Where I Come From, Rick Bragg

A southern writer whose short stories make me long for being young and growing up in Virginia. This is not a book intended to be a cold-blooded examination of the South, rather it touches, now and then, on a South that breaks and lifts our hearts. He writes of the spirit of Harper Lee before she passed; good Tupperware; weather in the South, the wanderlust of road trippin; the point of a good knife every Southern boy needs (reminds me of my first knife as an eight year old given to me)… about your grandfather who would have no more left the house without a pocketknife than without his britches. “A Southern man, knifeless, was pitiful. Men without knives were like men who rode around without a jack, or spare tire, just generally unprepared for life.” No more truer today. He’s searchin’ and reminiscin’ about growing up in the South., and where he still lives (in Alabama). I’ve read a few of these previously in the backpage of my monthly Southern Living magazine, and he always kicks out right through the center of the goalposts.