Here’s a guarantee for Rick Bragg’s next book

       Words.

Some folks are good saying them. Others are good when writing them.

My friend Rick Bragg is not just good in both categories. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist is spectacular. A self-effacing, self-described product of a poor-white-trash upbringing in rural Alabama, Rick has written a library shelf of books. I’ve read them all, plus everything else that I could find with his byline.

I am certain that Rick has boosted the magazine readership—particularly of men folks—in Southern Living and Garden & Gun. And on the speaking circuit, his audiences roar with approval.

I know.

Saturday night, I once again witnessed howling laughter and thunderous applause that Rick erupts when he speaks.

Rick was the keynote speaker of the annual Southern LitFest in Newnan. The Wadsworth Auditorium was filled with his fans, and I had the honor of introducing him. I wish you had been there. 

To hear not me but Rick.

I told the crowd, “Country artist Kenny Chesney had a chart-topping hit, ‘You Had Me from Hello.’ Rick Bragg had me in his fan club after just 20 pages into his first book, All Over But The Shoutin’. The autobiographical tribute to his saintly mom is my kind of reading. It’s right up there with a hot buttered cathead biscuit, slathered with mayhaw jelly. Even better.”

From memory, I pulled Rick’s line about the man who abandoned his wife and three sons. He wrote, “Most men have backbones. My daddy had starch. His khakis were so stiff, you could slice bologna with them.” Rick told the crowd, “My daddy was sorry, a drunk.” But he worships his almost-90-year-old mother, Margaret Marie Bundrum Bragg. 

Rick has an 11th book in the works, about an old Bronco that he and brothers Sam and Mark drove. Sitting backstage before Saturday night’s event, Rick told me the backstory. A year from now, Bronco Boys will join his list of best-sellers. 

To best describe the featured speaker, I shared paragraphs from a 2002 GQ magazine article, headlined “For a Vegetable, I’ll Have White Gravy.” Rick wrote:

“I always wanted some washboard abs. But I always seemed to want some baby back ribs.

“Washboard abs are hard to get. Baby back ribs are $6.99.

“Washboard abs come with size 32 jeans, good overall cardiovascular health and, if you believe the infomercials, beautiful women. Baby back ribs come with coleslaw and a Wet-Nap. (I ate a Wet-Nap, in Sylacauga, Alabama, but that is another story.)

“Washboard abs come with—screw it. I am a man, what I like to believe is a real man, a Southern man.

“If God meant for me to have washboard abs, he would have left me in the hay fields of Calhoun County, slinging 50-pound bales up on the flatbed. He would have left me standing in the middle of rocks, making—as the song goes—little ’uns outta big ’uns in the red-hot sun.”

That’s classic Rick. 

        As dirt-road Southerners say, “He puts it down where the goats can get at it.”

        I told the Saturday-night crowd—as Rick stood in the curtain wings—that my wife and I have been married for 57 years. We must have played hooky from middle-school recess and eloped. Pam and I don’t fuss, but we do tangle over who gets to first read Rick’s back-page column in Southern Living.

I found a way to win, every time. I race to beat her to the mailbox to savor my friend’s column on the walk back to the house.

         I predict folks will race to get their hands on Rick’s upcoming Bronco Boys. 

        Here’s my promise:

        If you don’t like it, I will eat a Wet-Nap, too.

        Yeah, Rick’s that good.

dnesmith@cninewspapers.com