Southern way of life

Garden & Gun.

The title of this magazine shocked and delighted me when I first came across it. The incongruity of the words garden and gun made me laugh aloud, and I found the articles about life in the South—ranging from making biscuits to fishing bass, from concocting a bourbon punch to growing the perfect tomato—as down-home and comforting as a glass of sweet tea on an August afternoon. 

Now the editors of Garden & Gun have selected the best of these articles and packed them up between two blue covers. If you love the South, The Southerner’s Handbook: A Guide to Living the Good Life deserves a permanent home in your library. 

In over a hundred short chapters, The Southerner’s Handbook covers cooking and food, drink, home and gardening, arts and culture, style and outdoor adventure. In “Part One: Food,” for example, readers learn how to care for cast-iron skillets and pots. Chef John Currence reveals how to make what he calls “big bad buttermilk biscuits,” and other writers, including the editors, give lessons on how to boil peanuts, cook okra and ramps, and bake a “drunken pecan pie” that sounds as if it would rock papaw’s socks.

In “Style,” Cindy Haygood teaches manners to young people, Peyton Jenkins shows how to make a pocket square, and Roy Blount Jr. shares secrets of telling a great story. (Have an animal in the story and know your audience). Diane Goldsmith explains how to offer the perfect toast at weddings and other celebrations, and Donald Link offers advice on how to party like a Cajun.

The “Drink” section contains recipes for refreshment ranging from mint juleps to sweetened iced tea, from a classic New Orleans sazerac to authentic Dixie lemonade. T.A. Breaux discusses absinthe, a drink once made illegal in the United States, and how to consume this green liquor, once a staple in cities such as Charleston and New Orleans. The editors dedicate several chapters to bourbon, of course, including the amusing “Three Odes to Bourbon,” in which a trio of drinkers describe how they like to take their whiskey.

“Sporting & Adventure” appeals to anyone who takes pleasure in the outdoors. Here are articles on hunting, fishing, river camping, alligator wrestling, the Kentucky Derby, sharpening knives with a whetstone, starting fires, catching frogs and a dozen or so other paeans to the Southern outdoor life. (One of my own favorite comments appears in a chapter titled “How to Talk to a Game Warden.” Ben Moise, a long-time game warden, says, “Those of us that have been in the business long enough have seen it all. And we have highly developed fertilizer detectors.”) 

“Home & Garden” gives advice on such topics as “Rope Swing 101,” “Silver with a Proper Shine,” “An Herb Garden with Southern Roots,” and “Stocking Your Home Library.” One fascinating and very short article focuses on Carole Marsh, author of The Kudzu Cookbook. It was news to me that the Japanese use kudzu in medical teas and fine cuisine, and Marsh has created recipes in her cookbook that include working the leaves into gumbo, frying them like okra and mixing them with Vidalia onions. In his article “In Praise of the Southern Garden,” Robert Hicks reminds his readers that not so long ago in the South “most everyone—rich or poor—was a gardener” and that travelers from Europe “were awed by the South’s gardens, filling travel books and diaries with descriptions of our labor and the fruits of it.”

In the final section “Arts & Culture,” we receive 16 lectures on such topics as “Songs of the South,” “Dance Like a Cowboy,” “The Church of Southern Football” and “The Brilliance of Southern Folk Art.” This last chapter mentions minister and painter McKendree Long, a North Carolinian who led a life stranger than fiction. I was previously unfamiliar with Long, but his autobiography inspired me to find him and his wild paintings online. 

“The Crowded Canon of the South” touched on authors familiar to me: Harry Crews, Eudora Welty and of course William Faulkner, but it also reminded me of how many other fine authors the South has produced. “The Truth about Robert Johnson and the Devil,” one of the longer chapters in the book, gives a sketch of the legendary bluesman who, legend has it, sold his soul to the devil at the Mississippi crossroads of Highways 61 and 49. This remarkable man, who inspired such bands as Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, died before reaching 30, probably from syphilis. Again I turned to my laptop and found his music on YouTube.

The Southerner’s Handbook is not only a great collection to own, but to give to others as well. The articles are short, concise, entertaining and leave readers hungry for more.