March 8, 2023, 11:08am
Today, over at Conjunctions, you can read “Every Friday Nite is Kiddies Nite,” a previously unpublished short story by Tennessee Williams—part of the forthcoming collection The Caterpillar Dogs and Other Early Stories, which will be published by New Directions in April.
“‘Every Friday Nite is Kiddies Nite,’ written before 1939, was inspired by Rev. Walter Dakin, Tennessee Williams’s maternal grandfather who retired as rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church of Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1931 and relocated to Memphis,” writes Tom Mitchell, the collection’s editor.
Eventually Reverend and Mrs. Dakin moved to St. Louis. It is ironic that Rev. Houston in the story prefers the excitements of city life over his sleepy Missouri parish since Tom Williams (Tennessee) preferred life as a frequent childhood visitor to Clarksdale over the pollution and social ambitions of St. Louis. ‘Every Friday Nite is Kiddies Nite’ was found in the Tennessee Williams Collection of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, with the alternative title, ‘Age of Retirement.’