Our Readers Finally Strike Back

LETTERS TO THE EDITORS Our Readers Finally Strike Back With the first issue of our second five years we'd like to offer you the chance to respond in print to the ideas and questions raised by Southern Cultures. We hope to be able to devote this space each issue to your impressions about our publication—be they good, bad, or indifferent. (That last one scares us the most.) Recendy we sent around some brochures extolling our graces with hopes that we might increase our subscribers, and the results were pretty good. Southern Cultures is now healthier than it's been in years. And an added benefit of our mailing was the creative responses we received back from many of you. Some people rather ingeniously used their time, for instance, to mail back empty envelopes. Some simply scribbled "too liberal" or "too conservative" on their returns. (We were glad to get both responses.) Some sent us coupons. (We can get $7 off a dry cleaning at Comet Cleaners or a new digital phone for $59 at the Beeper Depot, ifwe ever should need them next time we're in Fort Worth.) One person wrote proclaiming allegiance to "Dixie" over the "Star-Spangled Banner" and demanding to know if there was anyone left who cared about the aristocracy of the South. Another wrote to tell us she'd be spending her afternoon in a white wicker chair under a willow sipping lemonade. And Fred from D.C. asked us to spread the word that he has a preeminent collection of over two hundred labeled pieces ofJohn F. Kennedy paraphernalia (mainly books and shirts). One of our other favorites is printed below. We also include here a couple ofletters that address previous features in Southern Cultures. Alice Fessenden writes to correct us on a point dear to her heart that concerns our special Gone with the Windissue. We close with a note from George Wiley, who writes us with his family's recollections of the Faulkners, a short follow-up to the flirtatious letter that William Faulkner wrote almost sixty years ago to Mr. Wiley's mother, which we published in our Fall 1999 issue. a dirty, illiterate heathen. I have never been taken by the 'Moonlight and Magnolias' theory , but I truly believe the number of educated , gracious southern people outnumber the aforementioned individual. . . . Yet I also have to mention the picture of the old store. It reminds me of mother's store. She ran it while Daddy farmed and drove a school bus. She saved the daily profits in a cold cream jar. She earned enough money to buy a motel and a laundromat. True story. Maybe I'll subscribe after all. I'll ponder it more while I have my "While looking at the pamphlet you sent I afternoon snack of RC Cola and a Moon Pie noticed what looks like a caption ofa billboard whUe sitting at the table covered in my grandportraying a fellow on a porch holding anmother's best tablecloth." alligator, with the phrase '. . .next door, theyShirley Atkinson used to have a poodle.' This fellow looks likeLawton Oklahoma above: The "dirty, illiterate heathen. " person, and watchedas a close acquaintance was chosen to wear the dress worn by Vivien I^eigh in the movie. "My first copy oí Southern Cultures has arrived. As a native Adantan living 2000 plus miles from home I shall treasure my subscription. However, there was a mistake in the Anne GoodwynJones article [in the special Gone with the Windissue]. The [film's] premiere was not held at the Fox, but at Loew's Grand Theatre downtown." Alice Fessenden Mesquite, Nevada Ed. note: We stand corrected. Not only is Mrs. Fessenden right about this, she was there in attendance . Wellalmost. As the editor ofher high school newspaper, she made it to the second night's showing ofGone with the Wind, saw Clark Gable in "Thanks very much for publishing Noel Polk's article [in fhe Fall 1 999 issue] about William Faulkner's letter to my modier, Mary Frances Wiley. My mother would be tickled. ... I was not alive when my parents lived in Oxford, but they have told me that they...