Bailey White Essay Research Paper Adventures on

Bailey White Essay, Research Paper

Adventures on the Way Back Home, and Quite a Year for Plums, author Bailey White

offers readers an inviting refuge from our increasingly fast-paced society.

Using humor, White transports the reader to the rural South, where the setting,

the way of life, and the characters the reader meets contrast strikingly with

life in the typical Northern city. Bailey White.s South has a warm and

hospitable atmosphere, a pleasant alternative to cold, bustling, Northern

metropolitan centers. As a cousin of the Whites puts it when she calls from

Philadelphia to announce she.ll be visiting overnight, ..I.ve heard so

much about Southern hospitality. Now I will be able to experience it for

myself.. (Mama, 48). The language in Bailey White.s writings also

delights, especially her characters. manner of speaking, which contains many

curious Southern expressions. My friends certainly would not say

.persnickety. (Sleeping, 125), .doodlebugs. (Sleeping, 9), .junkets.

(Mama, 60), describe a club as a .tough juke joint. (Mama, 3), or say,

..She sho. ain.t gon. ride no ferry here.. (Mama, 62)! Located in

South Georgia, in the backwoods, White.s characters are allowed to do what

they please without judgment from neighboring yuppies glaring down from their

balconies. The village ..is a place where they are kind to one another and

indulgent of eccentricities. (Publishers Weekly, 30 March 1998). The result is

.endearing true stories about rural South Georgia. (Publishers Weekly, 1

March 1993) on subjects as quirky as bathtubs and Porsches on porches, backyard

camping, and road-kill suppers. After remodeling their bathroom Bailey and Mama

find that their bathtub won’t fit in it anymore. Instead of installing a shower,

they leave the bathtub on the porch. Bailey explains that .with the

midsummer’s afternoon breeze blowing through the high pine woods and the

fragrance of the lilies, it’s a lovely spot for a leisurely bath. (Mama, 25).

Joining the bathtub on the porch is a 1958 Model 356 Speedster in original

condition, because the driver refused to ..just park it out behind the

garden with those two tractors and that thing that might have been a

lawnmower.. (Mama, 21). When inspired, Mama can (and does) go camping in the

wilderness. Bailey, however, doesn’t have to worry about her aging mother alone

on a trip: their backyard is wilderness enough for camping. .At night I could

see a tiny glow from her fire. And just at dawn, if I went out to the edge of

the pasture and listened very carefully I could barely hear her singing .Meet

Me in St. Louis.. (Mama, 38). Mama, whether camping or not, can get

fast-food for dinner, Southern-style: road kill. White and Mama have .feasted

not only doves, turkeys, and quail, but robins, squirrels, and, only once, a

possum,. but Bailey draws the line at snakes, even when her mom protests

..But it was still wiggling when I got there…Let’s try it just this once.

I have a white sauce with dill and mustard.. (Mama, 39). Despite the gourmet

sauce, Bailey refuses to eat any animal her mom brings in without

documentation–the model and tag number of the car that struck it–to assure her

of a recent kill. While chronicling small-town culture, White manages to make me

laugh out loud, which is quite a feat for an author. The comical scenes from the

small town of Thomasville will not only produce laughter, but a longing to move

to such a quaint village. Instead of going into the Instant Care Facility, a

modern walk-in medical clinic, one can, as Mama did, take advice from

..surgeons, I’d say, from the amount of blood and brains on those white

coats,.. who were actually butchers on their cigarette break (Mama, 23). The

provincial aspects of life in Thomasville are evident in Plums, in the extent of

interest and pride community members exhibit when Roger appears in a photograph

in the April edition of the Agrisearch magazine. At the Pastime Restaurant the

waitresses tape up Roger’s picture next to the .In Case of Choking. poster,

Meade makes a mat for his picture out of construction paper left from her

schoolteaching days, Hilma transposes Roger.s image onto two color photos for

an artistic effect, Eula puts the magazine photo on her refrigerator, and others

prop it up on their windowsills (Plums, 4). The detail in Bailey White.s

stories come from her own experiences living in Thomasville, especially in her

first two books, Mama and Sleeping, which are both autobiographical. .In my

own town I know the story of every missing body part: an ear in an auto

accident, a middle finger in a miscalculation at a table saw, a thumb in a freak

accident involving a white horse and a Chrysler coupe. (Sleeping, 5). Since

White.s books are set in the rural South, nature is a part of everyday life.

(What a contrast to everyday life in our Northern city, which typical

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