I DON’T KNOW IF YOUNG BOYS STILL FOLLOW coonhounds into the Ozark Mountains without a trace of adult supervision and without a touch of modern communication devices, but I hope they do. I didn’t grow up anywhere near the Ozarks, but as a boy in the coastal environs of Savannah, Georgia, I happily got lost in the pages of Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. In my family, it was a reading rite of passage. The book, a tattered paperback copy, had been handed down from my three older brothers. When my turn came, I opened it up and couldn’t stop reading, staying up well after I should have been asleep to find out if young Billy Colman got his coonhounds, if they treed that first raccoon, if the fabled ghost coon eluded Little Ann and Old Dan, if they won the coveted gold cup in the coonhound competition, and, in the end, if the mountain lion spelled the end to perhaps the most famous pair of hunting dogs in history. What I discovered then was that a book could rip your heart right out, causing you to shed tears, real sobbing tears, on those thin, yellowed pages.
So when the entire Garden & Gun editorial team held our first daylong brainstorming session to discuss what we’d include in this book, I suggested Where the Red Fern Grows when we hit the W chapter. The book’s Southern setting made it a viable choice, and besides my own personal connection, its impact on readers across the South and beyond made it a worthy inclusion. The staff’s passions informed many choices. Deputy Editor David Mezz, the new owner of a jon boat, felt the iconic watercraft deserved a spot in the book. Design Director Marshall McKinney made a strong pitch for the bar Earnestine & Hazel’s (and its Soul Burger) in his hometown of Memphis. And Associate Editor Elizabeth Hutchison wanted to cover the Georgia/South Carolina peach wars. (A touch biased, Hutchison has three generations of peach farmers from Filbert, South Carolina, in her family.)
Of course, no one book could include every aspect of Southern life and culture. Rather than trying to make the book an all-encompassing academic and historical tome, we wanted it to take readers on a walkabout across the contemporary Southern landscape—its institutions, people, culture, and influences. You’ll find entries on modern touchstones such as Pappy Van Winkle and Waffle House as well as influential figures such as Edna Lewis and Ralph Stanley and insightful pieces on topics and events that shaped where we are today, from the Civil War to the lunch counter protests of the civil rights movement.
We also tapped some of the South’s finest writers and prominent personalities for their expertise—Rick Bragg on Harper Lee; Southern Foodways Alliance founding director John T. Edge on his mentor John Egerton; singer-songwriter and Hank Williams’s granddaughter Holly Williams on the Grand Ole Opry; food historian Jessica B. Harris on okra; and humorist Roy Blount, Jr., on humidity, among many others.
These days I’m a long way from my bedroom where I stayed up late reading Where the Red Fern Grows. Though I do keep a first edition of the book—a gift from my wife, Jenny—on my bookshelf. And one day I hope to find my children up past their bedtime reading it by the gleam of a flashlight, captivated by words on a page.
As for this book, I hope you’ll find it both entertaining and informative, and that it sheds light on where the South has been and where it’s going.
DAVID DIBENEDETTO
Editor in Chief, Garden & Gun
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA