Tuscaloosa Runs This
16
people who create this mess of poverty and inequality in the first place. That my granddaddy’s favorite song was “Dixie.” That our family history is littered with anecdotes about mammies, and that every fall my blood courses with unbridled devotion to SEC football. But something about my air, something about my speech, something about how I look and how I sound made the collards an anomaly. I’ve spent most of my adult life wandering through the world bringing people anomalies. I’m like Quentin Compson in Absalom, Absalom. I’ve spent my days explaining what it’s like to live here and trying to figure out what, exactly, the South is about, and at the end of every story the listener only has one question: “Why do you hate the South?” And like Quentin, I can’t escape this question. On the one hand it seems so asinine: “I don’t hate it! I don’t!” But deep down I know the question is valid. Somewhere in my story there was a detail, a turn of phrase, a tone. Somewhere along the way I made you think I hate it. But maybe it doesn’t matter that I’m Southern. Maybe this is getting in the way of my story. THE FIRST ONE The first time I survived a tornado I was 10 years old. Here is a list of things I remember about it: 1. Watching my sister’s plastic playhouse fly one way across the yard while the trampoline flew the other.