Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was born in West Point, Georgia. West Point is in west central Georgia right on the Georgia Alabama line. As a matter of fact about half of the town of West Point is technically in Alabama because the Chattahoochee River is the boundary between Georgia and Alabama and half of the town is on the Alabama side of the river.

The River and the railroad both went right through the middle of the town. My family was half and half too. My father’s family lived in Georgia and my mother’s family lived in Alabama. I used to walk from West Point, Georgia to Lanette, Alabama on Saturday mornings and go see the Saturday Matinee at the movie theater. Flash Gordon was my hero. I’d take the quarter my brother paid me for helping him on his paper route, and I could pay a dime to get in the movie, a nickel for a Baby Ruth, and another nickel for a Coke. I would stay all day and then walk back home past the creepy old house on the corner where an old lady lived that nobody ever saw. I could walk pretty fast for a 6 year old.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was born and raised in small western towns. (Gasp). But, I was bred by Missouri parents and raised by a Missouri widow. Heritage is everything—he proof is: I love just about any kind of greens with hot pepper vinegar dribbled over them and I eat my weight in cornbread nearly every month. I’m no stranger to black-eyed peas, grits, hush puppies, blackened catfish, slaw, deep-fried pickles, poke salad (never ate that stuff, though), and fried and boiled (yuk) okra. I’ve dined on alligator, shark, frog legs, stuffed crab, crawdads, many a poor pig, raccoon, squirrel, bream, bass, Cajun dishes too numerous to mention, mud pies, moon pies, Little Debbie’s honey buns, well, you get the idea. (Damn, I’m hungry).

Fact is, I spent a wonderful nine years living in Winnsboro and Vidalia, Louisiana – well, wonderful but for a divorce. (I couldn’t put the western beer down – my only fault). I even lived for a time on the banks of the Mississippi River at Vidalia. I’ve fished in the Mississippi, in assorted bayous, including the infamous Black Bayou near Monroe, LA, and in ponds and ditches. I hunted bayous for water moccasins many a time with a .22, I’ve crabbed, crawled through mud for crawdads, I’ve gigged, worked the troutlines, snagged catfish.

I have honest-to-goodness Southern blood coursing through these shrinking arteries of mine. Location isn’t everything—heritage is thicker’n location.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Although I was born in New Mexico, I lived in Georgia and North Carolina as a small child. At the age of nine we moved to rural Mississippi where I lived until the age of 21 when I moved to the most glorious, romantic and eclectic city on earth: New Orleans. I’ve lived here for 31 years and would never consider living anywhere else. I love this city like a mother loves her new-born babe. Don’t talk smack about my city or you’ll see the biggest hissy fit of your life.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Hell, I’m further south than you are by a long shot, living here in the northeast of Brazil (which, if you look at poverty statistics, is to Brazil what the South is to the U. S. of A.) In addition to my hemispheric southitude, I was born and raised on grits, alligator sausage, and Baptist guilt in none other than Kentwood, Louisiana, hometown to the best bottled spring water in the world and a famous go-go dancer by the name of Spears. It was there I learned to love everyone, especially those I don’t particularly like, and that’s what all my poems are about: people, and how to love them, or die trying.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I am my father’s son (as best I know), born on Perdido Street here in New Orleans, a few degrees southwest of True South. Many here think of themselves as not from The South but rather from New Orleans, thinking ourselves a bit better than our neighbors but as this is a common Southern affliction I hope you will not hold it against us. I live where The Mule is preferred to the horse on account of the God-awful hot weather, and can think of no better Southern qualification than that.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I lived in Louisiana and loved it, and only moved back because of the mosquito spray. I loved the swamp tours, the egrets and herons, the azaleas and live oaks, the afternoon rains, (not the humidity though). I have written about the South and feel a much better person for my experience of living on the North Shore of Lake Ponchartrain in Slidell.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Hey, I have been waiting for an occasion to write this for someone who cares. First, a disclaimer (and a riposte to folks who look at me askance and say, “You ain’t from around here, are you” –it’s not a question). I was born in Wilkesboro, NC, and I grew up in Statesville, NC. My father was a tobacco salesman and a moonshine runner. I was a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner before they saw the light of day. The disclaimer is that I have lived in many places, – and I mean for more than one year and to list them would be tedious — but in the South I have lived in, other than NC, Brunswick, Georgia; Jacksonville, Florida; Marietta, Georgia; and for twelve years in Louisiana, in Baton Rouge and Monroe, Louisiana. The South for me does not stop at geo-political lines. I lived in the Bahamas for a year and a half, and in Ecuador for four years. Guayaquil is somewhat like New Orleans. I am not a NASCAR fan. I spent too many Saturdays when I was a tike sitting at the Gwen Staley race track and coming home sunburned and covered in dust and rubber and temporarily deaf. I start every day (well, most) with a bowl of stone-ground yellow grits mixed with cheddar cheese and jalapeños and chow-chow. Read my poems along with this, and tell me I am legit.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I dearly love being a son of the South and Arkansas. There are so many things that make up the character of the South that one cannot begin, with any sensibility, to adequately describe it. Oh, you can try, but to really describe Dixie you have to live it, you have to live in it. When I look for the influences that gave me the love of where I was raised, I find they are beginning to disappear. They are not fading from memory for in memory they will always exist. I see my South being changed by the wearing down of the culture that has given this nation and the world such a marvelous tapestry of life. The beliefs, anyone not a Southerner cannot really understand, are the threads that have woven the fabric of the Southern character. If one is raised in the South it is a privilege to enjoy and for others to envy.

