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Home - I Home - II Writers Articles Links Stories from the Press Snippets Editor's Bio E-mail Message Board Bulletin Board Submissions Free Update Link to USADS USADS BACK ISSUES Aug~2004 Sept~2004 Oct~2004 Nov~2004 Dec~2004 Winter~2005 Spring~2005 Summer~2005 Fall~2005 Winter~2005 Spring~2006 Summer~2006 Fall~2006 Winter~2006 Spring~2007 Summer~2007 Feature pages may be accessed back to October, 2002. USADS ~~Most Popular Pages~~ Southern Names Southern Expressions Southern Humor Southern Memoirs Southern Cooking Bottletrees Great stories! Great reading! Humor, poetry, history, memoirs . . . and more! Submit a story Great resource! Know Southern History ARTICLES ABOUT SOUTHERN PEOPLE AND PLACES . . . AND ANYTHING ELSE WE FANCY! One of the best sites on the Net for readers, writers, storytellers, travelers, nostalgia buffs, and gossips. Southern Talk JOHN LOWE ~ I liked another use of “y’all” at a professional golf tournament last year. When golfers are ready to putt, marshalls hold up signs to let fans know to be quiet. In the Chicago area, those signs say "Shut up, dammit!" Here in Mississippi, they say (ever so gently), "Hush, y'all" -- just one of many reasons to move to Mississippi. JIM HESTER ~ Near the bend in the creek, the hackberry’s shade now reaches by noontime to the turtles’ sun log. The bowl of the eddy, last deepened by rains from far off oceans that swirled in on September’s gales, has now barely a ripple, and catfish lurk near the bottom in dread of autumn’s low water. On the high bank above, if one squints in remembrance, are the ghosts of farm boys past. They yelp and tussle and dive with naked glee into the cool water from the heat of high summer. MIKE WINDHAM ~ Robert Earl says Catahoula Cur dogs are smart. Maybe the smartest dogs in the whole world. They herd cows by nipping at their hooves and snatching and biting the cow’s tail. They can fight hogs and find wounded deer. They kill snakes, tree squirrels and they eat the cheapest dog food you can buy down at the Co-op. JERRY DALLAS ~ Eudora Welty writes that children quite naturally think that the town they grow up in will stay the same forever. But permanence is a chimera. Two weeks after graduating from Provine, I joined the army. I got out in the summer of 1962 and returned to Jackson. At first, Capitol Street seemed about the same. There was a new First Federal Building but it was an aesthetic improvement over the previous structure, which I never liked anyway. Its slow, rickety, prone-to-get stuck elevator was the bane of a Western Union delivery boy. But nearby, on the north side of the 500 block of East Capitol, something terrible had happened. It took me a while to comprehend what. The old Century Theater building had been torn down and replaced—by a parking lot! JANE RILEY ~ When I was growing up in Mississippi, we used to cook crawdads in tin cans on the creek banks. As an adult in Louisiana, I have learned to appreciate crawfish cuisine. DAWN DILLON BARRETT ~ I realized too that it had been months since I’d heard the croak of a frog or the buzz of a cicada or a cricket’s chirp. Or eaten a fresh tomato sandwich spread with Blue Plate mayonnaise. I’d forgotten how boiled peanuts taste and sweet water from a real artesian well. I missed the incomparable softness of a Southern night with stars so bright as to make you breathless and drifts of honeysuckle and sweet olive floating through the air. I was, in a word, homesick. For the South. SHANE HILL ~ Growing up, I never understood what it meant when my granddad said, “It smells like two cats a’fightin” (when something smelled really bad). One day I used that expression in front of a friend. She died laughing and asked me, “Do you know what that means?” I said, “No. I just always heard my granddad say it.” She then explained that when two Tom cats fight over a female, they spray each other, among other odorous things they do to one another. All those years I’d never understood the reference. Now I do! ~~~ Selected Stories from the Archives Will & Jamie Jacks ~ A. Gilbert-Yazdani ~ David Davis ~ Dave Hovey ~ Jim Hester ~ Jo McDivitt ~ Billy Tom Lusk ~ Don Drane ~ Ellis Theater memories ~ Eddie Draper ~ James Lutzweiler ~ Lonnye Sue Pearson Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Click here! ~Southern Speak~ WUDDIN ~wasn't~ Wuddin that bride over in Sunflower County in the family way? For more great Southern expressions, please click here. @2001 ~ 2007 All Rights Reserved Best viewed on IE Updated Sept/07

~Fall '07 Featured Articles~ _________________________ Granny Does The Shoshone by Beth Boswell Jacks Getting to the Bottom of Things by Bill Fullerton The Train They Call 'The City of New Orleans' by Chuck Jones Asthma by Mike Reed Memories of Jody and Josie by Peggy Wright My Mother's Hands and Smiley Knees by Lisa Christie Boone Remote Control ~ Reincarnated by Richelle Putnam Juicing Bovines by Newt Harlan 'Dead Man's Bones' book review by Augusta R. Scattergood Cub Scouts & Bad Tenderfoot by Charles W. Dowdy Staying Cool in the Delta, 1940's by Jim Harrison Life At Windhams by Asa Sparks The D Word by Jo McDivitt Laundry Day by Gail Livesay The Regular Ann by Ann Ipock Two Charley Stories by David Norris The Greatest Generation by Jackie Cooper Iron is a Four-Letter Word by Bettye R. Gibson Mother Goose and Me by Walter Jackson Pa and the Coyote by Annie Taylor Fish Fry by Thom Bowie Poems by Sandi Keaton-Wilson Ol' Red and Me by Anne McKee Mama's Spaghetti & Meatballs by Ralph Gordon Remember All of Love by Phil Bratcher One More Time by Jane-Ann Heitmueller Bulldogs and Strays! by Ray Maxie Two Poems by Carolyn Bertram-Arnold Heritage! by Janice Harris Battle of the Sexes by Arnold Dyre Harkins Bakery by Gilda Griffith Brown Treasures in the Smokies by Maxine Sommers The Last Hunt by Robert S. Lumsden Southern Cooking Makes A Difference by Shirley Keller Age of Convenience by Kent Fletcher Summer Vacation-1967 by Michael Gafford Musings on Retirement by W. Lee Lewis Country Living by C. W. Hardeman Ginning Cotton by Tom Givens The School Bus That Spit Fire by Peggy Wright Make A Joyful Noise! by Alita DeBerry Sic the Goats on Your Kudzu by Gene Owens Wedding Song by Gilda Griffith Brown

Southern stories, humor, travel, news, links, poetry, personal essays, memoirs, and lots more. No bells and whistles, just good reading. Best viewed with IE.