How Y'all Doing? Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived

by Leslie Jordan

Billy Wright,

Horatio Luro. Luro came from Argentina in the late 1930s and made quite a success of himself in U.S. and Canadian horse racing, training many of the top racehorses.

At his peak, he won the 1962 Kentucky Derby with a horse named Decidedly and two years later won both the Derby and the Preakness with a horse called Northern Dancer.

The American Saddlebred Horse Association was founded in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1891. It was the first organization for an American breed of horse.

Saddlebreds are known for their high-stepping gaits. They walk, trot, slow rack, fast rack and canter. The slow rack and fast rack are what makes these horses desirable. Their gait is exceptionally smooth and easy on the rider.

And it is a purely American phenomenon to have these horses strutting around like peacocks ...

I think our dreams are what sustain us in hard times. Dreams are what keep us childlike. I love that they can grow and expand as we grow and expand.

William Faulkner.

The Sound and the Fury.

As I Lay Dying.

Eudora Welty,

Delta Wedding,

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.

John Grisham, who was born in 1955,

Julia Reed.

Garden & Gun magazine.

The Help.

Tate Taylor,

Del Shores’s Southern Baptist Sissies.

Brunson Green, one of The Help’s producers,

actress Octavia Spencer, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress fo...

Tate grew up with the author Kathryn Stockett, who wrote the bestselling novel this won...

Sissy Spacek.

Viola Davis.

Octavia, Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard, Allison Janney, Jessica Chastain, Anna Camp, Chris Lowell

Cicely Tyson,

Stacey Snider, who was head of DreamWorks at the time, thought the movie could use some more comedy.

Julia Roberts.

Megan Mullally,

Superman movies.

Allison Janney.

Wes Chatham

Tiffany Brouwer.

Billie Holiday’s story was so tragic. She became addicted to heroin, and no matter how hard she tried, she was never able to completely kick the dangerous addiction. The U.S. government tried to use her personal struggles against her to keep her from singing her powerful song “Strange Fruit,” which had been written by a teacher in response to the lynchings of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana. When Lee called to offer me the part he had written with me in mind, he asked me if I had ever heard of Skip E. Lowe. He wanted the character to be an amalgam of Skip E. Lowe and Quentin Crisp.

Skip E. Lowe

The Boy with the Betty Grable Legs.

The Robin Byrd Show,

Mamie Van Doren,

Greenville, Mississippi.

Mia Farrow

Frank Sinatra

London

Twiggy.

Don Norman.

But that night, tragedy struck. Down in Orlando, Florida, an armed man walked into a gay nightclub called the Pulse and opened fire. Forty-nine people were killed and fifty-three were wounded. Among those dead was the young man who opened fire. We all woke to the disastrous news. At the time, it was the largest mass shooting on U.S. soil.

A Very Sordid Wedding

Why is it that we love to drag all that baggage from childhood with us? We heave it dutifully. We haul it everywhere we go. And we pull it out at the drop of a hat for all to see. Nope, we are not going to let go of all that baggage.

Baylor School.

Nationals’ stadium

Leslie Allen Jordan