HAWTHORNE, Fla. -- As I drove down State Road 20, there was something familiar about it. I felt as if I was driving down a road into the past, someplace that I have been before. It was not a recent memory; it was covered in dust and cobwebs and it took me a few minutes to place my recollection.

I was driving to cover a basketball game in the large town of Hawthorne for a class. The girls' junior varsity team from Newberry was coming over to play some ball with Hawthorne.

As I drove, I smiled to recall a part of myself that I had lost touch with. I was reminded as I passed the Grove Purk Grocery, the railroad tracks, some pigs and the Burger Barn that I was driving in the South, the real South. It’s been years since I lived out in the country miles from the nearest town that was complete with its own stop light.

All of my thinking made me grin to remember the times of being a kid in a place so small, but yet so rich in what I now call Southern Life.

Cracker style houses, men reading the paper down by the intersection to see what is going on, a fishing boat with a Lay-Z-Boy in it by the Bait-N-Tackle. So what is the South? I have asked myself this many times. I consider myself Southern now, and I consider that I was raised Southern, if not always by location, then by the way it feels.

My parents were Southern, my mom was Gainesville-grown on the east side of town in a house that is still stands. It’s a quaint little blue house, periwinkle to be exact, with white shutters next to the windows, the kind that aren’t just there for decoration, they really work, my Granddaddy would not have had it any other way. It’s the kind of place that calls for a tire-swing so that the whole neighborhood can run, hop, skip, scooter or tricycle over to play on.

The green-grassed yard is still encircled by a white fence that closes it off from the rest of the world, the one that has changed and somehow left this one little place the same as in my mom’s daydreams of playing in her red Radio Flyer wagon.

This is the South, the kind of place that children sprint home from school so that they can play in the grass and roll in the dirt until they are worn-out beyond return unless a cool glass of lemonade happens to find its way down to that right spot that gives them the energy to do it all again. This is the South, where mommas wear aprons, dads stand around and talk about the rain, and everyone knows what “dumplins” are.

This is the South, where no one would ever know that baseball was the American pastime, ‘cause they were all too busy watching football and eating Sonny’s. This is the South, where “ya’ll” is in the dictionary, no one knows what “pop” is, “fixin’ to fix some grits” really means you are planning to make them, and grandparents have “granchillins.”

This is the South, where tailgatin’ takes a whole day, folks eat collard greens and God, Earnhardt and John Deere’s names are not supposed to be taken in vain. This is the South, where on Sundays “dinner” is different than “supper,” and no one would ever quit talkin’ after church unless the Spurrier Show was comin’ on.

I enjoyed my drive. I got to see the trees and the creeks and pigs and cows that make the South what it is.

And my trip to the game?

The Hawthorne girls won the game, 40-18, and it was good to see them so pleased with a convincing win. But something that will last much longer than a season’s record is the feeling you get when you find yourself in a place that has not changed into a commercial metropolis, it has stayed the glorious way you remembered it, and it’s a great feeling to go back home to the South.

This is the South, where moms never believe you aren’t hungry because there are sandwich fixins in the icebox or you could just run around the corner to the Jiffy with Anna-Lynn, Emily-Jo and Betty-Sue. This is the South, where tea is always sweet and iced, young men hold doors and everyone says “yes ma’am.” This is the South, where Auntie Lou wants some sugar and there’ll be a potluck after church on Wednesday.

This is the South, where people would much rather go fishin’ than work, and on the weekend you could go on down to the Watermelon Festival – complete with a Little Miss Watermelon, Junior Miss Watermelon and a Watermelon Queen.