By SEAN DIETRICH A potluck. A little church in the sticks. There were maybe 50 people at the covered-dish social. Attendees were of all ages. All classes. They represented all creeds, income brackets and SEC football allegiances. The casserole dishes were steaming,...

By SEAN DIETRICH Do this. Get a tomato. Not just any tomato. A Slocomb, Alabama, tomato. Make sure the tomato is firecracker-red and softer than the hindcheeks of a 2-month-old. Find a serrated knife. Cut said tomato into thick slices about the width of the unabridged...

SEAN DIETRICH Three of us sat beside Mama’s above-ground pool, out in the wilds of Black Creek. We were beneath a dollar-store umbrella, and a canopy of live oaks and longleafs. My mother, my kid sister and me. Mama’s old transistor radio played Don Gibson’s “I Can’t...

By SEAN DIETRICH New York Harbor, 1885. Only 20 years after the Civil War. New York was the epicenter of the world. Bubs McFee had traveled all the way from Maryland to be here, hoping to get hired as part of the auxiliary metal-working crew that would help assemble...