13 stories
I never understood the point of eulogies. Oh sure, they’re nice speeches with flowery sentiments spoken in somber tones over the sound of soft crying. Occasionally they’re funny. Usually they’re touching. Sometimes they go terribly awry when the wrong family member is chosen to give them. (Looking at you, Uncle “Perpetually Drunk on God Knows […]
It was purely accidental that I stumbled upon the news. No. Not accidental. It was fate. As I perused the weekly online circular from Publix, an image caught my eye. Assuming I had seen it incorrectly, I zoomed in to double check. Could it be? It was. The Viennetta had returned. Frantically, I looked at […]
“Oh that’s just your daddy’s pinto beans.” My mama waved a dismissive hand in my general direction. The statement itself, at first blush, was as benign as a junebug on a windowsill, but the context of her breezy reply caused a myriad of questions to instantly flood my mind. The pinto beans in question, those […]
Now, I don’t want to come off too cosmopolitan and potentially frighten away readers who have come to love and appreciate my down-home charm, BUT… Liberace is my cousin. Let me explain. I have written previously in “Southern Stories” about my grandma, Nellie, who was a tiny yet terrifying whirling dervish of conspicuous consumption and […]
“It’s only a building.” Brick and mortar. Wood and glass. Carpet and paint and wiring and plumbing. And, in fact, when stripped of the sentimentality that sometimes hangs heavy over a place, Cowpens Baptist Church is, to be sure, only a building. Why, then? Why the anguish and bitter tears and disbelief upon seeing its […]
Not to brag, but I once saw Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer with my very own eyes. It was Christmas Eve, 1981, and we were piled in our family’s Ford Granada, returning home from service at Cannon’s Campground United Methodist Church. The service was my favorite of the whole year (a close second being any of […]
I tell you that to establish early on in this tale that I am a sucker. With childlike wonderment, I have always been transfixed by good advertising and product placement, by loud proclamations of efficacy and spokespeople with unjustifiably-white teeth proffering items and services that just *might* be the best thing since sliced bread. And […]
“A sleeping pill for night squawks.” The campy slogan in the magazine ad belied the danger of a prescription drug called Doriden. Introduced in the 1950s, it was touted as a safe alternative to barbiturates. It would turn out to be about as safe as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. […]
Indian Summer The euphemism used to describe those not-quite-Fall days that slink in unannounced after a cool snap, as a reminder that sultry Southern summers linger well into October. Those days when a frost-licked morning melts into a day so balmy you’d swear it was still the middle of June. And though the unofficial season […]
It is a distinctly uncomfortable sensation to see one’s grandmother addressed as “Kitten” by a man other than one’s grandfather. But that seems to have been the preferred pet name by which a young Private Gordon Thibodeaux addressed my grandma, Nellie. The first letter, dated March 15, 1943, is the only exception. Apparently wishing to […]
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