In these wide-ranging, thoughtful, and engaging personal essays, literary scholar and poet Robert W. Hamblin describes his experiences as a white kid in segregationist Mississippi cheering for Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers, as a National Guardsmen during the riot that accompanied James Meredith’s enrollment at Ole Miss, as a friend and collaborator of fellow Faulkner scholar and poet L.D. Brodsky, as a visitor to the A-Bomb memorial in Hiroshima, as the preservationist of an historic house, and as an observer of a demolition derby. There are also discussions of authors William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Willie Morris, William Carlos Williams, Seamus Heaney, and Shakespeare.