that professor knew I something had happened to me. He had heard that I was the girl that had the car wreck. And so he looked at me before I ever even opened my sketchbook and said, Look, Ms. Williams, that was my maiden name. But I just want you to know that I know what's happened to you in the last few weeks, and Christians and the art world here at USM don't really jibe very much. And you might want to find another major. I just don't know if you're going to last that long here.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

And you know, when you first get saved, you're ready to charge hell with a water pistol. And that's one thing you don't tell me is no, that I can't do it. I'm gonna I'll die trying. That's just my personality. And so I said, you know what, you let me sit here. What God's ordained, man can't stop, you let me sit here and take this class. I'm gonna show you what I'm made of. I remember going back to the dorm room that night and just getting on the floor, a nasty old floor, and saying, Lord, I know you've given me a gift. It's yours. It's not mine. And yeah, I know you can take it at any second, but if you would explode and enlarge my tent with this, I will bring you all the glory and it'll be yours. And I want you to know that five years later, four

Murals Around Town And Calling

SPEAKER_00 13:48

and a half years later, I came out with two art degrees, and the congressman Trent Lott was in place when I graduated, and he told my professor I was one of the two most successful artists that had ever come out of this region, which I don't say that in any bragging ego at all, but it's a testament to show that God really knows what he's doing, and man can't stop what God ordains. He just can't. He asked me to go and speak to all the new art kids for the next four years at the university. And I had that professor that told me I wouldn't make it stand right beside me. And after it was over, he grabbed me up and he said, I'm so sorry I treated you like that. I'm so sorry. I was wrong. And you are one of the two number one best that's come out of here. There's no paycheck in the world. There's nothing at that time that could have thrilled me more, not because I was labeled successful, but my God was labeled triumphant. What he told me could not exist existed. And I stayed and remained a Christian throughout my entire art career at USM. And God did all kinds of fun stuff with me. We had such a good time. I remember Willie Nelson. Remember Willie? Well, Willie. Oh, Willie. Oh, Willie. And you remember, let's see, Cheap Trick, and there was a third one. I can't remember who it was. They had a drawing contest. Remember when the Ray Green Coliseum had all those concerts all the time?

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Back in the like 80s. And I mean, like, that was the thing to do. You just went to a concert. One of the radio stations would always have an art contest, and you drew your picture on a sheet, a king-sized sheet. And so I took my spray paint and my paint and yada yada. And you you you entered the contest of drawing the rock star. And I won all three concerts. I won free tickets, which I thought was just like the most amazing thing ever. But what really was so special to me is that all three of those musicians begged the radio station, they said, we don't know who this little Kim girl is, but we want the portrait she just painted of us. Can we please have it? Willie Nelson said, I'm not leaving USM unless you give me that seven-foot portrait she just did of me. It was stuff like that. There was no paycheck in it. I mean, I won two tickets, whoopee, but you know what I'm saying? There's some things you do in your career. The paycheck has nothing to do with it. It's just the manner of that you did it. And it's a surprise, lavish blessing when you win it and God says, Good girl, go. Absolutely. I mean, what more could you want? What more could you want? So I had fun in college. Yes, I did. I sure did.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

I drove down from Jackson for that concert, I remember, with a friend of mine. I was in medical school at the time, and we had a good time. I don't remember seeing that. I I wish I could say They had it hanging up. You need to go back and look at your pictures. Yeah, well, that's what I need to do. We didn't we didn't have any pictures. We just went to the show.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

I remember I stayed in a dorm room and I asked the girl if I could have the lobby, and I just had everything in the lobby. There were kids kind of hanging out, you know. We just made a pizza party out of

College Challenge And Standing Firm

SPEAKER_00 16:57

it, and I drew a Willie Nelson. He has little braids in, all his little wrinkles. It was it was cute. It was cute. But I had a really good time.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

I went to hear him sing songs from his Stardust album, which is when I really fell in love with Willie Nelson and still love that album. If anyone hasn't heard it, Soul Standards, he just does the Willie treatment too, and it was just fabulous. He's done some others since then. But uh I love his voice. It's fun. Here you are. You just graduated from college. Where are you headed? What are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 17:34

What's going on? That's a great question, and I've got a fun answer. That was 1986, and they're just Lucille Parker and myself, we were the only two artists in Hattiesburg that actually produced artwork and sold it. It's painting magnolias left and right. That's what got me going. She was painting flowers, and everybody wanted flowers in 1985, 1986. I don't know if you remember that, but that's where everybody wanted. I wanted to see the Hattiesburg Pine Belt area, not only Summerall, but Petal, I love Petal, and Hattiesburg and Columbia and Purvis and all these fabulous towns, Lumberton. I wanted to see this community get on fire for the arts, not just the visual arts, but dance and music and theater and all those fabulous things and book writing and illustrating because this town is just so full of artists. Craig Wiseman comes from Hattiesburg. He's Mr. Music in Nashville. I mean, we've got tons of just Larry Pinella is like one of the greatest saxophone players in the world. He's from here. I mean, you know, there's just so many great artists that are here that can't draw, but yet they can do other things. But it's all creative.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Yeah, let me give a shout-out to Bones Malone, Tom Bones Malone. Absolutely. Who is from Summerall, went to high school here. And for those that don't know, later became he's a trombonist, but he also plays a lot of other instruments. But he's an arranger and a writer, ended up on the Tonight Show in that band and arranged their music, and then many other well-known bands he worked with. He was, for example, in the Blues Brothers band in the movie. That's right. That's right. So anyway, you're right. There's just a lot of talent.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

