Here’s the truth. There’s a kind of Southern gentleman we don’t celebrate so much, mostly because they don’t exist anymore or they’re dying off as time lurches on. It’s a kind of celebrity born out of it’s time, when nobody expected much from the South beyond the hayseeds and rednecks propped up by Hollywood or…
(This was written for Catapult in the fall of 2017. Since then, the essay has fallen off the Catapult stack. So I’m republishing it here.) I’m a time traveler. So are you. We advance through time every day of our lives, one minute after another, inexorably forward at a consistent rate. None of us moves…
I spent my summers a spy in a Jesus Tree in our front yard. Our front yard was an imperfect square of green, with a telephone pole in one corner near the street, near our neighbor to the left, and a mailbox on a post in the other. Our driveway bordered to the right, our…
(This appeared originally as a comment I left on a MetaFilter thread in January 2014. The thread was about Snow Jam 2014, the 2″ of snow that immobilized Metro Atlanta and turned half-hour commutes into ten / twelve fourteen hour struggle to get within walking distance of home or even a hotel for the night.…
The day after the election, shortly before I made my way home from work, I texted my mom. I didn’t know what to say, not knowing how she felt, or how my dad felt. So I told her how quiet New York City was. And how it had felt like the longest day I could…
The first election I can remember was in 1976. President Ford was up against Jimmy Carter. I was only four and knew Carter was from Georgia and he raised peanuts. I lived in Georgia and I liked peanuts, so I told my mom and dad to vote for the peanut farmer from Georgia. They said…
The first meal I made for Helena was a soup in the middle of the night. Half-dressed and standing barefoot in her little studio apartment in Prospect Park, I took what I found in her refrigerator and cabinets and threw it all together. Ever since, no matter the time of day, whenever I make a…
We passed four churches on the way to our own: two baptist, one episcopal, one Catholic. Our church looked like none of them. It was plain. When my grandfather founded our church in the mid-1930s, the building itself had very lately been a grocery store. All cinder block and red brick, even into the 1970s…
For almost twenty years, I sat with my family in the same wooden pew every Sunday morning. Ours was on the right side of the middle aisle, four rows back from the front. We sat at the left side of the pew, my father, my mother, then me. My aunt and uncle took the right…
From Pére-Lachaise to Payne’s Chapel As Helena and I stepped back onto one of the many long and narrow avenues of Pére-Lachaise, a man walked quickly by us. We were heading north and so was he, but soon he outpaced us, determination on his face. Dressed conservatively, professionally, he carried a briefcase in one hand, a…
When I was ten years old, Saturday nights were television nights. My family would settle around the living room with popcorn or ice cream to watch television together. But early in the evening, before 8pm, I had the living room all to myself and watched the only weekly TV show that mattered: Solid Gold. Solid…
My grandfather was a Braves fan. I’m not sure for how long, if he was a fan only after the team arrived in Atlanta, or if he’d been on board since Milwaukee or even Boston. When a man is born in 1897, appreciation can have some serious history. But he loved the Braves, loved them…
Growing up in the American South taught me several lessons, such as the fear of God and love of Mom. One lesson in particular I learned: Cars are sacred. Owning a car is a rite of passage, a step into adulthood akin to convocation. To get anywhere that matters, a kid depends upon the kindness…
Every few weeks I encounter a minister on the subway. They surprise me, a sudden voice projecting from the far end of whatever car I’m in. These sermons occur more often on colder days. Heat and humidity seem to limit the Holy Spirit aboard the MTA. I’ve heard variations on the Anointed Word ranging from…
I visited New York for the first time in December 2001. I’d flown before, a couple of trips to see family and a flight to Europe, but I was 29 years old when I bought my first plane ticket with my own money. I’d lived in Atlanta for almost six years, paying my own rent…
If asked if I’m a Southerner, I say yes. I don’t hesitate. I was born and raised in North Georgia, after all. “But you don’t sound all that Southern,” comes next. “Where’s your accent?” I respond with “Well” and a next-subject-please smile, or I go into a story of how I went through speech therapy…
My father’s father was born in South Georgia in 1897. Albert Ezra. “Out from Manor,” he’d say, pronouncing the name of the nearest town with a long A. “Mayner.” Manor is about thirty miles from the northernmost edge of the Okefenokee Swamp, over a hundred miles from Savannah. I don’t know much about his childhood.…
“You do skies well,” she tells me and I smile a little longer than I should, keeping the compliment for myself before passing it on to where I grew up. She’s looking at a photograph of a North Georgia sunset. “Yeah,” I say, “we really do.” “Where are you from?” The answer narrows depending on…