Don’t Mind if I Do...

Someone once asked a group of us Southerners gathered at a cocktail party why so many storytellers hail from our region.

“There must be something in the water,” he figured.

“Yes,” I said. “Bourbon.”

We’re not reared to be alcoholics, mind you, but we are taught how to be hospitable and have a good time from the get-go. It’s what the late, great bon vivant Eugene Walter—a Mobile native who spent much of his life abroad, entertaining Southern style—called “dropping the mask”: loosening up and tossing out pretension.