Dirty Boots
Dirty Boots: Irregular Attempts at Critical Thinking and Border Crossing offers a Deep Southern, Generation X perspective on the culture, politics, and general milieu of the 21st century.
*Most of the nearly 150 columns written since 2014 are now available by request only. To obtain a password to view a protected post, use the Contact form to make that request. Provide your name, a valid email address, and your reason for requesting access in the message. Below is a selection of openly available columns that do not require a request:
By way of introduction: A Primer on the Very Notion (October 2, 2018)
“Though my education, career, and worldview have led me away from a traditional Southern working-class experience, I’ll never move completely beyond it.”
Drivin’ N Cryin’ @ Saturn Birmingham (December 3, 2024)
“Of course, by the end there was a barrage that included ‘To Build a Fire,’ ‘Fly Me Courageous,’ and ‘Straight to Hell.'”
The Third Third (January 25, 2024)
“Life after 50 will be like a real-life bonus round.”
Flag Football (December 19, 2023)
“I’m as awkward a sports dad as has ever been, but there is one thing I’m certain of. I’m thankful that my son and my daughter have these opportunities.”
From Judas Priest to the Dalai Lama (October 14, 2021)
“One bored Sunday night recently, I was browsing the ‘Cult Classics’ section of the Tubi streaming app and came across this short film I’d never seen or heard of: Heavy Metal Parking Lot.”
Twenty Years since Y2K (December 21, 2019)
“We all just knew something awful was going to happen, but that was also kind of cool.”
Farm School Lessons and My Stubborn Optimism (November 19, 2019)
“While I’m no expert and have no formal training in agriculture or horticulture, I had more experience than they did in how to build, plant, grow, and harvest.”
“Before some ol’ fool comes around here” (November 5, 2019)
“I’ve always liked Lynyrd Skynyrd— that is, Lynyrd Skynyrd as it was originally, before the 1977 plane crash. (The band’s second incarnation . . . not so much.) Their biggest hit came out in 1974, the year I was born, so I can never remember a time when the band wasn’t a big deal here in the Deep South.”
When Reading Meant Everything (August 20, 2019)
“Though, as a young kid, I was something like the bullied Bastian in The Neverending Story who escaped from the world through books, what I have found in books and magazines (and music and movies) since then is expansion. By high school, I was no longer reading to get away from the world— I was reading to know it better, to see and to know more of it, to glimpse ways of life I hadn’t imagined, even when I couldn’t physically leave where I was.”
Making a Dollar with My Dad (March 5, 2019)
“We came up at a time when a dollar still meant something, but so did having the high score on Galaga or Dig Dug at the neighborhood arcade. Neither of those would last long.”
Local writers are real writers. (February 12, 2019)
“There are two things that seem difficult for people to understand about those of us who are (somewhat condescendingly) called ‘local writers.'”
Generation X gets skipped— again! (February 5, 2019)
“Now that I’m middle-aged – I fall smack in the middle of Generation X – I try really hard to focus not on the 1980s and ’90s bitterness that marked my generation, but on being kind and empathetic and those sorts of niceties.“
“Do the careful donkey-tending work.” (December 4, 2018)
“The 11th-century Persian poet Rumi lived and wrote a long way from the 21st-century Deep South, where we would simply say: if you want it done right, do it yourself.”
“Nothing cool ever happens down here.” (October 23, 2018)
“Resistance to change is one of the hallmarks of Southern culture, and while that predilection is usually applied to our political circumstances, its cultural significance can’t be ignored.”
The Boxes in the Attic (A Love Story) (January 25, 2018)
“Over the last twenty years, since moving away from home into bachelor-pad apartments then getting married and having children and moving a few more times, the boxes have come with me. I’ve done some purging from them, reducing the number from a half-dozen or more in my single days down to only two or three now.”
On the Edgy Edge of Edginess (May 25, 2017)
“An old proverb says that Time heals all wounds. It also humbles all young people.”
Things. (February 7, 2017)
“And I don’t want to throw them away.”
Where did twenty years ago? (December 13, 2016)
“The mid- to late 1990s were a really good time to be young, the way I recall it.”
Adia Victoria @ Saturn Birmingham (September 13, 2016)
“Her scratchy-sweet, but sometimes dour voice betrayed a twinge of a Southern-cum-British accent, and the grim guitar-driven band came off as a cross between Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Black Keys— blues-influenced but not exactly blues.”
The “There’s Hope for this Generation’s Music” Playlist (December 9, 2014)
“Near the end of last school year, one of my seniors gave me a mixed CD she had made, songs she thought I should listen to, and on a half-folded index card inside was the handwritten title ‘The ‘There’s Hope for this Generation’s Music’ Playlist.'”
