The Church Street Inn, Fairhope, Alabama

The photo you like so much was taken on a bench in front of a charming little bed & breakfast called the Church Street Inn in Fairhope, Alabama — stayed there once upon a time in a cozy upstairs room with gorgeous quilts on a big four-poster bed and a claw-foot bathtub. (I know, how girly can you get, right? Very romantic. I loved it.) There was some kind of celebration going on in Fairhope that night, and the streets were full of friendly, laid back people, and good food, and great music, and I couldn’t resist – we left the little inn and hung out with a bunch of people we didn’t even know.

Southerners are notoriously friendly, and before I knew it we were talking barbecue and shrimp boils (down here it’s pronounced “bowl,” like shrimp “bowl” and whose mama had seen whom in the Piggly Wiggly market and did you know he was back in town? Lookin’ all she-doggy with that hair of his and that smile (smahhhhl) that could melt ice right outa the deep freeze…I am incredibly taken with the sound and the cadence of life in the South, in case you wondered. Anyway, that spring night in Fairhope was spontaneous and lovely, with those clear light bulbs strung over the closed-off streets, and patio umbrellas suspended over tables sporting citronella candles flickering in glass pots, and Bruce Hornsby’s “The Long Race” floating on the breeze off Mobile Bay. Casually elegant women in chic Pulitzer-esque sundresses with perfectly trimmed ‘dos, sun-kissed shoulders, and gardenia blossoms tucked into their sleek hair languidly exchanged the latest gossip. Generations of observation and practice under their mothers’ tutelage had taught them the fine art of delivering sugar-laced bombshells with laser-guided accuracy. The men, mostly sporting an array of humidity-peached Oxford shirts, khaki shorts, leather sandals, and bottles of Beck’s beer, stood around talking casually and, as Southern men will do, indulging themselves with an eyeful of shapely Southern female. Nobody does a block party better than Southern towns, I must say, and Fairhope does them better than most.