Our Southern Souls: Southern Sisters, Fentanyl, and Sweet Potatoes

Welcome to Our Southern Souls Sunday. I’m glad you’re here. This week’s stories are about friendship, fentanyl, sweet potatoes, and saving memories.

“We’re starting to celebrate our seventieth year. Age catches up with you, but we still look good. Always take better care of yourself and use cream on your whole body. Religiously.”

Click here to read the Southern Sisters story

After the funeral, Kelley found the journal Skyelar used in a therapy exercise while she was in jail. There was a letter to Kelley that Skyelar never intended her to see. She wrote, “I know you want to know why I use drugs,” and explained that she felt worthless, but the drugs were like a warm hug.

“There aren’t any problems. It feels good’.”

Kelley was shocked the first time she read the journal but began to understand that Skyelar didn’t want to die; she just wanted to feel better.

Click here to readnKelley and Skyelar’s story

Flashback

It’s potato-picking season in Baldwin County, Alabama. Today, guys on a machine work each field quickly. In and out. But In 2016, I watched teams pick sweet potatoes by hand: filling up their buckets, dumping them into a school bus converted into a truck, then running back to their row. And doing it again and again. It took several days to pick one field. I finally got up the nerve to walk into the field to interview them for Souls and learn more about their work and lives.

“We have picked over 3,000 potatoes from this field. There are about 70 acres. We make 40 cents a bucket and each person picks about 240 buckets a day.”

Click here to read the picker’s story

Click here for a video I took of the potato pickers at work after our interview.

From Lynn

Over the next few months, I want to have more conversation with folks in their eighties, nineties, and over a hundred. We have so much to learn from people who were born during through the first half half of the twentieth century and need to save and share their stories. More importantly, they need to know they have stories worth telling. Send me suggestions of people in Mississippi and Alabama I should talk to, and I’ll try to get as many as I can. I’m also encouraging each of you to sit down with your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and neighbors of this age and record their stories while they are still here and can remember them. One day it will be too late. I missed the chance to do this with my mother before dementia erased her memories, but I record my dad every chance I get.

Ask about favorite Christmas gifts, first jobs, fears when they were kids, a challenge they had to overcome, what they miss about their mom/dad, who were they named after, a memory from a favorite vacation or day off. You can also ask them what became clearer as they got older or what they are struggling with right now.

Thank you for sharing a part of your Sunday with Souls. If you have suggestions for folks I should talk to, email me at [email protected].  Have a great week!

If you know someone who would enjoy Our Southern Souls Sunday forward them this newsletter and ask them to hit the subscribe button.