Richard Bausch, brilliant writer, teacher and friend, on the occasion of his move from Memphis to California: “Nowhere else, in no other English speaking city I’ve traveled in around the world—and it is in fact around the world—have I ever heard this expression, which is common only in Memphis, indigenous to Memphis: a form of greeting used in the polite sense of ‘How are you?’ or ‘How’s it going?’ In Memphis, unfailingly, it is expressed this way: ‘You all right today?’ Or, ‘You doing all right today?’ There’s something so generously concerned in it, as if the speaker and the listener are engaged in a struggle for better times. I think it is beautiful, and I intend to spread it all over California.”
