Issue date: 2/28/07 Section: ARTS

Media Credit: Justin Tennison Keywords: Jim Matheson stitches a leather hat in his booth on Monday in the Downtown Mini Mall II, located on the Square.

Media Credit: Justin Tennison Keywords: Jim Matheson stitches a leather hat in his booth on Monday in the Downtown Mini Mall II, located on the Square.

In the backseat of a Chevy the morning after a flash flood thunderstorm, Jim Matheson was born in 1943. His mother drove 40 miles of back canyon roads that night to get to the hospital.
"My dad's mom couldn't understand why she didn't have the baby at home, but I'd already tried to kick my way out," Matheson said. "She said 'no, I'm goin' to the doctors.'"
Now, decades later, after darting around the western United States because of his father's construction job, living homeless in the San Francisco area, making leather pressings, hair berets and volunteering for the Army, Matheson lives in Denton, writing novellas based on his life experiences and crafting leather downtown on the square.
Matheson can be found in the Downtown Mini Mall II, and when he isn't there, he's often sitting at Jupiter House, sipping coffee and smoking.
His table inside the mini mall is filled corner to corner with leather trinkets and hats. He makes bracelets, rings and hats.
The bracelets and rings he makes are braided into a "mystery braid" and made of leather, often decorated with brass.
Matheson's hats are all made of leather as well, and hand-hitched. He makes cabbie hats, top hats, cowboy hats and monkey hats, which are hats small enough to be worn by monkeys. His hats have been appraised at $1,100 to $1,500. His stories sell for about $5.
"I started writing stories, 'Lil' Bit's Heart of Christmas,' when I was a parking attendant in 1969," Matheson said.
Matheson said it was that story that inspired Charles Schultz to use a tiny Christmas tree in his Peanuts Christmas Special. Matheson's two other stories are "The Valentine Card" and "She Rode Dinosaurs." All of his stories are fiction.
"There's still 18 total collections of poems, stories, essays, that will be coming out in a short story collection eventually," Matheson said.
Crystal Wood of Tattersall Publishing works closely with Matheson to publish his stories.
"I have three of his major pieces, and he does share with me his works in progress," Wood said. "He has three works published with Tattersall Publishing and several works in progress."
Tattersall Publishing is a Denton-based standard publishing company, and primarily publishes local artists.
"We did his very first book in 2003, when we published 'Lil' Bit's,'" Wood said. "I've known him since about 2001. He came to me. Actually, I had at the time a trade publishing company located down on the square."
Matheson adapts people he actually knows for his stories, and there are a lot of real life occurrences, Wood said.
"Some of them are lifted from his own life," Wood said. "He also writes very stream of consciousness, it's like listening to him tell you the story."
Matheson also wrote a compilation of stories and poems called "Future's Child."
"It will be in the short story work," Matheson said. "The editor said 'I can't do one book after another after another.'"
Matheson said he plans to release a compilation work next, but a release date has not yet been set.
"We're going to do a collection of his stories, not right away, but eventually," Wood said. "He's still collecting. His imagination seems endless, so we look forward to having a very extensive collection of stories when we do a final anthology of his stories."
Matheson sometimes meets with the Denton Writer's League, which meets every second Saturday at the North Branch Library.
"They might be people who just love to read, they might be artists, they might be people trying to publish their first book," Matheson said. "There's all genre, that was a joke from one meeting when one guest speaker wanted to know what people wrote … when she asked me what I wrote, I told her G, PG, R and X."

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