Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Once I open my mouth and unleash my Alabama South Midland drawl, no one questions my Southern authenticity. I freely bless hearts, cuss chiggers, run barefoot, put lemon and fresh mint in my sweet tea, and consider recipes for kudzu. I learned to swim in a creek, to read first from the Bible, and to spit watermelon seeds with deadly accuracy. I re-read To Kill a Mockingbird, know all the words to the state song of Alabama, and every note of “The Tennessee Waltz.” I received my inheritance in advance–family stories, shoeboxes of letters and photographs, all of my grandmother’s hats, and a jar full of buttons smelling faintly of pickle juice after at least fifty years.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

There are plates of chicken fried steak and okra in my past and surely in my future. I occupied a school desk in a big ole Southern town for a spell. I still believe in Mama, trains, “bless their hearts,” “y’all” (truly the best plural address around), and the occasional Moon Pie (particularly if it’s of the banana variety). Peanuts should float in the Coke, not serve as a side-dish. Extra props if they’re aswim in an RC Cola. Hands-down, the South still has the most poetic geographic place names–I’m talking about you, Okefenokee. Even swamps can be pretty-fied! Eudora Welty, Harper Lee, and Flannery O’Connor will always occupy top-shelf space on my bookshelf and in my heart.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I fled the cornfields as soon as my legs were strong enough. Mistook the Mississippi delta for the end of the rainbow, and bled purple and gold there. I came to Baton Rouge, I drank, and when Katrina conquered still I stayed. Long after the water receded, I took a midnight train to Georgia. No plans to ever leave, and no plans to remove the pink plastic flamingo from my front lawn, no matter how many times the old lady next door lets her dog pee on it.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I’ve always lived in North Carolina under the influence of wisteria which crawls over every vacant branch or twig. Its fragrance renders me helpless, making me lie beneath its lavender cloud awaiting that Southern gentleman bearing no mint julep, but a tall glass of (sweet) tea, amber nectar of southern gods.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I think tobacco is about as southern as grits and cornmeal, and I grew up in Winston-Salem, NC, where tobacco was king (and queen). Could smell it when I opened the front door to walk or carpool to school in the morning. And my dad worked in textile manufacturing, as did his dad and his dad when cotton was king before tobacco ever was. Catfish were seen sauntering in the creeks around our neighborhood when I was a kid, and our just-inside-the-city-limits development must have been gorgeous when it was a farm, with its rolling hills and streams. Some of that farm became a golf course, of course, and it was in the woods between the holes that I rediscovered nature, the change of seasons, the ducks mating.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I’m a hybrid…father from Georgia, mother from Pennsylvania

Say Yes, sir when you’re talkin’ to me!”

I grew up eating grits in the North, still serve black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day.

Grandma “Hanskie” came up to visit every summer for a week…the matriarch of the family. Raised 7 boys by herself … we knew how to “act like a lady” at all times in her presence.

When I was in college a friend from Texas visited & told my dad: “Why Mr. F, you’re the handsomest man I ever did see!” (Imagine full syrupy accent…he ate it up…sorry, I gagged.)

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and except for the five years I spent studying at the University of Cincinnati, I have lived here in this wonderful small city. We are only one and a half hours from New Orleans, one hour from Mobile, and a hop, skip, and jump from the white sandy beaches of the gulf. This almost as deep South you can get if you don’t count Florida. There is much here to inspire writers of every persuasion. I’m a solid southerner with a foreign born wife whose German accent has now taken on a southern bent.

