As I drove the back roads of southern Georgia I felt myself slipping suddenly into another time and place. The roads wound through thick, lush patches of Kudzu. The air was sticky hot. Really hot. And as evening approached, the locust began to buzz. It felt like summer. A mix of summer from my childhood on the farm and a summer from the 1940's that I could only dream about. The kind of summer filled with lemonade, fried chicken, and long hours in the fields. The kind of summer with rickety screen doors, whirring ceiling fans, and gnats constantly buzzing in your ears. A place where the southern drawl poured slowly out of peoples' mouths in a molasses kind of way. The kind of thing that couldn't help but slow you down just listening to it. It was the kind of place to wear a cotton sun dress and carry a paper fan. A place to run barefoot in the red dirt and let your hair get sticky and wet against your neck. A place for shaded walks among the endless pecan orchards, blueberry picking, and fresh peach jam. A place where you shared conversation in the garden while picking weeds. The kind of place where you ate what you grew, reaped what you sewed, and hard work went a long way. It was delicious. Delicious in a way that needed preserving. Like an old recipe, the one that brings you comfort. The one that never lets you down.
