Dixie Days

For people of a certain age, almost every page of Garry Bowers’s reminiscences of growing up Southern in the 1950s and 1960s will evoke good memories of their own. Do you remember party-line telephones, BB gun fights, unauthorized but sacred secret clubs, the embarrassment of the first attempts to talk to girls, summer holidays at Granddaddy’s farm, your first rickety car fueled with a few 30 cent gallons of gas?

Then this is a book for you. If you were so unfortunate as to grow up in lesser times, then you ought to know how it used to be.

Southerners are distinguished, among other things, by their memories. Southerners are also said to be good story tellers. Also, unlike the folks that General Lee always referred to as “those people,” we are able to see humour in our own situation. Garry Bowers exhibits all these Southern traits in spades.