Past Is Prologue
In the South, Beautiful Things Have a Terrible Past
Hundreds of years from now, how will the story of this time in the United States be told?
As a kid, road trips were marked by dog slobber and historical markers.
We had an ’83 Jeep Cherokee with no heat and no air conditioning. The winters were fine in that car, but the summers were pure hell. Oberon, our Great Dane, would lean his massive head over my shoulder, his drool sliding in long shimmering strings down the back of the seat, pooling by my legs, and sticking my thighs to the vinyl.
We lived in the country, and I spent my elementary school years carsick as we drove up and down mountain roads, gravel spitting out from the wheels and rattling against the undercarriage. I was grateful for the frequent stops we made when my mother saw metal historical markers on the side of the road. My parents would get out and read the sign, my brother would barely glance up from his comic book, and I would puke into the pretty orange daylilies growing in the ditch.
My mother was, and still is, the smartest person I know. She worked a while as a waitress. But when the restaurant began requiring her to offer chilled forks to customers, she decided it was a rule too pretentious to…
