Whistling Dixie

Dixie Lee brings home an alligator, a snake, and an owl as pets to protect her family from such spooky creatures as the churn-turners, the bogeyman, and the mist-sisters.

HE HAD A WAY OF TALKING. I BRUSHED HIS GAT AWAY FROM MY FACE AND BROUGHT MY CUFFS INTO PLAY. THEY MOPPED AT THE BLOOD ON MY FACE. I PLAYED ONE OF MY TUNES. “SOMEDAY STACEY, WHEN YOU’RE OUT FROM BEHIND THE TIN; OR MAYBE SOME DARK NIGHT IN SOME LONELY PLACE; ONE OF THOSE NIGHTS THAT ARE BAD FOR COPS, I’LL BE THERE. YOU WILL NEVER KNOW WHEN, BUT I’LL BE THERE; UNTIL THEN KEEP LOOKING OVER YOUR SHOULDER.” IT WAS A BIT OF A LONG TALK FOR ME THEN, IN THAT SITUATION. HE REPLIED. “YOU STILL PLAYING THAT WORN OUT SPEECH? IT WAS OLD WHEN YOU PLAYED IT THE FIRST TIME.” THE CONTEMPT IN HIS VOICE FILLED THE INTERIOR OF THE CAR. IT WAS MATCHED ONLY BY HIS DEAD-EYE STARE. I LOOKED BEYOND HIM, BACK AT THE HOUSE; HIS GAZE REMAINED FIXED ON MY FACE. THE COPS AROUND THE HOUSE WERE ALL PRE-OCCUPIED. I SAID TO HIM. “NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT.” IN THE BARS, BACK IN ATLANTIC CITY, THEY TALK ABOUT SCOTLAND, OVER IN EUROPE. OVER THERE, IN SCOTLAND, THERE IS A LITTLE PLACE ON THE CLYDE RIVER. WELL, IT’S JUST ABOUT THE BIGGEST DARN TOWN IN THE COUNTRY OF SCOTLAND. IN THAT LITTLE PLACE CALLED GLASGOW, A GUY KISSES HIS OPPONENT, TO GET THE UPPER HAND. I GAVE LIEUTENANT BEN STACEY A GLASGOW KISS. AS HE SLUMPED BACK AGAINST THE SEAT I TUMBLED HIS BODY OUT THE OPEN DOOR AND ONTO THE ROADSIDE. I TOOK THE MOTOR OUT FROM THERE, LIKE IT WAS THE START OF THE INDIANAPOLIS 500.

Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'Easter is the story of a sweet Southern belle who leaves her beloved Memphis, Tennessee to follow her husband's dream of becoming the proprietor of a quaint Vermont inn. Leelee Satterfield seemed to have it all: a gorgeous husband, two adorable daughters, and roots in the sunny city of Memphis, Tennessee. So when her husband gets the idea to uproot the family to run a quaint Vermont inn, Leelee is devastated...and her three best friends are outraged. But she's loved Baker Satterfield since the tenth grade, how can she not indulge his dream? Plus, the glossy photos of bright autumn trees and smiling children in ski suits push her over the edge...after all, how much trouble can it really be? But Leelee discovers pretty fast that there's a truckload of things nobody tells you about Vermont until you live there: such as mud season, vampire flies, and the danger of ice sheets careening off roofs. Not to mention when her beloved Yorkie decides to pick New Year's Eve to go to doggie heaven-she encounters one more New England oddity: frozen ground means you can't bury your dead in the winter. And that Yankee idiosyncrasy just won't do. The inn they've bought also has its host of problems: an odor that no amount of potpourri can erase, tacky décor, and a staff of peculiar Vermonters whose personalities are as unique as the hippopotamus collection gracing the fireplace mantle. The whole operation is managed by Helga, a stern German woman who takes special delight in bullying Leelee for her southern gentility. Needless to say, it doesn't take long for Leelee to start wondering when to drag out the moving boxes again. But when an unexpected hardship takes Leelee by surprise, she finds herself left alone with an inn to run, a mortgage to pay, and two daughters to raise. But this Southern belle won't be run out of town so easily. Drawing on the Southern grit and inner strength she didn't know she had, Leelee decides to turn around the Inn, her attitude and her life. In doing so, she makes friends with her neighbors, finds a little romance, and realizes there's a lot more in common with Vermont than she first thought. In this moving and comedic debut, Lisa Patton paints a hilarious portrait of life in Vermont as seen through the eyes of a southern belle readers won't soon forget. A charming fish-out-of-water tale of one woman who learns to stand up for herself-in sandals and snow boots-against the odds.

Two generations after he challenged Republicans to envision a Southern-based national majority, Phillips issues a bold challenge to Democrats to transform American politics by building a winning coalition outside the South.

A witty and sometimes outrageous collection of essays presenting one Southerner's viewpoint about what makes the South the South. As the Washington Post said, "Reed knows his region intimately, probably as well as anyone around, and manages the impressive feat of regarding it both seriously and lightly".

A collection of photographs of latter-day Confederates take at Civil War re-enactments across the southern United States in the years leading up to the 2011 sesquicentennial of the Civil War.--Inside front dust jacket.

In The Texas Right: The Radical Roots of Lone Star Conservatism, some of our most accomplished and readable historians push the origins of present-day Texas conservatism back to the decade preceding the twentieth century. They illuminate the initial factors that began moving Texas to the far right, even before the arrival of the New Deal. By demonstrating that Texas politics foreshadowed the partisan realignment of the erstwhile Solid South, the studies in this book challenge the traditional narrative that emphasizes the right-wing critique of modern America voiced by, among others, radical conservatives of the state’s Democratic Party, beginning in the 1930s. As the contributors show, it is impossible to understand the Jeffersonian Democrats of 1936, the Texas Regular movement of 1944, the Dixiecrat Party of 1948, the Shivercrats of the 1950s, state members of the John Birch Society, Texas members of Young Americans for Freedom, Reagan Democrats, and most recently, even, the Tea Party movement without first understanding the underlying impulses that produced their formation.

Defines southern expressions, from "Adam's housecat" and "all vine and no taters" to "working without a full set of lights" and "you-all"