Waiving: Probably a Southern Thing

Paul Thomas Swann
2 min readMar 13, 2023
Photo by Ohmky on Unsplash

Taylorsville, Mississippi: It’s a tiny place in South Mississippi. A guy in a blue Chevrolet pick-up truck drives past me, raises his hand on the steering wheel, and waves as if he knows me.

I don’t know him, but I wave back.

I’m pretty sure that if I tried that in New York City I’d be assaulted and or arrested.

My dad had a habit of always waving at approaching vehicles, one hand on the wheel and the other hand holding a Pall Mall cigarette (ashes on the seat and floorboard).

If a hand was empty, it’d be holding a cup of sugar and milk, with a touch of coffee.

My dad grew up in a little town in southwest Alabama. I’m guessing they wave a lot there.

I grew up with the smell of these aromatic cigarettes and, although I don’t mind the smell of some pipe tobacco and most cigars, cigarettes just kill me.

My dad was a real-life red-headed step-child. At the age of 17, he lied to join the Army. He made it just in time for the end of World War II. This gave him a chance to see some more of the world other than Choctaw County.

Once he told me, during commercial breaks of Black Sheep Squadron, that he’d been, in no particular order, a driver for an Army general, a mechanic, and a drill instructor. At Camp Campbell

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