Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Third Battle of Manassas
Polo Place
Travel Notes: What’s a Cavalier?
RVa
All Come to Look for America
Travel Notes: What’s a Tar Heel?
Dobbies and Pout Houses
The Research Triangle
Sustainability in Greensboro
Trains, Furniture, and Krispy Kreme
Towel Town No More
Sister City
They Glue Lug Nuts on Wheels
Ella May’s Ghost
America’s First Civil War Battle
Hub-Bub in the Hub City
Downtown New South
Jerusalem Artichokes and Robert Kennedy
The Mountains
Cashiers
Franklin
The Smoky Mountains
Good Old Rocky Top
Norris, the Planned Community
Hard-bitten Land
Chattanooga Rebound
A Civil Misunderstanding
Alabama Retail
Alabama Wholesale
Driving the Natchez Trace Parkway
Nashville Hootenanny
Mississippi Embayment
Travel Notes: What’s a Julep?
Day Trip to Arkansas
The Delta in Mississippi
Cosmopolitan Helena
Duck Gumbo
Meeting the Governor
Water, Water Everywhere
I’m Only 75
Nitta Yuma
A Coffee Shop in Vicksburg
Mississippi Praying
Wide Spot on Highway 28
Not a Soul in Sight
The Rose Lady Comes to Camellia Land
The Salon at Ravennaside
McDonald’s Comes to St. Francisville
Crossing the River by Ferryboat
Baton Rouge, Huey Long, and the Movie Industry
On to Opelousas
Travel Notes: What’s a Coon Ass?
Cajun vs. Coon Ass
Zydeco Dancing
Boudin, Sugar Cane Farming, and More Crawfish
The Road to New Orleans
Once the Levees Break
Mississippi Gulf Coast
Travel Notes: Beauvoir
Mobile
Hank, Biscuits, and Green Roofs
Forty Miles to Tuskegee
Fender Bender in Birmingham
Travel Notes: Iced or Hot? Sweet or Un?
Metropolitan Atlanta
Traveling South Georgia
Happy Animals. Good Cheese.
Tallahassee
Ybor City
Cracker from Kissimmee
The First Coast
Stuck in South Georgia
Savannah
Travel Notes: Georgilina
Coastalitis
Carolina Gold
Flatland to Fall Line
Epilogue: June 2013
Notes on Sources
Sources
Songs from the Journey
Index
About the Author