Category: Essays

Essays

Tom Sheehan: The Day I Grew Up

 Southern Legitimacy Statement:  I have appeared in your publication, spent a recent vacation in NC, read in NC, worked in Tennessee for a short time. The Day I Grew Up I was fighting it all the way, wearing knickers, me, twelve...
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Essays

Eve Lyons: Don’t Mess With Texas

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in San Antonio, Texas. Eve’s poetry can be found here on the Dead Mule. Don’t Mess With Texas In sixth grade I started middle school.  I was terrified to go to Garner, my local public...
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Essays

CL Bledsoe: Waiting for the Miracle

Another in our bi-weekly Series of Memoirs from Mule editor CL Bledsoe. His southern bona fides run deep, just read on… Waiting for the Miracle My home town was like this: (                                                                              ). Wynne had eight thousand people, a Wal...
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Essays

Michelle Brooks: All Women Are Bunnies

Southern Legitimacy Statement: As for my southern legitimacy statement, here it goes. I grew up in Mineral Wells, Texas where my mother sold rattlesnakes that had been frozen and subsequently fashioned into paperweights. Nothing could put a smile on her face...
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Essays

Cortney Cameron: Dads and Guitars

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have lived in North Carolina since the turn of the new millennium. I eat Cajun fried chicken for at least one meal daily, have received live diddles in the mail, and secretly brewed wild blackberry wine in...
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Essays

Rite of Passage by Michelle Ivy Davis

Southern Legitimacy Statement: As someone who has almost always lived in the South (Southern Maryland, Southern India, Southern Florida and Southern California) I have these wonderful memories: Our yard filled with lightening bugs, their twinkle lighting up the night. My sister and I caught them in jar, had my mother poke holes in the lid, and took them to our room to watch until we fell asleep. The next morning the magic was gone and they were just bugs. We let them go, only to repeat the process again that night. I remember the twang and then bang of the screen door as we went in and out of the house a hundred times on summer days. I always wrote thank you notes and still do. There’s something satisfying about a pretty little card and words of gratitude. I remember when standing in front of a fan really did cool you off, even though the air coming from it was as hot as that the room. It was the humidity evaporating off my skin, y’all. And we opened the windows in the morning, only to close them and pull the curtains later to hold the “cooler” air in and keep the hot afternoon sun out. Pulling off a honeysuckle blossom and sucking out the honey was heaven. And the calming beauty of Spanish moss swaying in live oak trees? Only in the South.
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Essays

Dilly Lee by Gaylynne Robinson

Maybe it’s a Texas thing, but whether I’m listening to guitar pickers under the big oak tree at Lukenbach on a Saturday afternoon, or cruising the aisles looking for bargains at Fredericksburg Market Days or watching fish jump in Oso Bay down in Corus Christi, or swimming at the dam in Hunt, Texas belongs to me, and I belong to it. This is my kind of south. Now I once had a friend from Tennessee who disputed the “south-ness” of Texas. I will attest to its southwesterness, being just a couple of miles down the road from George Strait’s horse barn, but it’s south all right. But Texas is “southern” in its love for land and its history. In my south, you can trust a cowboy. You can serve your company beans and jalapeño cornbread on your best China. Saturday night’s for wearing your broken in boots to listen to Willie and dance at Floore’s Country Store. In my south, people aren’t too busy to talk about nothing. You get the friendly finger wave driving down any country road and you can call up the corner grocery and ask if they have any fresh tamales. In my south, we sit outside on the porch at Halloween and watch out for our neighbors’ kids. In my south Texas sky, you can still see the ripe orange moon sitting pretty in a nest of stars. We might laugh at ourselves during a watermelon seed spitting contest or a sandbelt tool race, but we love our flag and our earth and our “southern” way of life. Gaylynne Robinson
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Essays

Bill Prince: The Boy, The Buck Rabbit and the Beagles

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am an eighth generation direct descendant of a 1740 immigrant who came to America as an indentured servant to the Trustees of the colony of Georgia. I was born in Valdosta, GA and have lived in either Georgia or South Carolina all my life. Reared and educated in South Carolina, I have been residing back in my native Georgia for over 50 years now. I am legitimately southern in my origin and life and lifestyle.
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Essays

James K. Williamson: The Night I Saw Dwayne

We ask questions in Darlington County, S.C. and those questions are to make sure we're not related, me and you. Porch nights in Oxford but only a few minutes over Barry Hannah's grave. It's hotter than hell and far. Mortician and poodle meet ups in Birmingham. Delirius drives from Little Rock to Asheville, you name it. I'm looking for a sawdust floor in New York City and someone to buy me a drink. I have carpal tunnel so you might have to lift the glass. Hey, I'm just glad to be here.
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Essays

“Bushrod” by Andy Madden

Southern Legitimacy Statment: I am a true son of the South. I was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. My mother once said to me that myself, Elvis, and US Highway 45 were the only three things that ever came out of Tupelo worth mentioning. I was raised in Corinth, Mississippi. I graduated from Corinth High School and ventured forth into the big world beyond Alcorn County in 1983. I hunt and fish and purposely seek out mud holes to whip my pickup truck through, even though mud in California can some times be at a premium. I have a cousin named Larry Joe. I have been known to pick up fresh road kill on occasion. I believe barbequed Raccoon on a hot biscuit is one of life’s more special pleasures. I love my Mama and visit her twice a year no matter if I can afford to take the time away from my West Coast life or not. I am Southern, first and foremost. Everything else is just, well…….extra.
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The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
Essays

Andy Fogle : Edward, an essay

I was born Paul Andrew Fogle in Norfolk VA and grew up in Virginia Beach, and as far back as I know all but 2 threads of my family in the U.S. are from either Virginia or Mississippi: my paternal great grandfather was from Philadelphia and it is rumored that my maternal great grandfather "had people from Maine." As a Virginian since birth, I am fascinated by these two trickles of exotic Northern blood. As a temporary upstate New Yorker (10 years and running is temporary), I have noticed some quaint and backward ways amongst these people. They cannot seem to understand that I go by my middle name. I have signed work e-mails, "Andy" and have been replied to with "Thanks, Paul." Forgive my mid-Atlantic superiority, but I consider this the height of ignorance. I say "howdy" although none of my relatives ever have. I suppose I get that from the TV. My high school students think my accent and yalling is cute. They think I drink moonshine and they're right, at least they were twice in my life. My son once asked my wife if I spoke English. The main thrust behind this query was my pronouncing "ham" as if it had two syllables. Apparently the vowel in my pronunciation of "pie" is also alien. What does the boy want from me? There is a devilishly good chicken place up here, started in 1938 by a woman from Louisiana. I hadn't had my Mississippi grandmother's fried chicken in years, and when I first had a bite of Hattie's--by myself one cold rainy night--I almost cried it was so close. T
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