Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and bred in the Alabama Wiregrass to a father, who said, “Yes, Ma’am” to every female no matter how old or young, and a mother, who painted her lips and nails red and wore heels, hose and a garter everyday of the week except Saturdays, when she rode horses with my father then she wore jodhpurs and boots. Her hair was the hardest thing she had to deal with on a daily basis. If for some reason she couldn’t make it to the beauty shop, she took meals in her bedroom, announcing that her hair looked like a “stump full of granddaddies.” She believed in benign neglect. I ran around barefoot in cutoff dungarees without a shirt. The dungaree suspenders pulled over my shoulders and hooked to metal buttons on a bib, covering my chest. I was sandy, freckled and tick-ridden.
Occasionally, daddy would bring in quail and partridge from a Saturday morning shoot. I would pick them clean on Saturday night, while my parents were dining and dancing. We’d have fried quail and grits for dinner at noon on Monday. We ate fried fish roe and grits for breakfast on Sundays and brains and eggs many weekdays. I grew up on scuppernong wine made by my granddaddy. I was a child of the 1950's and life in the Wiregrass was peaceful, pleasant and in some ways peculiar (I just didn’t know it then).
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