Atticus   

Last weekend I finally got around to sifting through two plastic containers, each larger than an ice chest, that my mom had decided were past the expiration date to remain stored at my parents’ house.

Inside I found, among other things, the McGuirk mysteries I’d been trying to locate for my nephew, photos from my trip to Clemson with my grandfather in 1994 to watch Auburn advance to the College World Series and an old copy of Men’s Journal.

I remembered on sight why I had saved it.

The issue’s arrival at the two-bedroom house in northwestern Georgia I was renting had coincided with my surging interest in fiction, especially books written by Southerners.

On Sunday, when I thumbed through it, I harkened back to, as a newspaper man at the time, admiring Thomas Carney for a nice piece of creative nonfiction. More importantly, I recalled his subject, writer Pat Conroy, inspiring me to believe a relatively stereotypical Southern man could carve out a life of letters.

But somehow I’d forgotten the lead photo, a shot of the renowned author in waders. Barechested.

I have no idea what I thought about that image more than 10 years ago. Part of me now sees it and thinks “embarrassing.”

But another part of me, I have to admit, says “badass.” It takes a man with a lot of self-confidence to go shirtless in print when he’s more than a few pounds overweight and only a few months shy of 50. Or maybe it took only a certain quantity of beers.