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Vol. 20, No. 4: Winter 2014

  //  winter 2014

The Winter 2014 Issue brings us duels and Dashboard Poets, eels and faux villages, a beloved television icon, interviews with liberal hero Walter Mondale and conservative activist Jack Kershaw, Civil War battlefield monuments, and more. From familiar faces and famous legends to humble commemorations and invented histories, we explore the tensions between preservation and progress that have forged the region as we know it.

Table of Contents
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Front Porch: Winter 2014

by Jocelyn R. Neal
“Rivers take us back into history, sometimes literally, as the mighty Colorado has laid out the past in the rocky strata of the Grand Canyon. But elsewhere, that time-travel is sparked in the imagination.” One hundred and thirty years ago, Huckleberry Finn’s wild adventures on the Mississippi River first entered our imaginations, made all the »
Politics

The Cane of His Existence: Depression, Damage, and the Brooks–Sumner Affair

by Stephen Berry, James Hill Welborn III
“He had acted so precipitously so often in affairs of honor, and it had won him only paternal disapproval and a cane, a limp, and ignominy in Mexico. Now he had righted the ship; he had become a man of greater moderation and restraint.” Looking out across the scorched strand from atop one of the »
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“The First of Our Hundred Battle Monuments”: Civil War Battlefield Monuments Built by Active-Duty Soldiers During the Civil War

by Michael W. Panhorst
“These wartime memorials represent the earliest efforts to [illuminate] the sentiments of soldiers who memorialized their very recently fallen comrades and the heroic events of the war on the very ground where the historic actions occurred.” The New York Times was wrong in more than one respect when it heralded the dedication of two monuments »
Essay

There Goes Old Gomer

Rural Comedy, Public Persona, and the Wavering Line Between Fiction and Reality

by Sara K. Eskridge
“‘A mother and a little boy were walking along, and I could tell the minute the recognition hit the little boy,’ Nabors told the LA Times. ‘As he walked by holding his mother’s hand, he said in a real loud voice, ‘Look, Mother. There goes an old Gomer Pyle!'” Walking through Chicago’s O’Hare airport, Jim »
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The Faux History of The Villages, Florida

by Amanda M. Brian
“A founding family? Check. A harmless eccentric? Check. A local folktale? Yes, see ‘The Legend of Bocephus’ explained on Lake Sumter’s boardwalk.” The Villages, a planned retirement community, lies about an hour’s drive northwest of Orlando in the lake-studded landscape of central Florida. Imagine one of its community members—a Villager—enjoying a stroll on a warm »
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“The Duality of the Southern Thing”: A Snapshot of Southern Politics in the Twenty-First Century

by Angie Maxwell
“When real representational samples of African Americans and Latinos are included—and the default assumption of ‘southern’ as white is challenged—there are very few differences of note between the South and the rest of America.” In 2001 the talented up-and-coming rock band Drive-By Truckers released Southern Rock Opera, a critically acclaimed album that was produced only »

Dashboard Poet: Roger Miller

by Brian Carpenter
He who lives by the song shall die by the road. —Roger Miller (1) Even before he became the “King of the Road,” Roger Miller reigned as the undisputed king of the dashboard poets. By his own recollection, he composed his first solo hit, “You Don’t Want My Love,” on the road from Fort Worth »
Food

Eels for Winter

by Bernard L. Herman
Part I Eels rolled in crushed black pepper and chopped parsley cook in the smoker. Four more culled from the twenty or more in my eel pots chill on ice awaiting the same culinary fate. It’s September and winter holidays start early around here, and smoked eel is a part of the celebration. I always »
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The Coal Miner’s Wife: A Letter

by Joseph Bathanti
“my father, as yours, deep in the pit, my mother silent as plums . . . “ (as Ezra Pound’s adaptation, from the Chinese,of Li Po’s “The River-Merchant’s Wife, A Letter”)“Southern women have alabaster skin.” —Li Po We were from the same town, Cowen,along the Gauley, WebsterCounty—church, twice of Sunday,Wednesday evening prayer meeting.
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