Somewhere Down a Lazy River

   The Nancy and Rob Webpage

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The South of every country is different and the south of every South is even more so. We live in that stretch of the Gulf Coast South which is another kingdom. Mobile is a Separate Kingdom. We are not North America; we are North Haiti. Because we are so different from the rest of the United Stares. The spirit is closer to the Caribe than it is even to Montgomery. Someone driving southward will note a change about fifty miles before reaching the coast: a change in vegetation, a whiff of something in the air. It called "the salt line," that invisible frontier between the Black Belt and the coastal plains. It’s a genuine frontier. It might be the frontier between a somewhat Anglo-Saxon South and a world which is a melange of French, Spanish, English, and Confederate, with a thoroughbass of African and Indian. Or an invisible defining line between the Sunday South and the Saturday-night South. It means Mardi Gras and parties on this side, and it means Sunday school on the other. It’s the landed gentry with a rather British country house style—Southern country life ain’t so different. But when you get to the coast, you see, you’ve got pirates and drama and Carnival and fishing fleets and smuggling and so many different skies and thunderstorms, like this constantly changing pageant in the background. It’s another country. And that’s where we live.    Eugene Walter