Southern Raised in the Fifties

Speaker/writer Ralph Hood, member of the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame, was called “a funny man” by Oprah Winfrey. A master storyteller, he writes of growing up in coastal Georgia, during which he exploded a self-made Molotov cocktail, robbed a prison and allegedly painted “Zorro” on a tall water tower. His stories touch on music, morals, poetry, young love, first dates, religion, being “raised right,” and a voyeuristic tale that he left unfinished. You figure it out.
Though the stories stray to later times and faraway places, they never escape the influence of the Deep South in the 1950s. Ralph has traveled to all fifty states and several other countries, but he is still a product of the basics he learned and the people he knew in Brunswick and Glynn County, Georgia. He includes many of the local folk in this book. Are the stories true? Ralph says they are, “to the extent possible while avoiding lawsuits.” That makes sense, as the stories were first published in the Brunswick News.