Bottled in Meridian, Mississippi — A long-distance winner. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net I didn’t call them pop. I didn’t call them sodas. I called them Cokes. Cokes could be Pepsis, Fantas (remember those?), Orange Crush, or RC Colas. Tossed out windows, Coke bottles waited along dirt roads, gravelContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Each August I think of my father’s service in Japan, specifically Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Recently I came across one of his base passes that had been hiding from me all these years. Dad was stationed in Yokohama. The date on his pass is AugustContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net When I see photographs of Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park I want to explore a desert right then. Until I do, the fragile deserts along the Atlantic Ocean will do just fine. Wind, it shapes the earth, yet we never see it, justContinue Reading
Photo: Cool, comfy, and a tad literary. That’s seersucker. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Seersucker. A cool word, and cool is the word. Before AC came along, a Southern gentleman worth his salt wouldn’t be caught without a seersucker suit. Just one gentleman back home wore seersucker. With hisContinue Reading
Photo: A stack of 1964 Reader’s Digests, a trip back in time. Courtesy of Brenda Bancroft. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net I read my mother’s Reader’s Digests from cover to cover. It’s hard find one today, but if you do, it will take you back to another era. And itContinue Reading
Photo – Winnsboro’s clock tower, the country’s longest-running clock By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net In my journeys across the South, Georgialina, in particular, I take note of clock towers, watchtowers, and steeples. How can I not. They command the eye. They set me to thinking. I’ve written many timesContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net “As night deepened all he could see was the shifting line of fire, like some malfunction in the wiring of the world.” —William Gay, Provinces Of Night. “In the draws the smoke coming off the ground like mist and the thin black trees burningContinue Reading
Photo: A dirt road runs where an old locomotive steamed into Blackville. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net The road looks just like one on Granddad’s farm running into hardwoods where a spring bubbled in shade. Come sundown in Granddad’s battered old car, we’d ride that road through trees toContinue Reading
Time was, you could buy a casket from a country store. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net A do-it-yourself casket for a pet is as close most get today. I’ve heard of people paying a carpenter to build a casket for a dog, and I get it. Just placing aContinue Reading
Where a $20 bush axe killed the music. Jackson Station Rhythm & Blues Club October 1977—April 1990 Where the music died. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Now and then a kind of gravity draws me to an old building. I’m driving south on SC Highway 25 near Hodges. HurryingContinue Reading
The one-room schoolhouse, legendary, and iconic. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net I visited the Bart Garrison Agricultural Museum of South Carolina in Pendleton a few weeks back. If you’re a product of the rural South as I am, the museum takes you on a long walk down memory lane.Continue Reading