Smile from Katie Hattan

Natural wonders were Leon Hale’s lifetime subject matter. He looked for them wherever he went, and found them surprisingly often.  In the lives of plain people and eccentrics, in the brilliant smile of a tiny 100-year-old black lady, or the hi-jinks of his cousin C.T., in what happened on a dirt farm in 1930 or why he found value in chiseling brick, he revealed truths and wonders we might not have noticed on our own. When published in 1982, A Smile from Katie Hattan was Leon Hale’s first column collection after nearly thirty years of writing for The Houston Post. It was widely celebrated for presenting the delightful daily work of this writer, at last, to a wider audience. What is remarkable, now, forty years later, is how fresh and interesting the 155 columns remain, as we roam with the author through a Texas that remains as vivid and enjoyable as the day he wrote about it.