I just saw all the creativeness, and so I was really wanting to promote that. And that that's kind of been my life's mission is to promote art and God has blessed that. Mr. Walt Cartier with Forest County Schools came to me and said, Look, I know there's not any art jobs out there, and I think what you're doing's great. And if you want to come teach at my little school, Dixie School, on Elk's Lake Road, I can give you two art classes a day. If you can teach other things, I'll let you come. I said, All right, what you want me to teach? He said, Can you teach PE? I said, I sure can. He said, Can you teach science? I said, You bet I've rescued every animal known to man. He said, Can you what else was it? No, it's just science and pe. So I had two classes of science, one class of PE and two classes of art. And after Christmas, it was full-blown art because it just exploded at Dixie School. I taught there for seven years, and then I started having kids, and I realized I just didn't want my kids in daycare. I wanted them to be raised by me and my mom and my grandmother and go through the same fabulous upbringing that I did. So that's what we did. And I took a big step out on faith and I painted a magnolia and I called it first bloom. I did it when my daughter was nursing, and she was my first bloom, and I made 200 copies, and I decided to put $40 a piece on them and see what happened. And they sold in two weeks. All of a sudden, you do the math. I had $8,000. I didn't know what in the world you didn't even make that school teaching back then. I thought, oh Lord have mercy, here we go. Took some of that

Contests, Small Wins, Lasting Joy

SPEAKER_00 21:04

money and I said, okay, we're gonna do another print. And before I knew it, I'm 147 prints into it in a full-blown career. So I never went back to teaching in the public school, but I still teach homeschoolers today. I have 27 aspiring artists that I teach on Monday and Tuesday. Been doing that about 10 years. I love teaching. I I love it, love it, love it. But I figured out I could make more of a living and call the shots myself with my children. I never missed a field trip. I never missed a homeroom mom situation. I was at every ball game with my son. I never missed a ball game. Played one year in college and all through high school, junior high, basketball, everything. Never missed a game because I was my own boss and I could paint and draw. And I just really super believed that God had all that planned out. And he knew the desires of my heart. And he knew that I wanted to paint and draw, but I had a family. So I've learned to juggle all that. My kids took naps and when they napped, I painted. When they took their second nap, I got on the phone and did my marketing.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

So that's the way it works. So what led you to do your first mural?

SPEAKER_00 22:13

I did that uh ninth grade. My mom, I got in trouble painting on the wall of my house. Uh dad did not want me painting on the walls. And I said, But I'm dying to paint on the walls. And so she went and she opened up my closet. She said, Here, go paint anything you want to in your closet and then hang your clothes back on top. So I did. I painted a giant turtle, had a ball doing it, but she made me cover it up. But I I fell in love with mural painting right then and there.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Professionally, what was your first experience with that? You're you're now you're you're you're doing paintings, you started with magnolias, and I'm assuming you've moved on to other things plus the magnolias at some point in your career. At that point in your career. At some point you painted a mural professionally. Do you recall what led to that?

SPEAKER_00 23:04

You know, I don't remember which one that was. I remember which one sort of, as they call it, put you on the map, I guess. I've done over 5,000 at this point in my career. Can't tell you where or how, but I'm about sh I'm gonna say a couple of months away from painting the largest mural interior in the state of Mississippi. I'm about 300 square feet away, and I just gotta get time to finish that up. So I've come a long way with all that, but I think what set the fire of that was probably Pediatric Clinic. It was a medical facility, and they took care of kids, and there was a bunch of rooms, a bunch of doctors and a bunch of rooms. And my precious doctor Ronnie Kent, whom I love with all my heart, he's a good godly man, called me up and said, Look, I want you to paint something in my office. What can you do? And I said, I don't know. I don't know. Let's just go see. I don't know. So I went over there and ended up painting every office over there. Then they expanded, and I just finished three, and I think it was number sixty. I just finished the 60th mural over there. And then the other clinic on Lincoln Road called, and they wanted 37.

Launching A Career And Teaching

SPEAKER_00 24:08

So it just adds up. It really does. I have two that really stand out if you want me to talk about those, because one's kind of funny. You want to hear the funny one?

