We recently visited Gulf Shores, Alabama and decided to take a day trip to Fairhope, a quaint, old town on the shores of Mobile Bay. As we were exploring the area, we stumbled upon a wonderful bookstore, Page and Pallette.
They featured local writers and even had books signed by various authors, including one written by Rick Bragg. The only way I knew him was that he is the featured author at the end of every Southern Living Magazine. Mr. Bragg seems to get to the essence of life in the South from a different angle. I love his short vignettes. I decided to try one of his books, The Most They Ever Had. I was not disappointed.
From the New Orleans Times-Picayune
"Bragg has a true gift for great story telling, the kind...that makes you think
it's just a plain old story, until he gets to the end and you're either
weeping of covered with goosebumps."
Book Summary
The book highlights the lives of several employees of an Alabama cotton mill and one that picked cotton. It is the kind of book that should be written about the countless, anonymous heroes of our industrialized past, but isn't. Their jobs were difficult and dangerous. The only thing worse than the job was the thought of loosing it.
"He had wrecked old trucks into trees when the front ends fell out or the bald tires blew, had jacks slip and cars fall on him, and had tumbled from trees with a chainsaw bucking in his hands. For fun, he walked the mountains in pitch black, chasing his coon dogs across foot-logs and drop-offs where a misstep would leave him freezing in the pines. But what finally scared him, that night, was talk of the end of the world." This was Rick Bragg's brother, Sam, contemplating the end of the line for the mill.
Then there was Charles. He was a good enough guitar player to be invited to play at the Grand Old Opry. He had a family and couldn't leave. He stayed at the mill and regretted it. He began to drink. One day, he was working on a machine that processed polyester. It was so dangerous that two people were to be in the room any time it was operated. He was alone and a piece of wire caught his hand. The machine took his hand and then his arm, "an inch at a time." He picking arm was gone and, "he stayed drunk two years." I relate that story to get to this description of Charles singing.
"Then he begins to sing, and you can hear the hurt in it. It sounds nothing like new country, like that poufy, sissy, over-produced mess on the radio.
It is as different as a garter snake is from a water moccasin.
It is beautiful."
I can only hope to be able to write like that one day. Rick Bragg paints beautiful pictures with his words. I can even imagine what the old man singing sounds like. I loved the book and will probably read it again, but, as a friend told Mr. Bragg, "Well, it ain't a damn barn dance, is it? It's an American tragedy."
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