The Istoriaphile’s Corner

I think things are headed towards Spring.  That sounds crazy after last week’s snow storm, but Saturday the sun was pouring down like paint over the Sherwin Williams globe and there was a warmth in the light I hadn’t felt since September.  The sunlight is life here in the Deep South and it’s a birthright we’ve come to expect like warm food and good stories.  There’s a lot about this land that’s cringe-inducing but not our warmth and not our stories.  Like the land, they are strong and good and so linked to this place that many could not have appeared anywhere else on earth.  It takes a Southerner to sculpt some of these tales. The light and heat are characters inside Carson McCuller’s Ballad of the Sad Cafe. The setting is a Georgia summer and if you read it, you’ll fall under the story’s spell and start pulling at the side of your collar to let in a little cool air.  There was none in Georgia, not during those summers before air-conditioning when people woke up sweating and laid themselves down to sleep on damp, wrinkled sheets at night, half way to dehydration.  The heat is an omnipresent character,…