To my sweet, sunny South, take me home."

Southern roads are long, whether on the Interstate or on the surface. These are not empty stretches of black top. They are dappled with small towns and dimpled with traffic lights, gas stations, and stores. Roads lead to houses, from the one-room deep, two story "I" House representing a middle or upper class presence to the shotgun that identifies African American community.

Roads cut across the land where fields upon fields lay in wait for seed, growth, and harvest. They lead to Tennessee mountain ranges, trees ablaze with red and orange, the mountains dusted with snow.

The South is a varied landscape, lived on and used in many ways. In Kentucky a corn patch peacefully coexists with tobacco. In North Carolina, farmland is near a major university. Mississippi Delta cotton, soybeans, and catfish define a land that is productive and historic. In town, the tumble of shotgun houses testify to the other historic fact, that of racial division.

Roads wind, roads straighten out. They lead somewhere and can be like a maze on a foggy night. Where a road ends depends on where you're going, or where you want to end up.

Sometimes, roads can seem like one long, twisty turny road. The roads are long, and they can blend into one another, enough to make one ask "Now, where am I ?". I found that happening to me while going through the Florida Panhandle. Parts of the stretch, the trees, the climate reminded me of Arkansas.

It is a strange feeling, but sometimes it can keep you going because you want to see where you actually are. But it isn't always confusing. Sometimes you know just where you're at. Going through Bristol, Tennessee, I was startled by the height of the hills and the blaze of the trees. When I reached Boone, North Carolina, I drove through a late October snowstorm which caused me to wonder at a landscape heavy with snow and tickled by icicles.

.I love to drive. I get wrapped up in the road and all that's around me. I can take in a town at a glance, and when I stop for gas or a snack, I get involved in the community activity of the social store. Once I got involved in something I should have kept out of. After that I vowed to keep my mouth shut and just to listen and watch. I realized that I Iove to watch on the road and that I enjoyed the basic escape that comes with paying for my gas, climbing in my truck, and heading further down the road.

For eight months I drove Southern roads. The sights on the Interstates and surface roads let me think about a question I've turned over in my mind for many years: how do people feel about their homes, and how do they talk about it? And so I drove, leaving Albuquerque, New Mexico and venturing into a region I knew and loved. Maybe I wanted to go home, myself.

Southern roads, Southern Journeys were extremely kind to me. The people I met in the 11 Southern states received me with sincere interest and curiosity. The roads never seemed sadly long to me, but I have to be honest in saying that there were times when I experienced that stage fright that can happen when meeting people for the first time. I was lucky; the stage fright seemed to disappear.

This is a book of essays on how people think about home in their lives. I will look at home from a variety of angles. "Home Making" explores the many ways people talk about home, thereby making sense of home for themselves in a number of situations. In "This World is Not My Home," I look at how African- and Anglo American gospel music is a powerful expression of home in Christian life. "Home Breaking" is a case study of how one community came together and split apart during and after its sense of home was shattered by a school shooting.

The first essay explains my own concept of home and how the South became a special place for me to return to for this project. Think of it as approaching an on-ramp to the roads ahead.

I love to drive: I left Albuquerque on 26 May 1999 and concluded fieldwork on 1 February 2000. Fieldwork was conducted in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Northwest Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Northeast Texas, and Virginia. I returned to Albuquerque every four months to handle personal business, staying in town for up to two weeks. I now reside in Oklahoma City, which I consider home. Back to the text