I grew up on tales of my grandmother's family's escape northward into South Carolina as Sherman stormed into Atlanta. The one family member left behind, my great-something grandfather, continued doctoring and served as the model for Dr. Meade in cousin-something-removed Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, a book my mother made me read (reluctantly) and which I hated.
Even as a child, I knew the novel's history wasn't history.
My grandmother's inherited bespoke secretary, now my brother's, bears the doctor forebear's name, stamped into the wood by the maker, and I could join as she did the Colonial Dames, the first Families of Maryland, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Daughters of the Confederacy, if I wanted to.
The South is in my blood -- on her side (my mother's side) from the 17th century on, and on my father's side from 18th century on.
So it's natural I sang Dixie as a child and sunbathed on a battle flag towel. My father even jokingly dressed in a rebel costume, complete with spirit-gummed goatee, and presented himself as Colonel Billy Hood at national paint conventions. His northern friends loved the fake money he handed out with his own picture in the middle and the company's name and logo.
One Christmas, Daddy gave us each a book he had written: the front cover said The War Between the States and, flipped over, the back cover said The Civil War. Inside all the pages were blank.
Today, I remembered these tidbits and others when I read Gary Leva's "Gone with the Wind & My Southern Education" in The Bitter Southerner. You might wish to read it too, especially if you're one of us who know the past isn't even past.
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| selfie in the cemetery of the University of the South |
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