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We Have Met the South and It Is Us: Southern Souvenirs and the American Image

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Sue Bridwell Beckham
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Stuckey's is almost defunct. Even the Stuckey's next door to the home office in Eastman, Georgia, is closed on Sunday. Ever since the railroad bought the chain as a tax write-off, burnt down Stuckey's haven't been replaced, and few new Stuckey's have been built. The pecan rolls at the remaining stores were made, not by Stuckey's but were, rather, bought, mass-produced, from some nameless factory. And today, it is rare to see a roof bearing the admonition to “See Seven States from Rock City.” The three-foot letters on the barn roofs which still bear the familiar advertisement are faded and the words no longer dominate the countryside. Today, the message, extended only to literate birds, is private rather than public—new invitations to Lookout Mountain's Rock City are painted on birdhouse roofs, and the bird houses are sold to grace the back yards of nostalgia souvenir seekers. Even without Stuckey's and Rock City barns, the South ain't dead for tourists; rather, it's a New South—a South to which the travelling nation looks for the finest American virtues.

Type
Souvenirs
Information
Prospects , Volume 11 , October 1986 , pp. 247 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

NOTES

1. Stuckey's was established at Eastman, Georgia, in 1937. By the 70s, the chain was owned by Pet Foods, a subsidiary of ICC Industries (headed by the Illinois Central Railroad). Interviews with Eastman, Georgia, residents reveal that to them “the railroad” took over Stuckey's. Throughout the 70s Stuckey's, now a franchise operation, remained relatively constant at about 330 stores. By 1983, the number of units was down to 271 and as many were out of the South as were in it. The fact that Stuckey's has become a national chain in the last decade after forty years in the South, and that all over the United States it still sells pecan rolls, peanuts, and sorghum is another indication of the nationalization of the South (cf. The Franchise Annual: Complete Handbook and Directory, Lewiston, N.Y.: INFO Press, Inc. Issues: 1973–1983Google Scholar; Pet Foods Annual Report, Issues: 1973Google Scholar, 1977, 1983; “Pet Surveys Food Franchises,” Barons, 04 21, 1971, p. 3.)Google Scholar

2. Jack Kirby, Temple in Media Made Dixie: The South in the American Imagination (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978)Google Scholar treats of the “new direct-action, law and order South introduced in Walking Tall,” pp. 150–152.Google Scholar He does not, however, see the movie as a Southern “Western.”

3. A search in the University of Minnesota's Business Resource Library turned up nothing about Magnolia Plantation, but the stores are as ubiquitous along Southern interstate highways as Stuckey's once were. Lack of published information indicates that the chain has not gone “public” but is, rather, testimony to good old American free enterprise.

4. In my stops at several Magnolia Plantations, I photographed several middle-aged men in the “Good Old Boy” uniform. Unfortunately, since these photos were taken without the subjects' knowledge, none were good enough to merit reproduction. Possibly they were non-Southern travellers, but their presence did add “authenticity” to the Magnolia Plantation image.

5. Non-slave holding mountain areas in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia (esp. the part that became West Virginia) were strongholds of Unionist sentiment before and during the Civil War. Cf. Noble, David W. and Carroll, Peter N., The Restless Centuries (Minneapolis, Minn.: Burgess Publishing Company, 1973), p. 267–268Google Scholar; and Donald, David Herbert, Liberty and Union (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1978), pp. 89–97.Google Scholar

6. James S. Hogg, governor of Texas during the Farmers Alliance uprising of 1890, championed populism chiefly to serve his own ends. His name has been linked with Ben Tillman and others as an early “Southern Demogogue.”

7. Miniature cotton bales are second only to Civil War mementos as popular Southern souvenirs. Roadside cafes sell tiny ones, 3″ × 3″ × 4″, with pipe cleaner “darkies” perched atop. Magnolia Plantation has slightly larger ones which wind up to play Dixie. And on Mud Island, rather imposing ones, 18″ × 18″ × 24″, can be purchased for $79.95.)

8. Others have observed the increased value of Elvis as a “dead property” (cf. Goldman, Albert, Elvis, New York: Avon Books, 1981).Google Scholar He is, however, also more valuable as a dead hero: he can neither grow fat nor freak out on drugs.