Harmless but abundant, may flies are native to the Lake Seminole area. Their presence is an indicator of good water quality. They appear in swarms. They do not bite, but swarms can be so thick they can impede breathing.

One night the Corps of Engineers got a call from a campground where may flies were clustering around an electric light. Campers complained that the odor from dead flies was bothersome. When Corps workers got to the site, they found a pile of expired flies three-feet deep that had to be hauled away with a front loader.

John Burrison, professor of English at Georgia State University, estimates there are dozens of stories involving preachers and chicken, but he selected the best of the bunch for his book Storytellers: Folktales and Legends from the South. This story was told by Don Buchanan of Decatur, who heard it from his father, a Baptist minister:

Once there was this preacher who loved fried chicken, as all preachers are supposed to love fried chicken. And he was invited to eat at the house of one of his parishioners one Sunday. After church he made his way through the country to this house, and it so happened, as he was crossing this particular creek, right in the middle of the bridge he stumbled and he lost his false teeth, and they fell in the creek.

Well, ‘course he couldn’t eat, but he couldn’t turn down this invitation either, so he went on to the house. And, as they ate dinner, he ate what he could eat—mash potatoes an’ things that weren’t so hard to chew—but he didn’t touch the fried chicken. Well, he had a great reputation for eating fried chicken, and so, of course, everybody at the table was amazed and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t eating any fried chicken. So finally they asked him. And he said, “Well, I just have to tell you the truth. I lost my teeth goin’ across the creek down here, an’ I just can’t eat any.” (more…)