DEEP SOUTH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtE18koebkk

AVEN is the name of the fictional Alabama boom town in Dougie Bailey's DEVIL MAKE A THIRD which he modeled after DOTHAN. The literal meaning of an AVEN is "a vertical or highly inclined shaft in limestone, extending upward from a cave passage, generally to the surface"; in other words, the opening of a sink hole. Virtually ALL of the land in Dothan is part of the Lime Sinks region of Alabama. This is a common physiographic region in Georgia and Florida, however, only about 1000 square miles of Alabama are in the Lime Sinks. (Of course, Houston County also has a little town located slap dab in the middle of it called AVON. By changing the "O" to an "E", Dougie Bailey reminds us that old Dothan had a spelling controversy when its post office was misspelled DOTHEN from 1871 until 1897)  http://cartweb.geography.ua.edu/lizardtech/iserv/calcrgn?cat=North%20America%20and%20United%20States&item=States/Alabama/Counties/houston//Houston1977a.sid&wid=1000&hei=900&props=item(Name,Description),cat(Name,Description)&style=simple/view-dhtml.xsl



 http://www.wtvy.com/content/news/A-Sinkhole-has-opened-up-alongside-a-Houston-County-Home-460839243.html

second coast map article by James Hargrove http://www.apalachtimes.com/news/20180823/surveying-forgotten-coast

SAWYER'S LOST BALL (Golf Balls: HUMANITY'S SIGNATURE LITTER) http://www.cnn.com/2009/SPORT/11/04/littering.golf.balls/

SAL'S GOT A MEAT SKIN was a popular Alabama fiddle tune.

page 13 "For God's sake, Coke," Buck suddenly said, "let go o' my leg and do somethin' else. Suck a meat skin."

20. A meat skin was the outside of the smoked ham or shoulder that was often cut off and eaten raw, broiled or fried. I suppose parents often used a meat skin as a kind of pacifier for toddlers. 

“This passion for specificity, for the hypnotic materiality of the world one is in is all but at the heart of the task to which every American novelist has been enjoined since Herman Melville and his whale and Mark Twain and his river: to discover the most arresting, evocative verbal depiction for every last American thing." novelist Philip Roth on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2013. (clipping from the September 19, 1948 PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER ~ next month is the 70th anniversary of the publication of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD) 

 Sid Segler The Bailey's house was on Laurel Avenue, just east of W. Woodland Drive. The house on the corner of Laurel and Woodland was where a DHS friend, Larry Morris, lived...his dad owned Rimson Furniture Co. Douglas Bailey's son was Fields Bailey (named after dad's middle name, of course). He was in the 10th grade when I graduated in 1955.