All Over but the Shoutin'

Here Bragg jumps forward in time about fifteen years to when he is an established journalist working for the New York Times. He has had stories printed on the front page. He has achieved success. He is, however, haunted by his responsibility to his mother back home. He only wants to tell her happy news about his life and work. He never wants her to know that he is, in fact, often in very dangerous situations.

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.