“Our Nativity – 1970” by Dawn Wilson
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My sister used to experiment on me. At the age of twelve, she taught me how to do a Southern accent--and I got stuck. I couldn't get rid of it. The phone rang, back in the day when you couldn't get rid of telemarketers, so my sister started making me answer it with my fake Scarlett O'Hara oh be still mah beatin' heart accent--and she didn't stop laughing for three years.
Zacc Dukowitz “Ernesto and the Mule”
Southern Legitimacy Statement*
I have shot containers of propane with my grandfather's 12 gauge and yodeled with delight at the plume of flame that erupted into the night like a spume of blood from the skull of a Foreigner. I have walked often and barefeeted, and never been a stranger to hardship. I have thought of Andrew Jackson while alone in the darkness of my dead lover's room, and been comforted.
*featured on the Dead Mule's Facebook page
Rena McClure Taylor “Onions Can Make You Cry”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: We only eat Vidalia onions.
Brigette Steel:
SLS: A native of the Pacific Northwest, I lived in north Florida for eighteen months as a teenager. I was introduced to cornbread dressing, boiled peanuts, and beaches you can actually swim in.
Always Clap for the Band by Clint Tyra
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Alabama, grew up in Georgia, went to school in Mississippi, lived in Nashville and do my fishing in South Carolina. I've spent a lot of time on the grounds Faulkner's Rowan Oak and on the highway around Larry Browns farm. I currently live a street over from Carson McCullers' house. I don't know how much more legitimate I can be than that.
Molly Felder “Custody” flash fiction
Southern Legitimacy Statement: The family’s all tore up: PawPaw and Mimi because Pepe was such a teeniny dog and just flattened under the wheel of that teenager’s Camaro—never stood a chance!—and me because I’m on the outs with Aunt Jean.
I was only joking about her potato salad.
“Aunt Jean and her potato salad” was truly all I said.
I may have also laughed.
And now she won’t say boo to me, as if I meant that she went around offering it to people, whether they wanted it or not!
So you can see that if you accept my story, it will be cause for celebration. PawPaw and Mimi would smile again, and Aunt Jean would congratulate me, although I’ll have to take her out for some broasted chicken, Texas toast, and hand-packed ice cream first.
Jessica Wimmer “Sweet Baby Lamb”
SLS: It was probably around age seven in the middle of a winter night that I realized how southern I was while dangling my legs in Granny's outhouse.
Susan Miller “Last Job” flash fiction
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born many years ago in the 'Who'sthare' state, this writer seeks to expand and share stories with anyone who enjoys a midwestern flavor. I enjoy trying flash, shorts, and vignettes, or (postcard stories) if you will. The name 'Dead Mule' grabbed my attention as I've been called a j.a. many times over the span of 50 some years. I like walking in the nettles and then wading in the crik.
April Winters “Radio Waves”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Grammy used to make the best rhubarb pie. Her meals were the type where every inch of the long table was covered with food: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn-on-the-cob, and vegetables from her garden, and dessert of rhubarb pie. Yum! She expressed her love for her family by making sure we all had full – I’m talking really full – tummies. She had a quick wit and what she called a “hillbilly” accent. She may not have been ‘book’ smart, but she sure was love smart.
Ted Harrison “Brotherly Love”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: When you are born of Scot-Irish and Welsh stock in Piedmont North Carolina you start with a perceived southern legitimacy, but perhaps when you grow older you want to prove it --
One of my grandfathers was a storekeeper and the other a farmer. The storekeeper died sometime before I started school. The grandfather who was a farmer gives me a sense of southern legitimacy—at least in my mind. He farmed with his son, my uncle Richard. Their homes were about a hundred yards apart, separated by a field that by turns yielded cotton, or corn or wheat.
In the mid-1950s, Uncle Richard decided it was time to install indoor plumbing in his home. Running water in the kitchen, a bathroom, the works. He approached my grandfather with the idea that while the work was being done Poppa’s pump could be electrified, pipes run into the house for the kitchen and a bathroom, too.
I don’t know how long the discussions took, but finally Poppa agreed. Agreed, to a point. When the work finished at my uncles home work began at Poppa’s. First the pump was electrified. No more pumping the handle up and down to fill a bucket to take into the house for use. Yes, when the modern work finished you could turn on a spigot, then fill your bucket of water courtesy an electric pump—then you could carry your bucket into the house for use.
Maybe not southern legitimacy for some, but it works* for me.
*Works for the Dead Mule, too.
John Riley: How It Went Bad With Horsepen
Southern Legitimacy Statement: When my son was just a little guy, four or five, and studying the violin he loved to take a break from classical music and go with his pap-paw to an old barn down in Pittsboro that had been converted into a little music hall. When it was their turn the two of them would climb onto the stage and the women in the audience would say, “My, my” and “Look how cute he is.” My boy would be wearing his little white cowboy hat and jeans and boots and when his pap-paw gave him the signal he'd dip his head and start going to town on “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” or “Old Joe Clark” or “The Orange Blossom Special,” maybe even a Bob Wills song or two, while the house band accompanied them on dobro and rhythm guitar and bango. My son's parents would be in the audience beaming like bug lights as their boy and his pap-paw fiddled away. I'm sure this happens in other parts of the country, but I'm not sure there is anyplace else where playing the old-time music weaves warmly through generation to generation the way it does here in North Carolina, where the music was born and the best little fiddlers in the world are bred.
Sylvia Dodgen: Encounter
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and bred in the Alabama Wiregrass, where fireflies light summer nights and whippoorwills cry, as souls depart. My daddy never set his hat on the bed, fearing bad luck and didn’t believe in starting any project on a Friday. He believed in planting by the moon and swore long-dead cows could be ghosts too. Unmarried I said I wanted a baby and thought of artificial insemination, he said, “The little bastard will just be welcome.” He was a wise man.
Davis Slater: Helping Daddy Win
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised between the Mississippi and the Ozarks, where Missouri eats into Arkansas, you can walk to Tennessee, and you can wave at Kentucky, I'm now vegan, not for health or environmental reasons, but because I'm pretty sure I ran the entire South out of edible critters when I was a boy.
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