They Call Me Orange Juice

About the Book

From the time she could barely see over the space bar of her old manual typewriter, to writing her popular southern culture blog, Folkways Nowadays, author Audrey McDonald Atkins has been sharing her downhome stories and essays about life in the South.

In They Call Me Orange Juice, Atkins provides a nostalgic, poignant, and often-hilarious look at growing up in a small South Alabama town and how that upbringing still influences her today. What does it feel like to be the only Episcopalian at a Baptist church? How do you entertain yourself on a two-hour car trip with a dead man? What do you do when your foundation garment goes rogue in the middle of a busy intersection? And what price did they pay for calling her “orange juice”?

Atkins answers all these questions and more in her own unmistakable Southern style. She recounts stories about the men who congregated in the police station and the eccentric characters who worked on Main Street, shares words of wisdom from her Granny, and tells how one superstitious old man could literally make it rain even during the dry, dog days of summer. Each person still lives in Atkins’ memory frozen in time just as they were in the 70s, and it’s these ghosts of bygone days who shine through in They Call Me Orange Juice.

About the Author

Audrey McDonald Atkins grew up in the Oil Capital of Alabama, Citronelle, and spent her childhood roaming through the piney woods, swimming in creeks, and rambling about her small town taking in the sights and sounds of the Deep South and storing them away. And from the time she could barely see over the space bar to hack out her own weekly newspaper on a manual typewriter to writing her popular southern culture blog, Folkways Nowadays, Audrey’s been sharing her funny, poignant, and down-home stories and essays about life in the South. From her parents and grandparents to the men who congregated in the police station and gossiped to the eccentric characters who worked along Main Street, each and every person still lives in Audrey’s memory frozen in time just as they were in the ’70s. It’s these ghosts of bygone days that shine through the pages that Audrey writes. Audrey ultimately made her way to the big city of Birmingham after graduating from the University of Montevallo, where she earned a BA in English. While she currently lives in the city and sometimes eats sushi and drinks craft cocktails, her Mayberry-like childhood still gives Audrey a unique and often hilarious outlook on the South and our world.