Barbershop Education

What Makes Us Southerners #2

by Kathryn Tucker Windham

The title story of this recording might have been dubbed "Mother Knows Best." While Kathryn Tucker Windham has had a healthy respect for wisdom, her true love has always been humor. So the title story here, and the other selections, reflect her appreciation for traditional ways, but not quite as much as they beguile the listener with that most enchanting of Southern ways, a keen sense of humor. Windham speaks of a tombstone, exquisitely carved with doves, roses, and delicate leaves, that was used as a carving board and confectionery mold in her family's kitchen, of making frog houses in the sand, of a basket made for picking cotton, and of a little fatherless boy learning the ways of men while waiting to have his ears lowered.

1 pages, Audio CD

First published January 25, 1986

About the author

Kathryn Tucker Windham was an American storyteller, author, photographer, and journalist.

Windham got her first writing job at the age of 12, reviewing movies for her cousin's small town newspaper, The Thomasville Times. She earned a B.A. degree from Huntingdon College in 1939. Soon after graduating she became a reporter for the Alabama Journal. Starting in 1944 she worked for The Birmingham News. In 1946 she married Amasa Benjamin Windham with whom she had three children. In 1956 she went to work at the Selma Times-Journal where she won several Associated Press awards for her writing and photography. A collection of her photographs is on display at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. She died on June 12, 2011. The 2004 documentary film, Kathryn: The Story of a Teller, directed by Norton Dill, chronicles Windham's life and varied careers.