Sometimes I dream of moving. Living elsewhere. Like the Oregon coast. Or the forests of Idaho. Then I laugh and know I can’t– I’m southern through and through.

I talk southern, I cook southern, I dress southern.

I love horses and God and football. Lord, how I love football (SEC football, that is). I love beer drank on a tail gate and sweet tea sipped on a porch swing. I love cotton fields and apple festivals. I love Dolly Parton. I love magnolia trees and pearls and swimming in the lake.

I love old stately homes and hound dogs and athsmatic preachers. I love old ladies who wear hats and whose pocketbooks match their shoes. I love flamingos in the front yard and rusty mailboxes and picking squash. I love taking the long way home and giving directions that include “turn right where Charlie Maples’ grandson used to live”.
I love barn cats and pocketknives and flipping over rocks to hunt for crawdads. I love novels set in the south, movies set in the south, and people who come here searching for the real south. I love butterflies and bluebirds and barn swallows. I love fishing from a riverbank with worms you just dug from under the apple tree. I love blue tailed lizards and groundhogs and counting the stars. I love tomato sandwiches on white bread with Duke’s mayonnaise and a dash of salt.

I love knowing summer’s comin’, and I love knowing that cooler weather is coming after that. I love knowing why certain roads have their names and what breed of cattle are in that pasture. I love courthouses and camoflauge and collard greens.

I love maple trees and dogwoods and going to get ice cream on hot summer nights. I love craft shows and bluegrass festivals and tractor pulls. I love the sound of cicadas in the trees on humid evenings and the smells of honeysuckle and charcoal on the breeze. I love weddings and bonfires and river baptisms. I love casseroles that freeze beautifully and homemade pickles. I love aprons. I love green beans cooked with bacon grease and cornbread fried in a cast iron skillet. I love pine thickets and alligators and trains and flags. I love eating watermelon at picnic tables and fiddles picked up by old and young alike. I love clogging and the rhythmic beat of someone playing spoons. I love gravel roads and county fairs. I love Christmas lights and painted signs advertising vacation Bible school and produce for sale.

I love leaving for twenty minutes and catching lightning bugs and waving on back roads. I love knowing people at the store and copying recipes from old greasy index cards. I love handmade curtains in kitchen windows and fancy towels in guest bathrooms. I love talking to almost strangers at the beauty parlor and pressing leftovers into my guests’ hands in butter bowls.

I love when the grass turns green and daffodils come up so fast they bring the dirt with them. I love homemade pies and brown eggs and a plastic bag crammed full of cucumbers. I love when someone says, “Do what, now?” and when parents threaten to “tan hides”. I love bug zappers and falling down houses seemingly held up by the sheer volume of antiques. I love having my door opened and bowties with linen suits. I love things being overdone and just this side of tacky.

I love old things. I love storytellers.

I love it all.
I love the south.