There’s a story my husband has been telling for nearly 15 years, since not long after United States forces invaded Iraq. In a news report, American soldiers were going door to door with bomb-sniffing dogs, trying to persuade the citizens of Baghdad to adopt a well-trained pet. (more….)
There is something fundamentally democratic about a Waffle House restaurant in the wee hours of the morning. It’s a place where people working the late shift can stop for a hot meal on the way home, where high school kids can extend prom night just an hour longer, where 20-somethings jazzed on live music can wind down after a night on the town. It’s a uniquely American place. (more….)
I knew I was in trouble as soon as I pulled into the parking lot of the Quality Inn in Americus, Ga., last Saturday night. It was long past dark but I could see well enough to note the out-of-state license plates — New Mexico, Pennsylvania, California, Alaska — places far from this peanut-farming land. (more….)
It’s 2 in the morning, and it has just started to rain. It’s a gentle rain, with no threat of high winds or lightning. I know this without having to get up to peer into the dark night or put on my glasses to check the weather app on my phone. I know the facts of this meteorological reality without even opening my eyes because there is a large dog with halitosis now standing beside my bed, panting. (more….)
In 1978, the city of Nashville leased 18 acres of a Civil War monument to a local businessman who wanted to start a new baseball franchise — the Nashville Sounds, then a Double A expansion team for the Southern League — and needed a place for his team to play. It was a ludicrous arrangement from the start: a privately owned ball field built on public land. And not just any public land. Greer Stadium was built at the base of St. Cloud Hill, where the Union Army erected a stronghold after taking control of the city in 1862. (more….)
In 1986, Paul Simon released his seventh solo album, “Graceland.” One year later, my fiancé Haywood and I moved to Nashville. Haywood was driving my father’s secondhand panel van with the fake woodgrain wraparound made of shelf liner that masked the previous owner’s business logo. Attached to the van was a trailer too heavy for the hitch. (more….)
At least since Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door in 1517, Christians have disagreed on what Jesus calls them to do in the name of faith. There are nearly 34,000 Christian denominations worldwide, a number that doesn’t account for American Christians — nearly one in six, according to a Gallup poll last summer — who belong to no denomination at all. (more….)
I thought had escaped the beautiful, benighted South for good when I left Alabama for graduate school in Philadelphia in 1984, though now I can’t imagine how this delusion ever took root. At the age of twenty-two, I had never set foot any farther north than Chattanooga, Tennessee. (more….)
A few years back, when there were still three teenagers in this house, I got a little wound up at supper one night and kept going on and on about the brilliance of a novel I was reading by an Irish-born writer. “I can’t believe you’ve never been there,” one of my sons said. “As much as you love this stuff, I can’t believe you’ve never been to Ireland or England.” (more….)
My sister and nephew drove up from Birmingham on Sunday, the day before the eclipse, and out of pure curiosity we went downtown. The place was crawling with tourists. The Great American Eclipse website had estimated that as many as 7.4 million Americans would be traveling somewhere to witness the event, and this is the largest city in the path of totality. It seemed like a lot of them were already here. (more...)
