	While in the previous book Grizzard illustrated the Southern trait of dropping a letter from the end of a word, in his touching memoir My Daddy Was a Pistol and I’m a Son of a Gun he shares with his readers his relationship his turbulent relationship with his father, a man who was an admitted womanizing alcoholic who wrote a lot of bad checks and conned a lot of people, yet to his son he was just Daddy.  The syntax that Grizzard uses to tell his father’s story, and by default, his own story, is sad without being maudlin.  He manages to take a deeply personal subject, his father, and write about him from his earliest memories of the man until his death.  It is in this book that syntax plays the greatest role.  While there are indeed funny moments, such as in the very beginning when Grizzard and a friend discuss reaching the point of being Dead Daddy Drunk, the book is somber and honest to the point of tears.  The writing tells of life in the South, and how it was for Grizzard growing up without his father.  He uses Southern language throughout the book, and the syntax frames it like a work of art.
	Southern language is, in large part, simply seen as a mixture of the dialects spoken throughout the Southern United States.  However, it is so much more than that.  Southern language is Standard American English, with all of the rules and instructions, but they are thrown up against the wall to see what sticks.  This is much like Grizzard’s book, Don’t Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters Got Eyes.  The very title of the book shows Southern vernacular; by giving it the title he did instead of the more grammatically proper “Don’t Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Those Potatoes Have Eyes”.  Grizzard took great fun with this book, as its theme is sex in the South.  In the book he compiled a list as to why he wrote the book.  Number five on the list was ``Sex books historically sell a lot of copies. Do you think I`m still writing books at the advanced age of forty-two just because I like to type?” He shows the irreverence and sly humor that became his trademark.
	In the three books mentioned Grizzard did indeed cover some unique topics, such as women who are called Bubba, the reason that Baptists don’t have sex standing up – they’re afraid someone might think they are dancing and call the preacher -, and finding a letter he wrote his father where he told him that if he couldn’t clean his act up he wasn’t welcome in Lewis’s home in his father’s wallet when he was going through his father’s possessions after his death in the hospital.  These subjects were handled with the type of devil may care attitude that many Southern authors possess, notably Mark Twain.  The syntax and morphology that Grizzard wields to mold his prose are decidedly of a Southern flair.  For example, look at what might be the most quintessential Southern sentence, “Hey y’all, watch this”.  The morphology is interesting.  Since we are looking at the internal structures of words and not the way the words are constructed in sentences, “y’all” will be the word being examined.  “Here are many varieties of English which retain a distinction between singular and plural for second person pronouns. These have one of two systems. The first is the above (quite a rare situation). The second is a simplified system which shows 1) lack of case distinctions, 2) one singular form you and 3) alternative plural forms which are either the inherited nominative plural (ye) or a morphological compound (yous, y'all /jɔ:l/) or a combination of these two options (yees). (Hickey)” Lewis Grizzard would probably say that was just a high fallutin’ way of saying that apparently other languages have a version of y’all but only the South gets mocked for it.  So whether or not you are a’comin downstairs or fixin’ ta go ta the beach, the language of the South is as colorful as the foliage and this is reflected in the writing.
