Julia Sugarbaker's South...

Thunderstorm!

"The bottom just dropped out!" That's the way Mama would say it, when it came a big thunderstorm. "It rained like all get-out!" I don't know where she got that saying. Appalachian people never say a thing plain when they can embellish the words. The rain on our tin roof sounds like a loud roar, but wonderful in this time of drought. This kind of thunderstorm usually comes in the summertime. It rages and roars and the lightning flashes, wild. There's no fear ~ it's not a tornado. (We get tornadoes in spring.) I don't dread a storm. I love it!

Thunderstorms make me think of Huckleberry Finn, and the wonderful way that Twain describes the thunderstorms on Jackson's Island, when "it rained like all fury," and it "would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby." (Chapter IX)

We get the most wonderful thunderstorms in North Georgia, and flash floods that cause the mountain ravines to resound with crashing water. Our storm came quickly, dumped buckets of water on us, and faded quietly, as quickly as it came. Now there's just the soothing sound of raindrops and the glad knowledge that Muskrat Creek, all summer-dry and stagnant, will once again echo through these cobalt blue hills.

Mason Jars in the Flood

I just got hold of a new book of short stories: Mason Jars in the Flood and Other Stories (by Gary Carden). I've read quite a few of the stories in just the few days I've had the book. It's an easy read. The stories are very homey ~ just what you'd like ~ no pretense. They bill the author as a Southern Garrison Keillor, and that's an apt description. The stories are nostalgic without being overly sentimental, and you really get the flavor of Southern speech. By that, I don't mean dialect ~ you don't stumble over the words. There are times when he uses a homonym in place of the actual term, and that might throw off someone from out of town... he uses it in a casual way, to simulate the dialect ~ not in error (or so I presume).

The names alone gave me an old-home feeling: Sizemore, Ridley, Hoyt... and the nicknames are a treat. If you grew up among gossiping old grannys who have a strange, dark outlook on life and dignified, wiry old men in overalls, or fellows named "Bubba" and "Boone," this book will take you right back home...