Way back in college years, we had to take a test in speech class--beside each of a hundred words, we had to write the "correct" pronunciation. I missed two:
On and Pen.
On, in standard non-Southern English I learned, is not pronounced with a long O.
And "pen" and "pin" don't sound exactly alike.
When I went to Breadloaf in 1997, the comments on my writing always mentioned my "Southern voice." People from Up North really liked it. But I couldn't figure out at the time what was Southern about my voice on the page. I made a point not to say "fixin to" and other phrases I knew were not part of the standard vernacular.
You can take a Southern girl out of the South, but you can't take the South of her mouth. It bleeds through in expressions and the ways we shape stories, influenced, I'm quite sure, by years of listening to preaching.
As it does with Rheta Grimsley Johnson in her book about dogs. She sounds like where she came from. And since we came from near bout the same place, she sounds like people I know.
"When those dogs died, I said to myself the things you are taught to tell children when a family pet dies: Death is part of the natural process. Death is part of life. I think cliches are coping mechanisms that we dole out like Halloween candy."
"Before Mabel, I loved dogs, I did. But I didn't really know them. I prided myself on treating dogs like dogs, not people. They were more like neighbors down the street I waved to now and then. Nature had not intended dogs to live inside and become dependent on their owners for everything. At least thats what I'd been told and what I told myself. Somewhere it was written. It was one thing from childhood that seemed to have stuck."
"Mabel's burial began the pet cemetery which will be here when I'm gone and forgotten, the latter to occur exactly five minutes after the former."
"Nothing says retirement like a petunia."
I've enjoyed all of Rheta's books and this one most of all. If you love dogs--and even if you don't yet--this book is a keeper!
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