On the back of a pickup truck I recently saw a bumper sticker with the Confederate Flag displayed and the words “Not hate but heritage”. I know there are people that cannot get their minds around that statement: “Not hate but heritage”. This is because of a narrow definition of the South framed by historical events and the incessant denigration of its values. Thousands of men and women died standing under that flag, not because of hate but rather because of heritage and beliefs. In today’s time we celebrate various holidays brought to our nation by persons of many nationalities and that is a good thing . For example there is Cinco de Mayo which celebrates the Mexican defeat of French troops at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. It is a celebration of Mexican heritage and the belief in their heritage. Heritage and belief in it is the crux of being a Southerner. That’s what it’s all about. Heritage cannot be acquired simply by moving to the geography of the South. Heritage goes back over years. It is imprinted in the DNA of those lucky enough to have a Southern genealogy. It is grown from the soil of cotton fields, pine forests, the sound of a blue tick hound baying, or smell of turnip and mustard greens cooking on the stove. A Southerner’s heritage never leaves; it tugs at your heart pulling you back to your roots every day of your life.

When I think about childhood in the South I know that I did not have a lot of material things. I did have the love of my parents and all my relatives. That cocoon was a steady molding that shaped me into the man I am today. Men in my family didn’t speak about loving one another; you just knew you were loved. They didn’t talk about their girl friend or wife like men do today. All the men in my family took an interest in all the children. My grandfather was a raw bone of a man. Six feet tall with broad shoulders, strong hands but with legs broken down by walking behind a team of mules plowing fields. One day my grandfather called me out to the back porch and said, “Come on son, poppa is gonna teach you to fish.” Using a walking cane and in pain, he shuffled his almost useless legs out to the creek, sat on a stump, baited a worm on a cane pole with line and bobber, and taught me how to catch a mess of bluegills. And, when I was sick with pneumonia, he went to the pantry and from sacks on the top shelf took dried leaves he had collected in the woods and fields making a poultice to ease my suffering. He taught me how to make a corncob pipe, how to read animal tracks, how to take care of mules, and how a man shakes another’s hand. There is so much more I learned at his knee but most of all he taught me about my Southern heritage.

