christopher dickey

Last Tuesday my friend Chris Dickey called to say he was at a Bojangles on I-26 in the middle of a late-afternoon chicken snack. He and two of his journalist colleagues, videographer Lee Wang and photographer Seamus Murphy, were headed to Spartanburg on the last leg of their 10-day, modern-day "Sherman's March" through the South.

Earlier this month I was asked to be on a panel in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with poet and novelist James Dickey's oldest son, Christopher, and Payson Kennedy, the founder of the Nantahala Outdoor Center and one of the stunt doubles for the filming of "Deliverance." Next year "Deliverance" will be 35 years old, and it continues to resonate with those who remember seeing it the first time or have come to view it since its release. Over a hundred people came out, and when the moderator asked for a show of hands everyone present had seen the film.