The Prince of Frogtown

The Prince of Frogtown

Rick Bragg

Language: English

Pages: 272

ISBN: 1400032687

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


The final volume of Rick Bragg's bestselling and beloved American saga documents a mesmerizing journey back in time to the lush Alabama landscape of Rick's youth, to Jacksonville's one-hundred-year-old mill and to Rick's father, the troubled, charismatic hustler coming of age in its shadow.

Inspired by Rick Bragg's love for his stepson, The Prince of Frogtown also chronicles his own journey into fatherhood, as he learns to avoid the pitfalls of his forebearers. With candor, insight, and tremendous humor, Bragg seamlessly weaves these luminous narrative threads together and delivers an unforgettable rumination about fathers and sons.

Permanent Midnight: A Memoir (Twentieth Anniversary Edition)

My Father and Myself

Bullies: A Friendship

Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

highway. It rolled on gangster whitewalls and four perfectly matched factory hubcaps, and had a “Big Six” six-cylinder motor, three-speed on the column, fender skirts on the rear wheels and six little-bitty chrome letters that spelled out “Hornet” on the side. On Sundays, they rode and listened to the radio and talked about the sons they would have. They would all be sons, he figured. They would have to be. They decided to name the first one Samuel, after his grandfather. With a big name like

would be their own expendability. Here, from the Creek wars to the Civil War to a cold-blooded industrialization of these hills, is a history of my father’s people, the people of the mills. IT WAS MAGIC masquerading as nature. The round summits of the highlands seldom stood stark and clear, but were softened by hot, yellow haze in summer and gray, cool mist in winter. Even in their shrouds, they were beautiful. Poison ivy veined the trees, blistering even the lightest touch. Persimmons hung

table. One day they crept from under the porch, through the darkened house and toward the sounds of, well, something odd, in the middle room. There was a couch there, and further back in the boxcar-like house sat an unused rollaway bed on which Velma had piled mountains of folded quilts, sheets and other clean laundry. They crawled belly-down through the rooms, climbed the rollaway bed, cringing when the springs squealed, and burrowed under the laundry. From there they could see Troy and Dinky on

and relatives, I remembered my last year in the wild. I washed my hair and my laundry in dishwashing detergent, and both got squeaky, lemony clean. I never wore an ironed shirt or even wished I had one. I still lived in hotels, mostly. I spent some nights in my mother’s cabin in the foothills, some nights in a house near Mobile Bay, some nights with friends in Tuscaloosa who had a magic refrigerator filled with limitless pie. I left clothes scattered ’round so I could travel light, and my mail

of a dog? “He just needed something good to happen to him,” she said, and the dog was the only currency he had left. I had not realized, after all the hatefulness we endured in that time, how long that particular hurt lasted in my brother. We have buried, between us, fifty dogs since then. “But it stuck in him,” my mother said. “If he thinks about it, even as old as he is now, he gets so mad he can’t stand it. That’s why he will not talk hardly at all about your daddy, because it makes him think

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