What a blessing it has been to discover the books and articles of this great and good South Carolinian and defender of all that is best in Southern culture. Clyde Wilson is a patriot who understands that a culture's true greatness lies not in the material, but in the permanent things; intangibles like truth, honor, courtesy, loyalty, faith and sacrifice. May he long continue to point to the better path and the broad, sunlit uplands of freedom.
From Chronicles
By Clyde N. Wilson
Well, Old Man, 70 today. Who’d have thought? And still in pretty good condition, considering how little care I have taken of the old carcass. I understand now how the accumulation of minor miseries in aging is mercifully designed to let us down slow and easy till we are ready.
The children are OK. I still haven’t accepted that they are grown and responsible for themselves. However much I long to protect and help them, there is not much I can do now.
And that grandboy is something! Smart, fearless, and a winning personality. Lord, for this blessing I am truly grateful. But Lord, please don’t let that winning personality make him grow up to be a politician. Give him a useful, hands-on vocation. No need to worry. Son-in-law is a good man, another blessing, and will see the boy right.
And my other children OK, too. The young men who, to my surprise, came to study history with me—honest, courageous, Christian, and with a true vocation every one. A completely unexpected and undeserved blessing that has enriched and cheered me beyond measure. Now middle-aged, some of them, believe it or not. Not much more I can do for them either, but will do what I can. Ripples in the water.
The world seems an entirely different place now than when I was a child. Once ubiquitous, there is not a mule, a cotton field, a spittoon, or a lady’s fan left in Carolina. But it is more than that—the slow Southern contentment shared by black and white is gone. The world now is always promiscuously fast and noisy and full of strangers.