A Southern Reader Volume 1

ABOUT THE BOOK The fifteen stories in this book reflect the kernels of stories told to me while managing three country Post Offices at different times in my career. Most were exaggerated tales, and some outright lies. Then there were the things that happened in the post office lobby such as the elderly maiden lady who received an unsolicited pornographic advertisement in the mail. She dropped it on the lobby floor is if it were a snake rather than hold it in her hands. She came trembling and crying into my office with indignation to think that someone could possibly believe she may be interested such degrading material. She was tremendously humiliated. In my opinion she was far too good and far too kind for this earth. A tender and caring heart in a sea of thoughtless and careless commercial peddling. An enthusiastic young married country couple who decided to try an open marriage only to have theirs fall apart, first with jealous anger then violence and the inevitable divorce court. With time the locals began to confide in me and it was from them I learned we truly live in glass houses, the supposed secrets on display through endless gossip. All are interesting for the human drama that swirl about the everyday lives of the average person. Loss, jealousy, anger, indignation, love lost and love found. Some of my customers came into the office with the intent of unloading, their griefs, sorrows, joys, jokes, and often for nothing more than to touch base with another human. I will always be grateful for the confidences and secrets trusted to me. While these stories contain the kernels of those life happenings I hid them in plain sight in the dialogue, narrative, scenes, locations, and characters of the enclosed tales. Two of these stories could be considered hard core southern gothic, another southern gothic light a couple of WW2 love stories, a Vietnam vet story with problems that he refused to blame on his service time in Vietnam. A small town man slow in the mind was railroaded off to Milledgeville in order to get him off the streets, but the doctor recognizing a superior attitude behind the forced visit, sent him home with the message if he is the worst you have be ever so grateful. Read about the school teacher whose mother died giving him birth and the father who never wasted a chance to blame him for her death. Read about the nurse who had a husband for a drunk with sclerosis of the liver and overwhelmed with his inattention to a retarded son she put pain killers in his whiskey speeding his death date up by weeks. She married another drunk but a nice one but he drowned accidentally. When the autopsy came back he also had sclerosis of the liver and soon would have died anyway complicated by the intake of pain killers. She had warned him against taking pain killers and he had assured her that he would not take the chance of being parted from her company. Yet he had anyway. She was shocked to find out the reason. Meet the intelligent redneck nerd who fell in love with a girl who had a birthmark on her face. Follow his adventures and misadventures and humiliations as he traveled about the country driving a sixteen wheeler. This story is the longest one in the collection. My accumulated notes covering those years have not all been used up by any means. I hope to transfer those remaining bits of my past life to similar stories. Marshall L Dell

About the Author :
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Marshall Dell is a son of South East Georgia's wiregrass country in Ware County. After high school he spent four years in the navy and after discharge worked for the U.S. postal service. He was officer in charge of two small rural post offices and postmaster of the Waverly Georgia Post Office for twenty three years. He is retired and lives in Folkston Georgia with his wife of forty seven years Carolyn Annette.