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Son Of There
I know what it means to be Southern. This is an entirely different thing than knowing that I am Southern, or identifying as Southern. I am Southern, and I potently, self-consciously know what this means. It is as much a part of me as my blood type or the patterns of the veins on the backs of my hands. Because I live deliberately in the South, I daily knock up against the distinctions between myself and other men who were born and raised and still live down here. My distinctions are etched by the experiences of traveling and living abroad when I was a young man. The things I saw,…
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Have A Heart
Wanting to avoid last September’s nightmarish experience with a possum who found his way into our furnace and died, my wife and I decided to take steps to prevent such a thing. Yesterday evening, I got my large Have-A-Hart trap from the barn, baited it with marshmallows, and placed it in the cellar. This morning when I let the dogs out, it occurred to me to check the trap, so I went to the cellar and flicked on the light. A young possum, about the size of a kitten, was staring back at me from inside the Have-A-Hart. I waited until I let the dogs back into the house, then…