Our Southern Souls Sunday: Food, Floods, and a Guitar

Welcome to Our Southern Souls Sunday. Thank you for being a part of getting our newsletter going. This week’s stories are about family, music, floods, and neighbors.

“I met Robert in first grade at Point Clear School. He was in the second grade, and I liked him from the beginning. Thought he was the coolest dude there ever was, but he didn’t like girls. His family moved away. I didn't see Robert again until tenth grade at Fairhope High School. He ran into me, knocking my books out of my hands. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh.’  Soon after that, I read about him in the newspaper. He had been in a car wreck that tore his heart loose; he wasn’t supposed to live. My sister-in-law took me to the hospital in Mobile to see him one more time; they wouldn't let me in.”

Click here to read Bob and Irene’s story

“This is the first guitar I ever bought. Paid for it with one of my first oil field paychecks but never played it. I walked by that guitar one day after I was laid off and thought, ‘I spent way too much money for that thing to not know how to play it.’ I taught myself with internet videos. Sometimes I play at the Fairhope pier at sunset; people seem to enjoy it. I like to play Tyler Childers’ songs. I get told I look like him. That and Hank Williams, Jr. before he fell off the mountain.”

Click here to read Jesse’s story

Click here for a video of Jesse playing “I Can’t Promise You a Tear Won’t Fall”  

“I was up late when I thought of the line ‘I can’t promise you a tear won’t fall.’ I wrote it down and eventually drug out the rest of the song.”

Flashback

In August 2016, South Louisiana experienced a devastating flood when a slow-moving system poured over twenty inches of rain in three days. I saw my friend in Denham Springs sharing posts about the crisis, trying to draw attention to the area. I had been doing Souls for less than a year, but went to Denham Springs to help raise awareness. It was my first experience covering a community affected by a natural disaster. I walked through neighborhoods and listened to people’s stories as they hauled their soggy belongings to the curb. With no other help in sight, they were left to support each other. I learned here that the worst times bring out the best in people.

I can’t find the names of the men in these stories, but it was good to read their words and see their faces one more time.

“I live eight miles away from here and came over to help. For two days, there was flood porn on local TV, and I couldn’t watch it. During Katrina I helped clean out the charity hospital, and we had to pump out the morgue. The smell was so bad, we wadded up our cigarette butts and put them in our nose.”

Click here to read the story

“The rain came down so hard that it felt like someone was dumping buckets of water. It kept on like that and sounded like hail on my roof. I live alone. My neighbor called me about 7 a.m. and told me to get out. People were wading out of their houses. Everyone was stunned and didn’t know what to do.”

Click here to read the story

From Lynn

We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when, we are convinced, our lives will start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well adjusted, as some days are, with the right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light breeze perfumed from the mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.

From “The Life of a Day” by Tom Hennen” (one of my favorite poems)

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!

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