The Cult of True Womanhood

Piety, Purity, Submission, Domesticity.
(Do the proper, submissive, pure, pious thing and order a copy of W. Jeff Bishop's A Cold Coming.)

Birth and Death

A Cold Coming: GUARANTEED to be shorter in duration than D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation."

Gooble Gobble One of Us?

A Cold Coming -- this month. Gooble Gobble.

A Drunkard at 15

"Woodrow went after his daddy, Victor, who was my uncle, my daddy's brother. Woodrow Latham was a drunkard before he was 15 years old. And he would get dead drunk and he would come over to Uncle Paul’s house, Paul Jones, who lived on Eaves Bridge Road, and he’d beg Uncle Paul for a drink of whiskey. Now Uncle Paul always kept a jar of whiskey and I don’t know when he ever took a sip of it because I never smelled it on his breath as I knew of. And maybe his mother, my grandmother, Cora, would take a swallow sometimes. Well, I don’t know whether we, one of us, had told Woodrow that Uncle Paul had whiskey and he come by begging for a drink of Uncle Paul’s whiskey. And Uncle Paul wouldn’t even pay any attention to him. And he’d follow Uncle Paul around, up to the barn and about, and keep begging him until finally he’d go to sleep. Woodrow would crawl up under Uncle Paul's house and go to sleep. And Mr. Ayers lived just a little ways away from Uncle Paul. And he was a bailiff in the community. So Uncle Paul would go to Mr. Ayers and say, 'You’d better drag that boy out of there and take him and put him up until he sobers up.' And of course Uncle Victor appreciated that. Mr. Ayers would take him down to Buchanan and put him in jail. They’d charge him with disturbing the public, you know, and making such a show, a drunken guy. They’d charge him for it and make him serve time for it. But all they did, they’d take him over to Felton where they had a little hoose-gow over there. A little boarded-up place. And I think it belonged to a man by the name of Griffith. The county took it and made it where they could keep a guy that was drunk until he sobered up then turn him loose and let him go back home. O. B. Leatherwood was another one. O. B. Leatherwood got drunk and into a fight then crawled into a storm cellar out there just a little ways from Felton High, a farm cellar. They didn’t find him until they began to smell him. I remember that real well." -- T.J. Latham
Get drunk on A Cold Coming tonight. But maybe not that drunk.

Thinking

"The Southerner is ungiven to reflection. Thinking involves unpleasant realities, unsavory conclusions; and, happily, there is no need for it, since, as everything is arranged by God, there is nothing to think about." -- W.J. Cash, "The Mind of the South," from The American Mercury, October, 1929.
Everything is indeed arranged by God. There is nothing to think about. Purchase A Cold Coming.

Thomas Jefferson Contends:

In the North they are cool,
In the South they are fiery.

In the North they are sober,
In the South they are Voluptuary.

In the North they are laborious,
In the South they are indolent.

In the North they are persevering,
In the South they are unsteady.

In the North they are independent,
In the South they are independent.

In the North they are jealous of their own liberties, and just to those of others;
In the South they are zealous for their own liberties. but trampling on those of others.

In the North they are interested,
In the South they are generous.

In the North they are chicaning,
In the South they are candid.

In the North they are superstitious and hypocritical in their religion,
In the South they are without attachments or pretensions to any religion but that of the heart.

In the North they are reading A Cold Coming,
In the South they are reading A Cold Coming.

Zoose-ing the Buttermilk

"Mom, Lois Jones Latham, was a wonderful caretaker. She had a bit of nostalgia craving about her. If there was anything antique or ancient, it didn’t make any difference what it was, she wanted it. And if she could get it, she’d get it. That’s right, she was just one of those kids.
"She got my dad and they went up to Old Man Pink Cook’s place. His property joined her mother’s property. And her mother’s property joined our property. Old Man Pink Cook died and he had a wooden kitchen table, and that thing, I bet it reached from that wall almost down here to this bar. And it was just wide enough that you could sit and here and reach about the length of this. All the way across it. And there was a bench that was made in the wall over there. And that table sat right up against that bench. And Mama got Daddy to buy that thing when Mr. Cook died and she bought it and put it in our kitchen. and she had a big wooden table. Seems like it was pretty nice table. She always had it covered with oil cloth. But it was just made out of regular I think it was 1 x 8 or 1 x 10 plans. But this thing, if I remember right, it had two by fours that laid flat and plain. And I don’t know if they filled those cracks or what. But it was polished. I mean, it was just as slick as glass. And the legs were that big around on it. Big old legs on it. And I remember pulling my chair up and getting me a big glass of buttermilk and a big piece of cornbread and I was crumbling that bread up in that milk, and I turned it over and it went all the way across the table and went into my older sister Eloise’s lap. Eloise was sitting over there. And you know I come the nearest to getting a real good thrashing for that. My dad was sitting down here at the end of the table. I think what I did was I reached over like that maybe to get more cornbread or maybe to get a piece of onion. Piece of tomato or something or other. And it kicked that glass over. And that buttermilk just zoosed across the table. I’ll remember that as long as I live. And you know what? Mother scrubbed that table for three or four days. To get that white powder of that buttermilk out of those little pores that was left in the table." -- T.J. Latham



Zoose more buttermilk and cornbread with W. Jeff Bishop's A Cold Coming.