Includes index.

Introduction: South toward home -- Home. The roses of Fairhope ; Mama always said...choose your words carefully ; My brother's garden ; Pretty girl ; Crazy cat lady ; The porch ; Take your medicine, boy ; Time for the year's best nap ; My time machine ; All-night gospel ; Saving face ; Endless summer ; Happy as a pig ; Red dirt -- Table. For a vegetable, I'll have white gravy ; Back to the bayou ; Traveling food ; Fully dressed ; Your first oyster ; Bad slaw ; Never-ending Grace ; The plane truth ; Magic on the plate ; Seasoned in the South ; Summer snow ; The impossible turkey ; Honor thy matriarch ; Requiem for a fish sandwich -- Place. What stands in a storm ; No place like home ; Trade day ; Lost in the dark ; The eternal gulf ; Donkey business ; Armadillo ; Dixie snow ; Merry and bright ; Shopping ; My kind of town ; The lost gulf ; The Yankee mystique ; Cotton ; Stillness -- Craft. Why I write about home ; The fine art of piddling ; The color of words ; The blank notebook ; Fish story ; The quill and the mule ; Words on paper ; Wood, paint, nails, and soul ; Grandpa was a carpenter ; Stuck for good -- Spirit. Down here ; For the love of the game ; All Saint's Day ; When fireworks go South ; O Christmas Tree ; Wheels of time ; The gift of loafering ; Holiday lies ; O Christmas Sock ; Cowboys are her weakness ; A cast of characters ; Nick of time ; 109 yards returned, two points denied, and one twist left in the road ; Long time coming ; Born too late.