Roy Blount, Jr.

Just because I am from the South and live in the North, I don't know why I have to explain everything from grits to the Rapture -- not to mention alleged possum-tossing. But apparently I do, so hold on to your hats. And if you want a sense of how Southern family memories are like everybody else's, hear now my oft-broadcast "Voices Around the Table": talking and eating back home.

It takes a while to explain, with reference to snakebite, absent-mindedness, the plight of the singing-impaired, the challenges entailed in writing with a giant who slept with 20,000 women (Wilt Chamberlain), and an unfortunate in-flight experience involving a Frenchwoman and Jack Daniel's.

Juice as in au jus, juju, power, liquor, electricity, influence, zaftig-ness. The ABC's aren't just marks on a page, they're alive! They speak! Come with me now beyond onomatopoeia, to consider the flinch and wince family, or the thr- words, or the u dge's. Anecdotes abound, including a ride with a man who was dyslexic even regarding pie (it's a long story), and the Wilt Chamberlain story fits in here too.

His reprobate father, his blessed mother, his strained childhood, his drop-dead gorgeousness, his flirtatiousness, his sense of humor (how about that "Pussyism" joke?), and that pet hen of his.