Where I Get to Run My Mouth: A Southern Say-So Manifesto
Mama tried her best to pinch the wild out of me — mostly in church. At home, she’d snap my name out — “Cindi!” — every time my mouth got ahead of my manners, even when it was just our family in the room.
Mama was determined to keep me ladylike, sweet as a Georgia peach, polished smooth as a well-worn church pew.
My sweet Mama, Kathryn June Bohannon, trying to make me behave, even as an adult.
“Pretty is as pretty does,” Mama would remind me, like her grandmother reminded her.
It was a good saying and Mama took it to heart. She was a lady. A fine southern lady.
But “Pretty is as pretty does” didn’t quite take with me.
Mama’s gone now, bless her dear, good heart. But the wild she thought she’d tamed out of me? It survived. It burrowed deep in this South Georgia, creek-swimming, baseball-bat-swinging, flag-football-playing girl. My wild learned how to keep quiet when it had to — and how to holler when it needed to.
Maybe it took decades to unlearn “keep quiet, girl,” but I’m catching on fast!
Boys in my neighborhood didn’t like my truth-telling. As a kid, I got gut-punched by a kick ball, clipped by a belt buckle, and tackled flat for giving them a good Southern Say-So. Every time I got back up. Bruised, maybe — but still saying-so, sometimes with a fist shaking.
Now I’m a senior lady with grown kids and grandchildren — back on my home soil, roots deep, voice louder than it ever was in that Southern Baptist sanctuary. Southern Say-So is my promise to that little girl I used to be: you get to say it now. All of it. The pretty stories and the ugly truths. The gospel, the gossip, the grief, the gladness.
Here, I write about the things Mama might not want me to say out loud — music and memory, family secrets we dig up by asking one more question. The things that stick like sap, and maybe even sting like a kick-ball, when you speak ‘em true.
This is my say-so, sitting on my front porch.
This is my soil, my patch of Pinehurst — one square mile wide, with a mayor named Christmas and gators slipping through the yards.
So come sit a bit. Let’s visit — that old-time visitin’ that’s going out of style. We’ll bring it back, one Southern Say-So at a time.
About the Author
Cindi Brown is a Georgia-born writer, porch-sitter, and teller of truths — even the ones her mama once pinched her for saying out loud. She runs Porchlight Press from her 1895 house with creaking floorboards and an open door for stories with soul. When she’s not scribbling about Southern music, small towns, stray cats, places she loves, and the wild gospel that hums in red clay soil, you’ll find her out listening for the next thing worth saying.
