A mythic quality accompanies the American log house. To be born in one formerly boosted a politician's chance of becoming president, and even standing empty and derelict a log cabin causes passersby to stop and gaze. It embodies a national past at once romantic, genuine, heroic, and imagined. As Beulah Price wrote, "since pioneer days the log cabin ... has come to be associated with God-fearing persons of honesty, integrity, and perseverance."

In the Upland South, tens of thousands of log houses survive in the cultural landscape, more than a few of which remain inhabited. Though long in decline, they endure, often enshrined as little museums of a pioneer past. ...

In addition to the mythic character enjoyed by log cabins in general, the dogtrot [a house with a breezeway in the middle], by virtue of its dominance in Tennessee Extended [the area influenced by Tennessee], became a cultural icon for most of the Upland South. Wrote William Ferris, "the dogtrot has etched the memory and imagination" of Upland Southerners, becoming "a mythic image."

Southern writers, painters, photographers, and architects found themselves drawn to the dogtrot. William Faulkner used it repeatedly in his stories, as did Eudora Welty. In time, as traditional Upland Southern culture weakened before the onslaught of American popular culture, the dogtrot became most often associated with poor whites.

Surely much of the appeal of the dogtrot house lay in the breezeway. In Koeppen's humid subtropical climate, the "trot" replaced the primordial fireplace as the gathering place for the family. Here, after the day's work, the people assembled, seeking a cooling breeze while conversing, listening to stories, or singing. Many stayed on to sleep in the hot months. One Arkansas old-timer remembered the trot as the place "where melons were cut and horses swapped," while listening to "the music of pigs, poultry, and piano." A European traveler in mid-nineteenth-century Texas described the open passage as being "according to the custom of the country" and offering its inhabitants "a cool, pleasant resort in summer." Another Texas traveler of that time, turned away when he requested overnight accommodations during a rain storm, wrote that he "dragged my saddle under the covered corridor and slept." From these functions, experiences, impressions, gatherings, and memories derived both the popularity of the house type and its iconographic status. In the brief interval between the advent of screened wire and air conditioning, the dogtrot enjoyed its finest hour.

(From "The Upland South" by Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov. Published by Center for American Places in association with the University of Virginia Press, 2003. Reprinted with permission of UVA Press. For more information visit www.upress.virginia.edu.)

Researcher Brooke Cain searches journals and other sources for talk about the South. She can be reached at (919) 829-4579 or bcain@newsobserver.com.

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