Kith & Kin

On Saturdays male college students left campus in abundance. Some went to the mall. Some went home. And some of us who needed cash went to work for the good folks in the local community. It was on one such Saturday that I found myself at Mrs. White’s, along with a fellow college student named Phil. We rode there in Phil’s rattle-trap car, parked, got out, slammed the doors, and walked to the front door of a rambling white house with dark blue shutters. Wisteria grew profusely on a trellis to the left of the door, draping it in purple, and a hulking magnolia tree grew on the right, fully in bloom and fragrant. Phil knocked, and when the door opened, a tiny former Southern Belle with completely white hair welcomed us. It was Mrs. White. She must have at least been in her seventies, and you could tell she had always been happy and honest of soul, two traits that had given her a grandmotherly glow from within. We stepped just inside the door, and she introduced us to her son, Plato (yes, “...

It was September of 1980. Mom and Dad had brought me down from Ohio to South Carolina to start college, and once again Dad was getting on my nerves. A lot of things that Dad did irritated me. His staunch standards and inflexible beliefs. The way he made us boys work on our property whether we wanted to or not. (Oh, those dreaded words on a Friday night: “We’re going to drag some brush tomorrow, boys.”) Even the way he came into my bedroom every Sunday morning at eight and put his hand gently in the middle of my back and said, “Time to get up.” And now here I was, eighteen years old and more than ready to be on my own, free from the responsibilities and frustrations of home, and he seemed determined to get on my nerves one more time. Anyone who’s lived in the dorms (nowadays “residence halls”) at a university knows the importance of arriving early each semester to claim your storage space and bunk. I had arrived after only one other roommate had arrived, so the pickings were still prett...