All Over but the Shoutin'

In this chapter Bragg relates the story of his career: “In the beginning. I almost never wrote about killing, about misery. I wrote about violence, yes, about huge men trying to pond each other into mush and scattered teeth. What I wrote was football...” (134). In Bragg’s part of the world, football was an obsession, exemplified by the legendary coach Bear Bryant and the Alabama Crimson Tide. For people like him and his family, football is “the grandest of escapes from that life” (137).

The author also continues the tale of his rise in the profession of journalism. He begins to write more serious stories, the first being about hunters who have killed their friends by accident.

This chapter tells the story of Bragg’s brief marriage. He had a steady job, and his wife was studying to be a social worker. During their marriage, Bragg became more and more involved with his work, and his wife did not see a future for them together. In particular, Bragg was not ready in his twenties to settle down and raise a family. So they divorced.

Chapter 19 returns the focus to Bragg’s family. He recalls trying to “buy my way in [to heaven] with a set of dentures” (148) for his mother. He talks about his brothers, now grown men. Sam was married and working hard to build a good life for his family. His brother Mark was showing signs of the same alcohol addiction that had killed their father. Bragg himself stayed away from alcohol, knowing that the alcoholic gene was in him and that drinking was way too risky for him.

Bragg’s career advances when he gets a job with the Birmingham News, a midsize daily, where he reached a new level of success and learned more about his craft.  He missed the tumultuous era of civil rights in this infamous place, but he did get to write for the front page.

He returned home for a time to be near his mother who was ill. She suffered from having an empty nest and no purpose to her life. However, she was primarily worried about his brother Mark.

This chapter is a character study of Bragg’s younger brother Mark. He inherited their father’s alcoholism and was always getting into trouble because of his drinking. Bragg mostly ignored his brother’s difficult life, except when it affected his mother. She worried about Mark for years, especially during the time he spent in prison. Bragg tells us, “Once they sent him off for a year, and she suffered every day of it, afraid for him. You hear people say all the time how someone ages ten years in one. I have seen it” (167).

Bragg also articulates his feelings of guilt about his relationship with Mark. “I should have gone to see him. I told myself it was because I couldn’t bear the thought of it, seeing him in a cage. The truth is a damn sight uglier than that. That was a time in my life when I was so conscious of who I was, working hard not just survive but to succeed, and a brother in prison did not fit in” (167).

In this chapter Bragg turns his attention to his older brother Sam, telling us, “My brother Sam grew up to be a good man” (169). In Bragg’s lexicon, a good man is one who works hard and provides for his family.

Sam is Rick Bragg’s childhood hero, the big brother who took care of him when there was no father around. “Much of my young life he spent coming to rescue me, with his fists—on the playground—or just his hands...I would break down on the side of the road and...he always got me running again, or pulled me out of the ditch, or at least wrapped a chain around my bumper and towed me out of the embarrassment of the middle of the road” (170).