Before the dejection set in. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net May 2011. Jennifer’s email cut to the chase “We want you to write a play for Georgia’s Official Folk Life Play, Swamp Gravy.” “Me, write a play,” I replied. “I don’t even go to plays.” “That’s okay. We loveContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Besides the solitary confinement of writing, I cut myself off from the world in two places. Hard-to-reach wilderness areas and forgotten churches where a haunting takes over when I see pews, a pulpit, and the occasional piano. A hymnal now and then too. MyContinue Reading
The Maker’s Mark I can’t remember who I signed the first book for but I’ll hazard a guess it was a woman. Not many men turn out for book signings. For sure I remember where I was. At Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, South Carolina. Thus began signings for thirty-six yearsContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net A blade-like katydid poses by a bison cuff of bronze. Nature blessed my boyhood summers with music. Cicadas’ rising-falling singsong gave days rhythm. Katydids chimed in evenings with a nightshift song backed by cricket twitter. The call of a whip-poor-will drifted through the night.Continue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net There was a time carriers arrived like clockwork, were friendly, and lost mail was never a problem. Today’s USPS is unionized, bloated, arrogant, and inefficient. It even steals your checks. U.S. law, specifically the Private Express Statutes, grants the USPS a legal monopoly overContinue Reading
By Tom Poland: A Southern WriterTomPoland.net My June 15 post, The Kerosene Lamp, received reader comments that deserve sharing. Who in this era of ultra-dark-defying lighting would take the time to comment on the old kerosene lamp? Well, several did. Their responses made me glad I chose such an obscureContinue Reading
By Tom PolandTomPoland.net I inherited an old Bible, so old I can’t determine its age. I see my ancestors reading that Bible by the light of a my kerosene lamp. The kerosene lamp, legendary for the destruction it caused. No cowboy scuffle was complete without a knocked over kerosene lamp.Continue Reading
Rows of nails, a security measure of old. Photo by B. Newman Bancroft By Tom PolandTomPoland.net Old doors rife with nails. Rows and rows of nails. Studs. Like handsome lads, all in a row. All in precise order. I’ve come across two such doors. Brenda N. Bancroft, historian and co-founderContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net This fiddle’s origin may never be known. Long did Grandad’s fiddle hang on my mother’s living room wall. I could never walk by it without wondering . . . “What’s its story?” Best I recall, my mother didn’t know its provenance, that fancy wordContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern Writer In my youth we had a daily newspaper, The Augusta Chronicle. What we didn’t get every day was local news. That’s what made The Lincoln Journal special. Farmers, grandmothers, country storeowners, housewives, and others pulled news about people they knew from their mailbox. “TheContinue Reading
Grandma’s petunias By Tom Poland – A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Vintage petunias, those flowers my grandma loved, I saw them in youth. As I sort through my memory album they reappear. Soft and delicate . . . pastel petals of white and pink, lavender, like watercolors. In the flowers’ throats, subtleContinue Reading