Column: Appreciating the South after toting my bags up North
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Roll on, Mississippi
W. Ralph Eubanks considers the literature, landscape, and legacy of the Magnolia State in âA Place Like Mississippi.â
photograph by w. ralph eubanks
âOn these Mississippi roads, the past and the present exist side by side. The past is there for all to see, yet perhaps is only noticeable to those who still remember it. Perhaps it is not the past Mississippi is losing on this landscape. Instead we are witnessing how the past and future are slowly becoming knitted together into one seamless garment.â â W. Ralph Eubanks, A Place Like Mississippi
From a Yazoo City cemetery to Rowan Oak, on the banks of the Mississippi River and in the shade-dappled heart of Piney Woods, on the paper-scented shelves of Square Books and the sun-blasted dirt of the Delta, author W. Ralph Eubanks has searched for â and found â Mississippi. The author has confronted its myths and its most mundane realities, sought out its soul in story and song. The r
Ashley to her husband, in Junebug
There was a time when young men and women in fiction went to big cities, seeking victory. Now they return to small towns, escaping defeat. Lonesome Jim follows, for example, Winter Passing, Elizabethtown and Garden State. These movies tell us the big city will crush you, but your hometown is a center of depression, weirdness and parents near madness. It s risky even when you only visit, as in Junebug.
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These movies are not bad; they range from good to great. But they dramatize a disintegration of native American optimism. You can t make it there, and you can t make it anywhere. Consider Lonesome Jim (Casey Affleck). He went to New York City to be a great writer, although his choice of role models sends up an ominous signal; the photos on the wall of his childhood bedroom, he explains, show victims of alcohol, drugs or suicide, sometimes all three. He ought to have an alternative wall for modern writers who are successf
When I was one year out of college, I said goodbye to my small-town newspaper job, packed my bags, and toted them to Washington, D.C.
Literally, I toted them. Though the word âliterally is almost 100 percent overused in todayâs language, it hits the bullâs-eye in this story. In those days, luggage didnât have wheels. My luggage was a deep, vibrant pink set of Samsonite, which I had been collecting as gifts since the seventh grade. One of the pieces was a beauty case with a tray to section off cosmetics.
I still have it.
A year or so later, I traveled west from Washington to Indianapolis, Ind., for two years of the worst winter weather I had ever seen. The skies were gray and dreary from November to April. During the harshest months, it took me 30 minutes to clear the snow and ice from the windshield. Then I would drive the 8 miles to my office with bags of rock salt in the trunk. The weight held down the rear end of my Camaro and kept it from sliding.
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