Category Archives: Dixie
Evolution Embraced in Dixie
Cultural evolution will have to suffice for the present. The southern Atlantic seaboard is a remarkable sight to behold this morning. Barack Obama has demonstrated his broad appeal from the outskirts of DC, through the Carolinas and Georgia, all the way to Key West. This is certainly a sign of a broad nationwide appeal, largely [...]
Ty Cobb: All-American
Baseball “historian” Daniel Okrent righteously denounced American icon and baseball great Ty Cobb in Ken Burns’ Baseball miniseries: “Cobb is the great black mark on the history of baseball … he was a man of vile temperament and vile habit … I think that Ty Cobb in his totality is an embarrassment to baseball.” —Third [...]
Curt Flood: American Hero
He could have contented himself with stardom, but he had to go out and try to break the last great American monopoly, Major League Baseball. “I am pleased that God made my skin black — but I wish He had made it thicker.” —Curt Flood As a kid I was, for some mysterious reason, a [...]
The Two Souths
We had moved to South Carolina or South Africa four times by the time I turned fifteen. During those four stints, we lived in seven different towns. The principal motive for all this motion was to participate in mass conversion of Blacks to the Bahá’í Faith. Mass conversion wasn’t just something that we were drawn [...]
Born free
Dad’s blind, so it shouldn’t surprise anybody that he never was much for playing catch or bicycling with the kids, but you’d be surprised what he was willing to try on occasion. Of course, if you’d like to wrestle, he’d always be happy to take you on. As for Mom, she worked, of course. She [...]
King of the World
The Bahá’í Faith drove many of the big decisions in our family, and I’m certain that much of Mom and Dad’s time was dedicated to the Faith, yet I can’t remember much, if anything, about the Bahá’í Faith from our time in Walterboro. Maybe I was too young to be involved in all that. I [...]
My Black Catholic Heritage
There is a community just outside of Walterboro, South Carolina, known informally as “Catholic Hill”, with a remarkable history. Back in 1856, well before Emancipation, a Catholic church building burned down. The white membership disbanded, leaving the parish, for all practical purposes, defunct. St. James the Greater Source: The Catholic Diocese of Charleston Fast forward [...]
Ruffin It
Our life of excess and extravagance could not last forever. In the wink of an eye, we packed up and left the Hotel Jericho for a little track-side house in the hamlet of Ruffin, which is little more than a railroad crossing on the Lowcountry Highway. Our new house did have its luxuries. I remember [...]
Hotel Jericho
Old Jacksonboro Road crosses the Savannah Highway within a half hour of Charleston. The name for this intersection is Jericho. Today it is considered part of the town of Adams Run. Source: South Carolina Department of Archives and History Jericho was once the site of a hotel, a post office, and a store with gas [...]
Just call me Bubba
Last weekend, we finally cracked and gave Bubba Gump a try. I can’t think of a more cynical Hollywood spinoff, but we were hungry, and the Aquarium restaurant was stuffed. Bubba’s food was not bad. The kids actually ate—there’s something to blog home about. What struck me was one of the myriad bits of nostalgia: [...]