Banner Photo, Botany Bay Road, Edisto Island by Robert C. Clark
Welcome to the South. I invite you to take a trip through the best part of the country courtesy of magazine features and columns I’ve written. Like many aspects of our culture the South is changing and not always for the best. Browse the pages and time travel a bit. You’re sure to find memories, places, and unforgettable characters. Send me an email and let me know if you have a special feature or memory you’d like for me to write about. I’ll do my best to oblige you.
Thanks for stopping by.
Favorite Quotes On Writing and Creativity
Live Free, Live Wild, Live Different
In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused. —Ernest Hemingway
Writing is a kind of smoke, seized and put on paper. —James Salter
All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. — Ernest Hemingway
Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. —Ernest Hemingway
I never wanted to be well rounded, and I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design. —Harry Crews
I enjoy all of your e-mails, please keep them coming.
Enjoyed your article “The Old South Rediscovered” at http://likethedew.com/2012/06/10/the-old-south-rediscovered-2/#respond.
Not sure how to email you now. Nothing happens when I click on “email me.” My comment has to do with your most recent article in the Lincoln Journal. My family, like most Southerners, enjoys sweet tea. In fact, the first thing my mother did when she walked into the kitchen in the morning was to put water on to boil in a boiler (a pot with one handle). When it boiled she set it off the stove and poured loose Tetley tea leaves (ground) into it and let it steep for quite a while. Next, while it was still fairly warm, she strained the grounds out by pouring the tea water through a strainer, or sieve, and into a pitcher. The sugar was next and the stirring to dissolve the sugar, after which Mother added enough water to fill the pitcher. More stirring.
I place three Family-Size Tetley Tea Bags into a coffee maker carafe, pour boiling water over, and let steep for at least an hour. I then measure 1 1/4 c. sugar into a gallon pitcher or jug, stir or shake vigorously, then add water to finish it out. I always try to make it enough in advance so that it has time to get nice and cool in the fridge. Nothing ruins sweet tea like pouring it warm over ice; the ice melts and dilutes the tea. Ugh! Tea is much better if it’s made the day before and has time for the sugar to “strike through it.” And don’t dare skimp on the ice; personally, I like it to touch my nose.
Lest I sound like a purist when it comes to iced tea, I must admit that I don’t keep sweet tea made and in the fridge all the time anymore. All that sugar and those empty calories. . . to quote my granddaughter, I’d rather get my calories in something I can chew. Alas, I drink water with my meals, except at the beach and on other special occasions. And when any of my children or grandchildren are home, they expect –and get– sweet tea.
Enjoyed your article. Thanks.
Emmye
Shelby Turner
Enjoyed your article reminising on days gone by and thinking on the countless times my dad
(Sam Turner) took lawnmowers to Cooper & Poland`s shop for repair. I agree, back in the day, more people appreciated hard work and the hard workers who wore their names on shirts.
Tom – Enjoyed reading your site after we met yesterday….great stuff. -
Just finished your article in Midland Blitz Huntings Long Slow Demise how true brought a tear to my eye that so many young men will never have the feelings that I had growing up with my dad uncles and granfather hunting and fishing. And it is not about the kill but the experiance
I will look forward to meeting you. The story I will tell you is intertwined with many southern lives of vastly different backgrounds yet the same theme runs deep and definitely needs to be uncovered as it is profoundly moving .
Late but here.
My husband and I live in Lincolnton, GA.. We read your articles in our local paper, The Lincolnton Journal. I enjoy them because I was raised in Beaufort, S.C. and miss the old southern times as we knew them. I am always sharing Beaufort with our children. That was a great place for children to gror up. Everyone was kin to everyone! The brick main streets, the dirt road to Hunting Island for a day at the beach! That is still my favorite beach. Such a long and slow drive we stopped under an old oak tree on side of the road and picnickned! The castor oil at least once a year and the other half of the year we had a dose of calomon? (pills!) kept us well all year and we never had to miss school! If Mom wasn’t looking we would spit out the pills but she always knew and gave us another! I know she had eyes in the back of her head! It was ans is now so full of good memories we never had time for fights and “hating” people! Oh, Well, I will be writing your article if I don’t stop and leave it to an expert. I do like your articles. Barbara Doyle
I was looking for the list of old time remedies.
I write also. I was born and reared in Savannah, GA in 1936. As I read your remarks and those which have visited, I cried. Much gentler times in many ways. I am reading two new books on my Kindle written by a couple who portrays Charleston, their hometown, very accurately. I’ve cried in both. Just keep up the wonderful writing for our children’s sake. Like the Walton’s, everyone began building homes with wrap around porches and a swing, but I never saw anyone sitting in them. We’re missing something very important. My book is “My God Makes House Calls.” Perhaps…
Oh, how fortunate I am! I’ve just at age 85 found this page which means I’m not the only surviving “true Southerner” as I had feared! There’s hope the South will survive after all, if people such as I see here keep up the good effort. Doug Allen, Roswell, GA