Southern Legitimacy Statement: “Southern since ’63 with no plans to go anywhere else!” Mr. Aldon When my father died, Aldon Keane attended his wake in soiled jeans and a stained tee-shirt, his face a mask of tears. He hurtled into the sanctuary as though trying to forestall an emergency, to…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Having recently purchased an old farmhouse in rural Georgia allows for all kinds of inspiration. Some wonderful and some horrific. This story is one such instance. Good Fences Phone calls that come early in the morning are never good news. “Your daughter is in jail.” “Your bees…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: We moved from West Virginia to South Carolina in 1952. The other kids were surprised I wore shoes and I was equally surprised that they did not. My step-father moved us to Aiken when he took a job at the Savannah River Plant, which was nicknamed “the…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a Southerner born and raised on a tobacco farm in Eastern North Carolina. The farm sits on a hill with a small creek running around its base. The slopes are wooded, so only about half of the acreage is cleared, but tobacco was a labor-intensive…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas home of the University of Arkansas Razorbacks and what was once one of the prettiest little Southern squares you might ever see. I was gone a long time and missed the square when it fell on hard times and nearly got…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Along with Rosey Grier I was born in Tyler deep in the piney woods. Soon after that blessed event my mother rode the train to L.A. with her baby, but I returned to Texas every summer through adolescence. Eventually I traded LaLaLand for the Deep South where…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Only in the South can you walk into the woods and be surrounded by something so familiar yet so different from everything you’ve ever known. It is like seeing a life-long friend and forgetting their name: there’s the tenderness that you remember in the back of your…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: The South is a complicated thing for me. It’s where I was born — North Carolina, to be exact. It’s where I couldn’t wait to leave. It’s where I’ve always been. This region has beautiful places and people. But it also continues to be haunted by demons…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Richard grew up in the north, moved to Tennessee in 1992.  Later moved to the Charleston suburb of Summerville, SC where he enjoys sweet tea and grits (rhymes with “as good as it gets”).   Grave Speak “Gee Paw, mommy thinks you are getting too old to…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: If you don’t believe I’m legitimately Southern by now, Val, you ain’t right in the haidbone. Rusty Roses Mama used to say that she never had to lecture me much because I knew right from wrong. She told me that when I was about ten in the…

I am a happy Southern transplant and have lived in the beautiful state of Tennessee for six years now. I adore this place and have absolutely no plans to leave. The plates on my car and frequent use of the word “y’all” both confirm that I am firmly planted. Strike…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: My family never hid our crazy folks; they generally sat on the front porch and enjoyed the breeze just like the family who weren’t crazy. Come to think of it, we all had some crazy mixed in amongst our sanity. My mother cooked red-eye gravy every time…

Southern Legitimacy Statement : I grew up running barefoot through the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains chasing crappie by day and visiting with family on the front porch as lightning bugs lit up the night sky. I ran off with the U.S. Air Force and ended up with a law degree…

Wow! What an amazing bunch of talent we have here in Dead Mule Territory. Had over 85 entries in the Flash Fiction Competition. The fierce competition is over and we have a winner! We will publish the Winner and Five Honorable Mentions in the June 2019 Dead Mule School of…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Charlotte, North Carolina with my husband and ten-year-old son. The Line The line shifts. I move quickly, bumping the woman in front of me. Sorry, I mumble. She doesn’t acknowledge me. I think about all the things I have to do. The door opens,…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: We were a prototypical southern nuclear family. My Papaw came up in the Great Smokey Mountains, near Farner Tennessee and Cherokee North Carolina. When he was nine, he lost track of the time one summer evening, squirrel hunting up on the mountain, and he avoided a sound…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I said comic books when I moved to Tensas Parish, Louisiana as a small kid. I said funny books when I left. I moved there during WWII from Manhattan. I remember and love St. Joe, LA. I don’t remember Manhattan. I have a sculpture show coming up…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: If you hold your fingers over the eyes of your imagination and squint real hard, you can easily mistake a dead moose for a dead mule and Newfoundland for the South. I agree with Kurt Vonnegut that our purpose in life is to fart around. Night Time…

Here’s my Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born on the Gulf Coast of Texas, I grew up in a little town—a buttermilk junction—called “La Marque,” “the mark,” by the French woman who worked at the railroad depot way back when. Raised by a Texas daddy from the east Texas town of Center…

Here’s my Southern Legitimacy Statement: At my school you could use ACC Tournament Friday as an excused absence. You just needed a note from your mom: “Please excuse Johnny from class on Friday. He was watching the basketball.” I’m also Southern enough to worry that people I know will read…

Southern Legitimacy Statement : Only a snow-starched Canadian would consider me, a born-Brooklynite, from the south; though my current Queens neighbors claim I have a country gait. Walleyed I spot him eyeing me, though I can’t gauge any eyes. He’s faint against the ceiling, easily mistaken for gossamer. The bathroom…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: The South is a complex kaleidoscope of contradictions that historically coexisted through compartmentalizing when ideal clashed with real. Brutality and gentility, discrimination and democracy, hospitality and race/class hostility, and more odd couples, lived and live in our kaleidoscope, which at each twist shifts the aspect created by…

SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT: My family moved from San Fransisco California to Orlando, Florida a year or so before I was born. They are originally from the Northeast – a mix of Canadian-Indian, French, and Mohawk/Pequot Indigenous – making me the only one of my family born in the South. I…

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I come from Alaska and I married a woman from the Outer Banks. I fell in love the lifestyle, language and unique character — and charterers — in Buxton, Ocracoke, Avon and Waves. We will be retiring there and I look forward to fishing for Red Drum…