Barbershop Education

The title story of this recording might have been dubbed "Mother Knows Best." While Kathryn Tucker Windham has had a healthy respect for wisdom, her true love has always been humor. So the title story here, and the other selections, reflect her appreciation for traditional ways, but not quite as much as they beguile the listener with that most enchanting of Southern ways, a keen sense of humor. Windham speaks of a tombstone, exquisitely carved with doves, roses, and delicate leaves, that was used as a carving board and confectionery mold in her family's kitchen, of making frog houses in the sand, of a basket made for picking cotton, and of a little fatherless boy learning the ways of men while waiting to have his ears lowered.