The Ocean Was Salt by Loretta Cobb. Livingston Press. $25 and $14.95. 152 pages. Release date March 2004. This collection of short stories by Alabama author Loretta Cobb is the homegrown, garden fresh variety that we Southerners like best. Cobb wastes neither time nor movement in the stories, entering at the latest possible moment. She goes to the best part first and stays there. Loretta Cobb chooses a wide range of subjects and themes including sexuality, father-son relationships, and racial inequality. In a hilarious tale of sexual energy, Cobb explores the world of academia in "Belle's Balls." Belle, the college president's wife, accepts her husband's challenge to bring around the obstinate Professor Armand. This Southern belle employs her feminine wiles to lure him into a tangled web. The arragont S.O.B. never knows what hit him. Cobb had me laughing out loud. Cobb continues the belle theme in "The Darling Buds of May" where the protagonist pretends to be a Southern belle at William Faulkner's home in Oxford, Mississippi. As a class project, the professor takes an integrated group to view the famous author's home. Only Faulkner's ghost is there at Rowan Oak with the present down-on-their luck occupants lurking from a shack on the property. Cobb manages to peer into the mind of the young student who can only glimpse the depths of all she has been exposed to on that day and how her small part plays in the overall Civil Rights Movement. Loss of innocence resonates throughout "The Ocean Was Salt." In the story, "That Fall," children gather outside to look at the Milky Way on a frosty October night. They're cold, and when they try to reenter their home, they realize they've been locked out by their sitter and stepfather. Cobb's use of metaphor is superb as she gently leads readers to discovering the many aspects of their lives that have been locked away, the most precious being their innocence. "Feeling Salty" takes readers into the world of father-son relationships, and shows how distance and indifference cannot be made up in a summer month. Though the pattern is predictable-divorced, non-custodial father with a business that he hopes his angry teenage son will work in for a month-Cobb uses this to show how quickly a son becomes a man. A father will have to come to terms with his venial sins, for time lost is gone forever, just as the waves sloshing on Rosemary Beach, the setting for the story. Cobb switches to humor to tackle a once-taboo subject in literature-the big C word. In "Seeing It Through" Thelma is diagnosed with cancer, maybe, might be, if she knew more about it, only nobody will talk straight to her. She is a buoy bobbing about on waves as she attempts to navigate the medical system. Her Spanish-speaking physician has more interest in tending horses than his patients. He relies on nincompoops to manage his office and arrange for all the tests and re-tests. Thelma sums up her feelings about this fiasco with, "I feel like beating the crap outta somebody, and I can't figure out who." There are ten stories in "The Ocean Was Salt," each one a vignette of the South during the sweep of the last half century. These stories were published by Livingston Press at The University of West Alabama. I would be remiss if I did not mention that getting a collection of short stories published is tantamount to firing a shot in the dark and hitting a target. Joe Taylor and staff are providing a greatly needed outlet for an art form that might never see the light of day. Taylor is preserving some of Alabama's best literary works. This is as it should be. Loretta Cobb is Founder and Director Emeritus of The Harbert Writing Center at the University of Montevallo. She has written stories, numerous academic essays and poetry, corporate profiles, and a series of travel articles for The Birmingham News. She lives in Montevallo with her husband, novelist William Cobb. ___________________________________________________________________ Marianne Moates is the author of Truman Capote's Southern Years published by The University of Alabama Press.