Looking Homeward….

        I always knew I would write this book. I didn’t know at exactly what point in my life it would actually happen, but, in my heart, I always knew it was waiting in the wings.

        I left Alabama in 1975 after having spent my childhood and young adult years in the Cotton State.

        At the time I left, I was glad to be gone. While one part of me loved my native state, another part of me felt that Alabama was too small and unprogressive for my personal tastes.

        Over the next 25 years, I went to all the places I dreamed of visiting when I lived in Alabama. I lived in Florida, California, Montana, Washington, D.C., Texas, and Colorado. I traveled to Hong Kong, Paris, Istanbul, Nairobi, Caracas and Bora Bora .

         One day after I turned 50, I decided to review my life’s journey. Of all the places I had traveled during my lifetime, the single locale that I longed for the most was the pine-studded hills of North Alabama. I had this sudden undeniable need to smell black-eyed peas cooking, to hear a whippoorwill call, to taste chicken dumplings and see a “See Rock City” sign. The southern boy that had been hiding inside me all those years had suddenly roared to the forefront.

         In my heart, I knew I could never REALLY go home again but a special part of me desperately wanted to give it the old college try.

        These short stories represent my best efforts to accomplish that singular feat.

                                                                                                 John Isaac Jones