But how could we sing a song of the LORD
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget.
May my tongue stick to my palate
if I do not remember you,
If I do not exalt Jerusalem
beyond all my delights.
-Psalm 137
And you ain't just whistlin' Dixie You ain't just slappin' your knee I'm a grandson of the Southland An heir to the Confederacy
You ain't just whistlin' Dixie 'Cause the cattle call's callin' me home So put me down there where I wanna be Plant my feet with Robert E. Lee Bury my bones under a cypress tree And never let me roam
-The Bellamy Brothers
A phone conversation with another lawyer, one I've known for decades and love like an eccentric old uncle, began unexpectedly with a warning.
"I read your blog every now and then for entertainment. But I've got to tell you, you need to quit talking trash about the South, or we're gonna run your ass out of town."
That stung a little, but rather than getting my feelings hurt I figured I'd take this as a moment for discernment and self-reflection.
It's true I've been pretty hard on that part of the world over the last year or two. The events of the MAGA era, culminating in the catastrophes of the pandemic and the storming of the Capitol, and my neighbors' embrace of what strikes me as a stew of divisive, cynical hypocrisy have at times caused me to betray my own stoic principles by letting myself become enraged. Nothing good comes of that, and it's on me not them.
Why the anger, rather than the disengaged befuddlement my northern friends show at anti-vaxxers or atavistic racial and gender attitudes that become law and policy in that corner of the country?
Well, Donk, you sort of answered your own question. "Disengaged" isn't an accurate descriptor of my relationship with the South, even as I spend a little more time here in the New York hills.
Half of my bloodline goes back nearly 200 years in north Mississippi, and before that we were in Tennessee and South Carolina. At least two of my ancestors served in the Confederate Army--one was killed at Shiloh, and one rode with none other than Nathan Bedford Forrest, later the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, shooting at Yankees within a few miles of the land my family farmed. I probably have Yankee ancestors who fought for the other side, with my Pennsylvania heritage and all. It just never seemed worth finding out.
Before I came to Panama City, the longest I ever lived in one place was for nearly five years in Atlanta during elementary school. As Dad's career sent us cross-country as nomads after that, my Georgia drawl marked me as different, and I cleaved to that identity like a lifeline for a kid who was never really from anywhere. I got the snot beat out of me after school one day outside Nelson Elementary School in Tustin, California, after having the temerity to be the only kid in class to raise his hand when my fifth grade teacher asked the ridiculous question of whether anyone thought the South was right in the Civil War. A half dozen kids descended on me as a "racist" and a "klansman" for believing those things.
My accent has faded over time, but for most of my life I had a twang that was a source of amusement to my classmates and, it seemed, of attraction to the young ladies. I was a novelty, if nothing else, this Southerner abiding in the desert. And it was a great advantage throughout my life in those places that the natives often assumed I was stupid because of the way I spoke. That's right, friend. Just a hayseed from Cobb County. Won't be any competition with you on that test or college application. Just keep believing that, bless your heart.
Later when I was back in California for college, after a time in Texas, you could find me at the dorm parties howling next to the record player, joining Lowell George and Little Feat in singing my longing for Atlanta.
You can drop me off on Peachtree
I've got to feel that Georgia sun . . .
I wish I was home, home, home . .
Oh Atlanta
I've got to get back to you
When it came time to go to pilot training, a few eyes rolled when I eschewed the dusty, cloudless bases where most of my classmates went to UPT, asking instead for Columbus AFB, Mississippi. I wanted to be back with my people, and the base was close enough to Water Valley that I could fly a T-38 right over town and up Highway 7 until I saw Cousin Butch's new tin roof on his log house and figured Aunt Alice was probably standing on the front porch with Uncle Happy watching me fly that aileron roll.
Then there was the long season in Panama City, raising three boys there, helping run the Kiwanis Club and a food bank and serving as president of the local orchestra. And trying lots of cases all over the panhandle, getting to know folks intimately, getting to know their hopes and worries and how they lived and died because that's what you do if you want to be effective as a lawyer. Oddly enough, given the acrimonious nature of the profession, it can't be practiced effectively without love for the people whose lives you touch, whether it's in a deposition or while they're watching you from the jury box.
So I guess the reason I've had trouble abiding with the badness I've observed lately is disappointment, to a degree. It's like finding out the beautiful woman you've fantasized about loving forever has developed a flatulence problem, and is so proud of it she's bought you and her matching t-shirts stating we both "fart proudly." That's MAGA in a nutshell. A part of my identity, a story I told myself from the time I was five about my heritage and home, has died along the way, or at least it's gravely ill. Who am I without that Southerner-in-exile narrative? And how does one go home, how does one practice law with love and empathy, knowing what we now know about each other in this unfortunate political moment?
Of course, it's a gross overgeneralization to suggest the South has become a monolith of fire-breathing reactionaries. It's also full of folks who walk a different path, unapologetically. The Bitter Southerner, one of my favorite online reading resources, is filled with them.
And rather than getting angry at all the folly, maybe I should spend a little more time trying to understand why the other crowd feels as they do, obviously anxious and threatened as they try to sweep back the tide of history with a broom. Being a decent mediator has always meant trying to build an empathetic connection with people whose thinking and feeling are radically different from my own. Why not give my neighbors the same benefit?
Okay, I'm done talking to myself. Less politics here for the time being. More sweet tea and fresh peaches and tomatoes, more long afternoons on the screen porch, more of what makes it so hard for those of us who grew up with those things ever to let go of them, no matter how long or far we roam.
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