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Surviving a late Southern Summer
I know a Good Story / August 23, 2016

No one does the end of summer quite like the South.  The prairie states may be wilting under the furnace-blast of the sun, California may actually be on fire, (It seems to burn up every year) but for the last word in late summer misery, look below the Mason-Dixon line.  Here, the outdoors is a cauldron of heat and humidity sufficient to make snakes seek the comfort of air conditioning and lacquer the porch with mold.  It’s impossible to sleep when the air-conditioning fails, and HVAC repairmen are worth their weight in gold (a rate reflected in their bills). But the thing is, Southerners don’t complain about the heat.  In an interesting way, they relish it. It’s one of the things that makes this place so distinctive and it certainly fuels our art.  The endless, draining summers stew the atmosphere  of Southern literature so tragedies and harsh truths emerge.  Before August ends, pick up at one or two more tales about the South and enjoy the benefits of an omnipresent, overwhelming Summer. Always In August was one of my mother’s books and the title says it all.  There’s the usual ” ‘ole Southern family” with the “ole family place” (a…