All the talk about “no red states and no blue states, only the United States” sounds nice but the reality is that it’s little more than lofty language. There is indeed a widening schism in this nation and those of us trapped in locales dominated by "the other side" can attest… Read full post »

It’s such a shame. April’s a great month for which I had better hopes. It joins October as arguably the two best months, culturally and meteorologically, to be on the central Gulf Coast. There is more to do, and the weather more conducive to it, than anytime else on the calendar.… Read full post »

The conclusion of 

Animal parts and broken hearts

Fast food entrepreneur Paul Leverett had everything he desired on the Alabama coast, except the absence of his long-abused wife, Elizabeth. He hired someone to solve that problem and detained the children on errands one afternoon...

&nb… Read full post »

Animal parts and broken hearts 

The regret lives in the survivors, the pain is on the pages.

“We were only three years apart,” Dot George said of her sister as she leafed through a spiral notebook, its yellow cover now dog-eared and aged. “We were real close.”

Almost… Read full post »

The conclusion of  

Arch Enemies 

When Wilbur Williams left the ground in Mobile, he left a world of certainty behind.

The 25-year-old policeman was bound for Shreveport, La., in connection with a stolen car report he filed two months previous, in October of 1973.… Read full post »

Note: I wrote this last year and was reminded of it by a post from Harry Homeless earlier today. Thought it might work as a sort of companion piece to help put faces with the situation. It helps to note the target audience of the periodical that published it are mostly conservative, firmly… Read full post »

Arch Enemies

Southern memories endure. Like tufts of Spanish moss clinging in the crooks of the mind, they are flimsy things that inexplicably persist.

So even after all these years, how could he forget? How could Wilbur Williams disregard the stolen car that led him on… Read full post »

New blood, old power  

Sleepy little Mobile wasn’t Atlanta, but it had just enough to suit Henry Ewald. The weather was balmy, the winters mild and the indiscretions easily concealed.

In 1929, 28-year-old Ewald was the Associated Press’ feature editor in Atlanta. It wa… Read full post »

For the last few years, I've written for an alternative newspaper in Mobile, Alabama and over that time have penned a locally popular series of stories on notorious murders and various iniquities. I've pondered assembling them into a book that would tentatively be titled: "Petal Blight and Root… Read full post »

Not this again. Every year, St. Patrick’s Day comes. Every year it dredges up my disgust.

The epicenter of Mobile's celebration is at Callaghan’s Irish Pub, a clapboard joint in a historic neighborhood. No longer owned by the namesake clan, the current proprietor is a good enough… Read full post »

"How many thousands nobodies there are whom Fame blows up to importance and authority. Heaven bless the man whose splendid reputation is based on truth; but when it lives by lies, I am not deceived; Fame hides an empty fabric of pretense and luck."

-Andromache to Menelaus.

Euripides, Andromache 320&… Read full post »

Note: this originally appeared as a response to a post by Harry Homeless regarding police harassment in Texas. 

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In 1996, my girlfriend and I were returning to coastal Alabama from a trip west, staying with friends in Sacramento for a week and with other friends in Los Angeles after tha… Read full post »

When was my “brush with death?” 

Was it when I ran a 104-degree temperature as a child, the hours of boiling hallucinations and possible brain damage? 

Was it when that other kid held the knife to my throat? I’m still not sure he would have used it but I'd… Read full post »

It seems you’ve just got to pick and choose. Often to make the day-to-day bearable; other times to make existence possible.

Take Bob, for instance.

I knew Bob throughout college. We were very good friends, he and I.

Bob was a Marine, but no stereotypical “jarhead.”… Read full post »

Sometimes things are just as they seem while still being more complex than appearances suggest. 

Alabama’s sole entrant in the inaugural parade of Pres. Barack Obama is a group of 50 teenaged girls from Mobile, Ala., the 300-year old town’s Azalea Trail Maids. Quickly after sele… Read full post »

For years, I made a living as a cook. I discovered in that time that the secret to crafting a memorable dish was in the sauces, concoctions that could change the mundane to the magical.

If you needed more flavor in a sauce, the solution was simple: reduction. It… Read full post »