Category: Essays

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

Any woman who can bake a crawfish pie--and enjoy eating it--should be counted a Southerner no matter where she lives.

Some Lovely Creative Non-Fiction. Enjoy … Moonshine Piedmont North Carolina Intro Nick Pegram, Nicholas Talley Pegram, my grandfather was born in the Piedmont of North Carolina 1864 during the height of the Civil War. He was six generations from his...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: In elementary school, a boy named Jedediah taught me how to drink the nectar from the honeysuckle blossoms by pinching the end of the flower. My mother stared at me for a full three seconds the first time she ever heard me say "yall." I stared at her even longer when I first heard her say it, too.

1. The car I used to race Lance in is gone, broken into and caught on fire by someone trying to get out of the rain. Whoever was in there tried to put it out with the sweater strewn on...

SOUTHERN LEGACY STATEMENT: In my archives there is a picture of a young tyke sitting astride a mule---a live mule. The youngster is me; perhaps age 5. The mule was one of the pair my Grandfather owned: Bob and Mag. Poppa plowed those mules on his farm in Rowan County, North Carolina where he raised cotton, corn, wheat, and a vegetable garden that couldn’t be beaten. Although I wasn’t raised on that farm, I was allowed to pick cotton in his fields. Rest assured as a young grade school kid, my bag wasn’t one of the big bags made up of two “tow bags” sewn end to end. Those bags stretched out along the rows as various family members pulled the white fibers from the bolls. As small as my bag was, I was never able to fill it. Poppa usually gave me a quarter for my meager efforts. He took the coin from his leather purse which he kept in the chest pocket of his overalls. I have memories of him sitting in the “fire room” of the weather beaten farm house as he filled his pipe from his can of Prince Albert smoking tobacco, listening to Gabriel Heater on the radio during World War II.

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Memphis. It's a wonderful town. I resent the Yankee preconception that Memphians have but a full set of teeth between them. We have many teeth. I have between fifteen and twenty, whatever's the normal amount to have.

By Gideon C. Kennedy   The Desire of Wrestling A southern experience   “Weighing in at 250 pounds and hailing from Shermer, Illinois, The Nature Toy Devin Desire!” The goateed ring announcer directs the audience’s attention to one of the...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Frederick, Maryland elementary, middle, and high schools, often finding myself visiting Baltimore to see the Ravens and read extensively on Poe. Everywhere else felt like an invasion until I moved to South Carolina to graduate from a Florence high school. I went to Francis Marion University for an undergrad in English and Coastal Carolina University for my Master’s in Writing. I currently enjoy teaching college literature in Beaufort, SC and cannot get enough of the eager, curious faces at the mention of “Lenore” and “The Case of M. Valdemar.” I consider myself a writer of dark fantasy, though my nonfiction pieces borderline on the absurd and bizarre. As part of the Southern Gothic Revival I feel it is necessary to be positive in every aspect of my life, even when the deep southern Classics weep in their ledgers. We are a collective of strong, captivating people, I see it in my southern husband—all the loving and unique facets of the South: intelligent, rational, observant, collected, close, empathetic, and, of course, creative. My husband is my Gothic Muse and the South my office tucked away in the thick, old growth forests. We have great ancestral roots that wind their way freely into our lives, our families, at the dinner table during grace, and our imaginations.