Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I spent most of my life in a poor community called Doodle Hill. One grandma lived behind me and one in front. Breakfast was always ready before putting in tobacco or going to dig foundations with granddaddy. Feeding hogs was half of my early childhood. At fifty, it is a little weird having to proclaim my legitimacy as a southerner. Yes, we have it all here, the good and the horrific, the beautiful and the tragic. Where else could Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond be promoted up the political gang plank for their opinions on segregation. Where else could black and white kids play doodle bug under a grandmother’s house while their parents graded tobacco together. If nothing else says southern, the title of my chapbooks “no good will”, “No Welfare, No Pension Plan”, and “Pot Liquor Promises” should sound it out. Yes, I know who was the first person to introduce the steel guitar to the Grand Ole Opry and who introduced the drums to country music and who really wrote “Hello Walls.” Well if this doesn’t legitimize my southerness, I am due to get a tattoo proclaiming my love for mother, Jesus and whiskey. Hallelujah. Set the dogs free.

Southern Legitimacy Statement

I was born in Tensas Parish, Louisiana, on Mayflower Plantation. We were part of the help. I picked some cotton and chopped a little, a skill I never mastered. I now live in River Ridge near New Orleans, about 200 miles and two cultures downriver, with my wife Liz, a native of Detroit bless her heart. New Orleans is a beautiful old city and I doubt we could ever give it up, but I have never seen anything prettier than Tensas when the dogwoods flower and the cotton blooms.

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Hmmmm…Southern Legitimacy Statement?

Well, right off we’s put off by havin’ to do a verification of our ‘Southernness’, but then one must weed out the ‘wannabees’ from the far North. Okay, so I’m from, and still live in, Southern Illinois…which a lot a people think is the North. Hell, Richmond and a damn good part of Virginia is further north than me (although I do acknowledge that Richmond, of late, has been somewhat tainted by the immigration of Yankee interlopers). This here area, Southern Illinois, was settled by folks from the South. My people came from South Carolina. Can’t get much more Southern than that. The central and northern part of Illinois was settled by Easterners (a term they use thinkin’ folks won’t think of them as the Yankee dogs they are) and, as the text books will tell ya, the two groups: the Southerners and the rest, mixed like oil and water. And we still do. You can tell when you in a Northern town…people ain’t as friendly…there’s a deffenite lack of humor. Pshaw, there I go on the stump again. Didn’t mean to make this so lengthy. Didn’t even get a chance to jaw about my ten years livin’ in beautiful Georgia along the Chattahoochee or bitch about the War of Northern Aggression. Maybe next time…if there is a next time.

Our final story from Life on Black Mountain by Ann Hite. Read the entire collection by visiting the archives. Downloadable pdf realbook free version of Life on Black Mountain available by … hmmmm … July 4th (if not sooner).