By the way, you should add fried okra to the list of southern food. It’s a great favorite down here.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I lived in Maryland and went to college with a lot of folks from rural Pennsylvania who thought they were more Southern than they were.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

According to weather experts, it has been the hottest summer ever in Texas. All the heat makes me really sweaty, and when I’m really sweaty, I feel very awkward at parties. I feel uncomfortable giving hugs, dancing, and sitting on certain types of furniture. This is what Texas has done to me in a little over a year.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I originated in Jonesville, Virginia, population <1000 (Salute!) located 15 miles from the Kentucky state line and about 20 miles from the Tennessee state line, give or take a few miles. I graduated from Clinch Valley College (now UVA-Wise) in 1978 after serving as editor of the school’s literary magazine “Jimson Weed” for 1.5 years. Following a 12-year stay in Denver, Colorado I relocated to Bowie, Maryland where I currently reside, still south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

A Western boy hailing from North Routt County, Colorado, near the town of Clark, Cody Badaracca has spent the last 5 1/2 years his life living east of the Mississippi and south of the Mason-Dixon Line in Nashville, Tennessee. His idyllic Southern vision of seersucker, sweet tea, and saying “Oh mah lawd” on a regular basis was quickly dissolved his second night in Music City, where he proceeded to get drunk on whiskey and vomit off the front porch at 2 AM. Since then, Cody has developed an affectionate spot for Tennessee, grits, Coon Hounds, and irregular word contractions. If he should die in the Volunteer State, Cody requests that his body be allowed to be overgrown by kudzu somewhere in the Cherokee National Forest, and that somebody graffiti his name on the bar at the Springwater Supper Club and Lounge.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I exist; therefore, I am Southern.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I am a California boy, born and bred. The paternal side of my family is wonderfully southern, hailing from scattered places–Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas, especially. My grandfather was a proud southerner, although a drinker and unstable character of ill repute–one you might find in a Carson McCullers novel, perhaps. The most time I’ve actually spent in the South have been in airports–but I could smell its beauty and hear its music having my curbside smokes on those layovers, and I could see the majesty of its landscape from my cabin window. Much of the music I love comes from the South, and much of the literature I love comes from the south. The South is in my blood and it owns a part of my spirit. Most of my dreams take place in the South.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

In the middle of winter, the trips to the woodpile, back to the woodstove and the smile on my dad’s face when the fire was stoked to red and his feet and hands finally warmed from the cold butcher shop where he worked. The long walks to the woods, dropping the trees and how my dad bragged on how well I could handle a go-devil as he sat and sharpened the chainsaw. I feel it in my bones even now as I describe it. I believe this to be another of my southern legitimacies.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Yes, it’s true we are related to Robert E. Lee. Thank goodness our family tree landed us in the South. God bless the land of the free and all of those that tread this way. Born and raised a Virginian with no plans to sway. Thank you one and all for inspiration and support throughout the years. May we all stand together without fear. E Pluribus Unum!

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was born in Nashville, Tennessee. I was raised on a hundred acre farm in Dickson County, Tennessee. I’d rather feel the cool waters of the Mighty Piney River than any pool Man ever made. I know poke sallet ought to be boiled at least twice before going to the table. I know a snake-doctor ain’t a veterinarian that specializes in reptiles. I know the difference between bluegrass and country music. I know how to re-season an iron skillet after some ‘know-it-all’ washes it with soap and water. I know the difference between dinner and supper, and I drink sweet tea at both. I know what it means when I see an alligator gar nailed to a tree above a good fishing hole. And I know what a dying cherry tree means to a cattle farmer. For those of you who don’t, it means there’s poison in the field and a calf is liable to die soon. The dying cherry leaf is like bovine cyanide, and yet they can’t resist it. I know these things not just because I was born and raised in the South (there’s lots of folks born and raised here who have no clue about any of these things); I know these things because I’m a natural student of life, and it just so happens that this is the life I was brought into. The South has a rich and beautiful and triumphant and tragic and violent and contradictory heritage. That’s what makes it so interesting. An outsider can embrace it, but only a native can understand it. Like Quentin tells Shreve, “You can’t understand it. You have to be born there.”

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Danny P. Barbare has two pecan trees in his yard, since his youth. Loves to visit Charleston, SC. Loves the Mountains of North Carolina. Since he grew up in the South and has spent his whole life here, he know nothing else but to write about it. He has been writing poetry for 30 years and has been published locally, nationally, and abroad including in Dead Mule.

