Generation X
Born during the post-Civil Rights era and raised during the swing from the “Solid South” to the “ruby red,” Generation X has seen historic alterations to the fabric of Southern culture and is now making our own alterations to this much-fabled landscape.
Foster Dickson is a life-long Alabamian who grew up in Montgomery in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. Like many Generation-Xers in the South, Foster has experienced the changes to this region firsthand and felt the effects personally. In that spirit, one of his recent projects was the crowdsourced online anthology level:deepsouth, which sought to collect and document the experiences of Generation X in the South. However, that project stopped publication and went offline in December 2023. Some of its content, including the tidbits, fragments, and ephemera series, has been moved to this site.
More about being Generation X and growing up in the South:
Throwback Thursday: The Haiku Year, 2004
“Though the first edition of The Haiku Year was published in 1998, I didn’t know about it until the second edition came out in April 2004— twenty years ago this month.”
50 GenX Movies That You’ve Probably Forgotten (or Never Seen)
“When the subject of Generation-X films comes up, everybody remembers the John Hughes classics The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and Pretty in Pink, and Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything and Singles, and Kevin Smith’s Clerks and Chasing Amy.”
Throwback Thursday: The Death of Bear Bryant, 40 Years Later
“Of all the mythic figures in Alabama’s history, Paul W. ‘Bear’ Bryant would top any list.”
Short Essay: Happy, Happy
“Ryōkan’s poem ‘First days of spring— the sky’ came into my life when I was about twenty years old, a college English major who had come to a love of literature through the Beats.”
Dirty Boots: From Judas Priest to the Dalai Lama
“So, when I watched Heavy Metal Parking Lot and saw those mostly shirtless teenage boys, I recognized them. Because I knew them.”
The Lower End of the Highest Rates: Suicide and Generation X
“In the era when Generation X was coming of age, suicide was a growing problem but was seldom discussed openly, honestly, or rationally.”
Reading: Widespread Panic in the Streets of Athens, Georgia
“I wasn’t there for Panic in the Streets, but reading Lamb’s book, I recognized the vibes and the people.”
“Say hi to your new mom!”— Divorce, the ’80s, and Generation X
“Those of us who grew up Gen X in the Deep South experienced the ground-level reality of that unraveling, whether at our own houses or our friends’ houses.”
“And he said, My name’s Johnny and it might be a sin . . .”
“The late ’70s and early ’80s were a good time for country music.”
“My Source for Some Definitive”: 30 Years since “Closer to Fine”
“Though it never reached the top-ten on the Billboard charts, that album’s first single ‘Closer to Fine’ may be one of the most influential songs from Generation X.”
Alabamiana: The House of Judah, 1991
“William Lewis and his House of Judah caught my attention twenty eight years ago, when an article about them ran in the Montgomery Advertiser on New Year’s Day 1991.”
“Scarred but Smarter”: A Drivin’ N Cryin’ documentary (2012)
“When I was in junior high and high school, everybody seemed to listen to Drivin N Cryin.”
Dirty Boots: The Boxes in the Attic: A Love Story
“Something like a hope chest, these battered cardboard boxes hold reminders for me of what I once wanted for myself, what I hoped my life would become.”
Dirty Boots: On the Edgy Edge of Edginess
“Probably the greatest benefit of old-dude cool is being able to invoke my inner Bob Dylan.”
Where did twenty years go?
“I graduated from college twenty years ago this month.”
The Old Agrarian-ness of a New Ethos
“However, to write off pro-Southern, anti-industrial ideals as nothing more than paranoid, backward-looking, overly poetic myth-making is to miss the basis of some important ideas that are buried within all of those heavily dated pronouncements.”
“Smokey and the Bandit”: How Cool It Was— Back Then
“There was nothing any of us wanted more than a black Trans Am with T-tops. Smokey and the Bandit even made driving an eighteen-wheeler seem cool.”
Foster Dickson 