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…
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…
(I wrote this in the fall of 2015. For a time, this essay now lived over on Catapult. At some point in the last few years, it was removed from Catapult. So now it’s back here where it started.) From our fourth-story window, I watch the traffic below. Taxis creep by, brakes squeaking from overuse,…
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…
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