Southern Legitimacy Statement #2:

You’re not southern ’til you’ve been switched in the face by a cow’s tail, Or stepped on a bee, barefooted… How about eating warm tomatoes plucked off the vines in the tomato patch; Or have daddy bust a ripe watermelon out in the field, cause everyone’s thirsty. Ah, did you ever bath naked under the eaves of the house during a summer shower, Or gather warm eggs from underneath the hen, sometimes getting pecked! Then watch a baby chick peek out of its shell—to be free.

I did, I was, I am.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Born in the faraway, Yankee land of New York, I have lived in rural South Georgia for the past thirty-two years. More importantly, I married a proper southern girl who cooks the proper southern way. We have raised three boys among the sand and pines, feeding them close to grown on that proper southern food. Sorry to say I never acquired a taste for sweet tea, but my kids drink enough to make up for my shortcomings.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Since moving to Hillsborough, North Carolina, in 2007, I have discovered a inexplicable fondness for turnip greens. Perhaps it is because my Great Great Great Grandfather Barker left the Piedmont for northern flatlands almost 150 years ago. Can the siren song of vinegary greens be heard across the generations thus luring to me their savory shore?

Nov. 15, 1996. The day we registered the domain name DeadMule.com. Wow, has it really been that long?

Southern Legitimacy Statement: When I get breakfast at Shoney’s, I eat the grits.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Alabama where pine trees and red dirt are in no short supply. There are still faint red dirt stains around my ankles from going barefoot during my childhood. My mother was on the cutting edge of nutrition back in the 60’s and 70’s. She deep fried broccoli and cauliflower. We ate breakfast, dinner and supper. Nothing called lunch was ever served. When daddy said he’d be home about dinnertime he meant noon. We drank our sweet iced tea from Bama jelly glasses. During the summer little old ladies in sunbonnets worked in their flower gardens and in the evening they sat on their front porches and shelled peas and butterbeans into their aprons. We all talked with that melodious southern accent and we used that beautiful language peculiar only to a Southerner.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

We Southerners are nothing more than the jesters’ costumes of the stories we tell. Our stories can be full of common sense and truth, while often disguised in folksiness and disarmingly told with a sweet, southern cadence.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in the South, exiled to England and then returned. *one of two stories in this issue by Deb Jellett.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: “I’m from boys & bike ramps; curly hair, unruly in the damp heat, cut short to tame. I’m from Women teaching Bridge until midnight; from day lilies and red clay, sand in my bathing suit, sunburn and oysters. I’m from peanut butter and jelly; plain, salty chips and chocolate cake for birthdays.

I am here because William Wallace cried for freedom, British savaged Highland clans, and pushed Presbyterians into the sea. I’m here because Huguenots sailed, and Kid-the-Pirate swung dead from the bow of his ship in Charleston Harbor; but not before poaching and stealing, and damp hot nights with her…

This stuff counts, right?”

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee and have nearly my whole life. Though my submission has a vague setting centered around the confines of a mason jar, I imagine this jar to be within a southern state, North Carolina perhaps. I love biscuits and gravy, sweet tea, William Faulkner, and relaxing in a creaky wooden rocking chair while looking out onto a quiet southern landscape through the gaps of porch railings. Though I’m not proud of it, I have friends and family who now live or at some time have lived in a trailer park. Yesterday I saw a raccoon chewing at my garbage. I use the phrase “fixing to” a lot. As in, I’m fixing to submit this story to yall.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: As to my SLS, I was born and raised in the South, exiled to England and then returned.

I have been a teacher, a lawyer and a business owner.
I am now blissfully retired.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m from southwestern Virginia where being southern means manners, simple-living, and a love of storytelling that begins at the dinner table and moves onto the front porch as the evening wanes. It’s about smiling, even when you don’t feel like it, and knowing that kindness warrants a smile from God. It’s a sense of place and belonging, a hazy memory of home that comes to you when the world seems harsh.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My first home was in a trailer park. I grew up in the middle of East Texas, in a town with just 4,000 citizens. According to records, my ancestors owned slaves.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Though not as bad as in some other places, theft is still a fact of life even in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. In this case, a paratrooper’s hunting proclivities come through to recover a of a set of stolen wheels.