Georgialina

Georgialina

A Southland as We Knew It

  • Author: Poland, Tom
  • Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
  • ISBN: 9781611175943
  • eISBN Pdf: 9781611175950
  • eISBN Epub: 9781611175950
  • Place of publication:  South Carolina , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2015
  • Month: November
  • Language: English

Veteran journalist and southern storyteller Tom Poland has been writing about the disappearing rural South for nearly four decades. With a companionable appreciation for nostalgia, preservation, humor, and wonder, Georgialina: A Southland as We Knew It brings to life once more the fading and often-forgotten unfiltered character of the South as Poland takes readers down back roads to old homeplaces, covered bridges, and country stores. He recalls hunting for snipes and for lost Confederate gold; the joys of beach music, the shag, and cruising Ocean Drive; and the fading traditions of sweeping yards with homemade brooms, funeral processions, calling catfish, and other customs of southern heritage and history. Peppered with candid memoir, Georgialina also introduces readers to a host of quirky and memorable characters who have populated the southland of Poland's meanderings.

As commercialization, homogenization, and relocation have slowly altered distinctive regions of the country, making all places increasingly similar, southern traditions have proven to be more resilient than most. But Poland notes that many elements that once defined day-to-day life in the South are now completely foreign to contemporary generations. Set primarily in Poland's native Georgia and adopted home of South Carolina, his tales of bygone times resonate across a recognizably southern landscape and faithfully recall the regional history and lore that have defined the South for generations as a place uniquely its own for natives, newcomers, and visitors.

  • Cover
  • Contents
  • A SENSE OF PLACE, A SENSE OF LOSS
  • FORGOTTEN BY TIME
    • A Church Full of Wasps
    • The Joggling Board
    • When People Swept Yards
    • White Lightning
    • Genuine Corn Bread and Greens
    • Ghost Towns
  • OLD WAYS
    • Do Boys Still Follow Men Afield?
    • Telephoning Fish
    • Hunting on Horseback
    • Family Farms Melt Away
    • Closed at Noon Wednesdays
    • Vanquished Ways
  • A LAND TRANSFORMED
    • Atomic Paradise
    • Kudzu Eats the South
    • The Last Dirt Road
    • Along the Dune Line
    • Carolina Gold
    • For the Birds
    • Fire Towers and Windmills
  • LEGENDS, VOODOO, AND MAYHEM
    • The Goat Man
    • Black Magic
    • How a Mule Kick Killed Eight People
    • Tenant Homes
    • Country Stores
    • Covered Bridges
  • SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
    • The Summer of 1967
    • The Sad Ballad of Moses Corley
    • Now Loading in Track Two
    • Lincoln Street
    • Sacred Earth
    • The Colonel’s Camellias
  • RECOLLECTION
    • The Small-Town Weekly
    • Magic Was in the Air
    • Remembering Danburg
    • Beating the Heat
    • The Great Depression’s Long Shadow
    • We Called Him Kilgo
  • THE ENDURING, ENDEARING SOUTH
    • The Chattooga
    • Hite’s Down-Home BBQ
    • Anthony Shoals Lives On
    • The Old South
    • The Seat of Power
    • Down by the Sweetgrass Highway
    • We’re Going to Camp
  • AFTERWORD: THE OLD HOME PLACE

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