Albino Coons and Squirrels for Breakfast

I've been working on a little something these last few days that I'd originally hoped would be ready to go by today, but it wasn't meant to be.  This time, I can't blame the diaper changing or the lack of quality sleep.  I do blame liberals and the mainstream media.

In lieu of this dazzling little post that hopefully will wow your Crocs off, I did manage to find this most interesting item while searching to see if the newly discovered Larry Brown story happened to be online.  The essay might not be available at Field & Steam Online but a Larry Brown recipe for squirrel, biscuits, and gravy is there and includes this great introduction:

The late Larry Brown, the author of Joe, Billy Ray’s Farm, and seven other classics of Southern literature, had a saying. When things were difficult, complicated, aggravating, or vexing in one way or another, he’d say, “They ain’t squirrels, baby.” Squirrels, for Larry, were the antithesis of all that: They were a joy to hunt, a joy to cook, and a joy to eat. Hunting and eating them was one of life’s simple pleasures—along with bream fishing, slow back-roads driving, drinking with pals, and cradling his grandchildren. On numerous mornings he greeted me with a plate of squirrel, biscuits, and gravy, his signature dish, usually made with grays his sons had killed. Nothing ever tasted better, or will again.

I will try to swing by a magazine rack this weekend and pick up a Field & Stream.  If you're curious, the Clarion Ledger has more details about the new Brown:

Best anyone can figure, it's the first nonfiction story the late Mississippi author Larry Brown ever wrote. It was found last January by writer and close friend Jonny Miles and Brown's widow, Mary Annie, in a loose-leaf notebook, printed in blue ink and stashed among the boxes of notes, letters and unfinished manuscripts Brown left behind.

The story, about an albino coon, appears in this month's issue of Field & Stream magazine, available at most major bookstores.

Brown, a former Oxford firefighter who died in November 2004 of an apparent heart attack at the age of 53, became known as one of the South's greatest literary voices. He wrote eight books; two of them - Joe and Father and Son - won the Southern Book Award for fiction.

"The story is from the early '80s, when Larry was just starting to write," says Miles, a columnist for The New York Times and a contributing editor at Field & Stream. "I was totally floored when we found it. It's beautiful, and the writing is beautiful."

Miles phoned Field & Stream editor-in-chief Sid Evan and told him: "I found a coon hunting story."

Comments

[Randy Craney]

It's a nice image to think of this writer cradling his grand kids, but the Larry Brown i knew in the 90's was more interested in getting his hands on and cradling a coed. You can bet that among those boxes of letters were some yearning missives from young women from Missoula to Mowling Green, to Raleigh and back again.