The South attracts all kinds. My neighbors include a gospel singer, a man who owns an Uzi, a handful of Quakers, a cell-phone engineer, an ostrich farmer, a survivalist, a dog trainer who raises white wolves, a group of Hari Krishnas in a yellow geodesic dome, a Japanese musician in a log cabin, and a sportswriter occupying historic Moorefields Plantation.

Just across the road lives a man who flies his Confederate battle flag over a squadron of roosters. These are gamecocks, bred to fight. Early each morning, the gamecocks crow a rooster's rebel yell.

What's going on here? Where's the charming, Dixie-humming, jasmine-scented Southern Living way of life? According to our sources for this issue, that version of the south is, to quote the raven, nevermore. And never was. The South has always been a wilder, weedier place than the movies and marketing departments made it out to be.

Yes, our history is still underfoot. From my back door, I can walk thirty yards into the woods and kick the leaves off an old cache of Ball jars and rusted buckets - the remnants of a moonshine still. And a friend just brought me a pod of magnolia seeds from Rowan Oak, William Faulkner's home in Mississippi - knowing I will plant them. Connections to stories, connections to land - these things may always define me as Southern.

But there's more to the South than romance, and here at Carolina, most of the scholars we talked with say the time has come to stop whistlin' Dixie. As they delve beyond the gauzy myths, researchers here are uncovering some surprising new versions of the American South - versions that will no doubt ring truer than Dixie to people whose ancestors never sipped a mint julep or set foot on a cotton plantation.

The Editor