My grandmother was a spit of a woman, ninety pounds dripping wet. She always wore her hair in a tight bun on the back of her head. Lord, that woman could cook. There was always on a plate sitting on the kitchen stove with some biscuits, cornbread and fried bacon for the grandkids. She had a little dog named Peaty. I hated that dog! Whenever I went into the kitchen to grab a biscuit Peaty seemed to sense my hunger and would stand on a straight back chair next to the stove. Every time I reached up for biscuit he would growl and nip at me. When I was six years old I took a fly swatter and hit him pretty hard. He started yelping and ran to granny. I ran out doors and climbed up in a tree with low hanging branches. Granny came out with the swatter and asked me if I hit Peaty with it. I fest up to it and she told me to come down out of the tree because she was going to swat me so I could see how it felt. I said no and climbed higher. Well, granny climbed in the tree too! I went as high as I could with granny right behind me. When she reached me she whipped the tar out of me and climbed down. After a lot of bawling and bruised ego I got out of the tree. When grandpa got home he was informed of what I did and he whipped me. When mom came in she whipped me. When dad got home work he whipped me. All of this spanking was not because of hitting the dog, it for not minding my grandmother. It was about honoring your elders, it was about being man enough to take your punishment, and it was about a lesson in my Southern heritage.

A Southerners heritage has no form, it has no weight, and neither can it be bought or sold. To possess it will define a human being for the rest of their life. I could go on and on about all the lessons learned, about the unspoken way I was taught to handle myself as a Southern man but there is not enough space here to do that. What I want you to take away from this brief moment together is one small thread of the tapestry that is part of being a Southerner. If you can gain a better a better understanding about the South from these memories and the content of their meaning, you will find yourself a better person. If you can look at the strength of the symbols and beliefs of the South in a different light, if you can begin to understand that being a Southerner is not just a word defining ones birth, then, maybe you can find a little bit of Southerner in your own life.

God, how I love the South!

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I am the quality of my essence. I have become that which I have found to love, to revile, to relish in and to enjoy. I am white and that is not a burden nor is it a gift. I am lush with rhythm, patient with ignorance, despised by bigotry and not without the slightest embarrassment do I submit to the will of a Yankee…unless she is damn good looking, can pop her own beer, open her own oyster, and doesn’t pretend to like country music.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

What makes me southern? I get tickled when people tell me they fancy fried chicken with a vegetable side like fried apples or mac-n-cheese. Or when people stop by to sit on the porch and sip sweet iced tea with lemon and mint. Wednesday night is church night so there are no other activities going on around town, and people mention Jesus and the devil in casual conversation. I’m a southerner because I love to take Sunday drives and see the lighted signs in front of the churches with welcoming slogans like “Get Christ before the Devil gets you!” And I’m a southerner because people ask me if I’m from New York on account of my accent—I’m from Chapel Hill. But I’m a southerner with the best of both worlds—I married a damn yankee.

**

Editor’s Note:

The Dead Mule is pleased to present Anderson O’Brien’s first published poems. She is a poet of considerable gift. Her book of poems about quilts—when it’s ready—will be amazing.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I rarely pronounce the “g” at the end of my words; I take off my shoes as soon as I walk in the door and don’t put them back on to go check the mail; I pull out my gumbo pot at the first sign of a breeze and call all my friends to come eat; I believe a community bonfire is the best place to meet guys; I order catfish fried in cornmeal at steakhouses; I believe hurricane lamps can be decorative and functional; I sometimes eat biscuits & grits for supper and Maw Maw’s leftovers for breakfast; I drink coffee with chicory, black & strong; I have 9 bags of my best Mardi Gras beads that I use to decorate my Christmas tree; I know everybody in my neighborhood and even if I don’t like them, I still wave every morning; I learned the art of flirting before I could spell the word; I have Magnolias planted next to my Mimosas; I eat figs right off the tree and pecans right from the ground . . . I am indeed a born and bred Southern gal.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Whitaker has spent the summer retracing his Confederate great great great unlces and grandfathers routes through Chancellorsville, Vicksburg, and other state parks. Whitaker’s Virginia ramblings have left him wander shod, but upbeat, as the late summer vegetables fatten on the vine.

The Dead Mule’s first Black History Month poems will be go live February 2. Thanks to those who sent poems for this special occasion.