SPEAKER_01 24:19

I love funny.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

You love funny? Oh, you're gonna love this. Father Tommy's probably gonna kill me. So we have a Catholic church. Those of you who are not from here, we have a big Catholic church here. It's called St. Fabian, and everybody loves Father Tommy. I mean, he's just like everybody's brother. And you know, Catholic priests, they rotate a lot, and he told them, he said, I'm staying in Hattiesbury. These are my people's. So he built this big church at St. Fabian, and he's precious, and I just adore him. He's just so fun. So he calls me up one day. He's from Ireland and I can't do his accent, but he calls me up. He says, Kim! I said, What are you doing, father Tommy? He said, I need you. I said, Oh, I've always wondered if you just needed me or not. He said, And I need Jesus. And I said, Well, it's about time. I said, It's about time. I said, What do you want? He goes, I want you to paint Jesus in my in my place, in my church. I said, Well, I can do that, darling. I'll come over there and talk to you about it. So we hung up and I traips over there the next week and I go look at his sanctuary and it's this huge, tall, tall wall. I said, Where do you want him? That's like a big space. He goes, Oh, I want him from the bottom to the top. I want him 21 feet. And I said, wait a minute, excuse me, you want a 21-foot Jesus? And he says, Yes, and you can do it, my friend. And I said, Oh gosh, Father Tommy. So I said, All right, here's the condition. I will paint Jesus, but you leave me alone. You let me go in that church every day for three or four days and don't bother me because I know how you like to talk. I said, I got to be totally with the Holy Spirit, like totally vibed out. Do not bother me. He goes, Okay, I'll give you the key, my darling. So I said, okay. To date, there's a 21-foot Jesus with open arms that stands high above him when he's doing his sacraments. And it's just turned into a reverent, inviting, warm welcome portrayal of Jesus that I'm most tickled about. You know, just very, very tickled about that one. Very tickled.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

Well, I'm a huge fan of Father Tommy. I've known him for years. Don't you love him? He's just a different kind of guy, and I like different kind of people. I guess that's why I like you. Oh, I'm very different. At this point in your life, you said that you've gone over the fact that you pulled back from teaching and that you spend more time with your grandchildren. You've got several and you're expecting another one. And also I hear that you're about to go on a nice little vacation. Tomorrow I'll leave them plane. Woo-hoo!

SPEAKER_02 26:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

My husband, when we were dating, we sat down and and I said, What's on your bucket list? And he'd asked me what my bucket list was. Mine didn't cost any money. His is like his is cost money. I said, What do you want? And he said, I want to go see those big old red Sequoia trees. So that's where we're going. We're going to go tackle that bucket list. And we're going to go to Yosemite and the Sequoia and King's Mountain and Lotus, California. And we're going to go whitewater rafting and hiking. And I'm going to have one whole week with no painting. But when I come home, I have a strange feeling that I'm going to be wanting to paint everything because I'm going to be exposed to la Yeah. Like the God of the universe made this mountain. It's going to be awesome.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

It always passes so quickly.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

And we're already 30 minutes in.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Yeah, we're we're getting toward the end. But I I do want to leave a minute or so if you have anything else you would like to say, any other story or any other witty system or any other just deep thought.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Well, you know, I'm not really in a mood today of deep thought, but I am in a mood of fun today.

Magnolia Prints To Full-Time Artist

SPEAKER_00 28:00

So I will have to just leave y'all wondering, you need to tune into segment two, because I rehab animals for the state of Mississippi as my hobby. I don't get paid a dime, but with the wildlife, I'm a certified rehabber. So I take in birds and squirrels and possums and mammals and all kinds of things. And I take them if they're abandoned, I'm and I'm mommy. And until they're old enough to be on their own, or if they're hurt, I try to help them heal. Right now, in your office, did you know that in your front lobby I had to leave a bucket of crickets in there to feed my pet Blue Jay when I get home because they would die in the hot car. Yes, they would. Y'all should see his face.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

For just a moment, I was wondering how you rehab a cricket.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

No. Rascals, my pet Blue Jay, lives outside by day all day long, and taps on the door at six o'clock at night, wanting to come inside and roost and take his bath. So that's where we are with that. But you'll have to stay tuned for part two to learn all about that. Glad to hear you say that.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

And we'll be back in a few weeks with another episode of this kind, sweet, and most talented lady. Thanks, Kim, for being here. You got it. Thanks for spending time with us in Cold Springs. If you enjoyed today's story, please like, subscribe, and share the show with someone who appreciates a good twist and a strong sense of place. You can find more about me by visiting the letter J Stephen with a phbeam.com, including where to purchase my novels, The Death Letter and the Bondage of Innocence. And yes, there's a third one coming out later this year. Until next time, keep your porch light on or your pen ready. If you get an idea, write it down before it grows legs and walks off without you. Support for stories from Cold Springs comes from MCS Home Center Bellevue. Visit them at 7329 US 98 in Hattiesburg. Tell them Cold Springs sent you.