Garden & Gun: Get It

Here's a mashup for you...

Take equal parts of Southern Living, Texas Monthly, Gray's Sporting Journal, and a chicken-fried version of the New Yorker, and what do you get? You get Garden and Gun, one of the few magazines I look forward to reading cover to cover, every single month that I've been fortunate enough to receive it.

To the uninitiated (or uncouth), it seems like an unlikely combo... I get laughs when people see it proudly layed out on my desk. But once they crack it open (hoping to mock me), they begin to understand that this little book is not about begonias and .44 magnums.

It's a "lifestyle" magazine, to be sure. But I invariably cringe at that word... I mean, what asshat out there describes himself as leading a "southern lifestyle" -- or ANY lifestyle?!?!? That's a word for no-talent, just-out-of-school marketing punks that have no, well, lifestyle of their own. Anyhoo, I digress.

Back to Garden and Gun. Please tell me what other magazine you know of that has the editorial stable of Sid Evans (EIC) and David DiBenedetto (ED), along with contributing editors like Roy Blount, Jr., Pat Conroy, Rick Bragg, and Winston Groom? (If you don't know them, shame on you. Google them first (see?) then buy the damned magazine already.) Add to that some of the best outdoor writers plying their trade on a freelance basis (see Phil Bourjaily and Eddie Nickens) and this magazine is a sure bet.

Of course, no magazine is a sure bet these days. In fact, thanks, to the recession and corporate ad slashing, most mags are thinner than double-ply asswipe these days. G&G is hanging in there, and you need to know about it. Get a subscription. Buy it on a newsstand or during a layover. At the very least, visit their blogs. Trust me, pal... this day and age, we could all use some old-school southern sense.