Photo: Collards — A field of memories, good eating, and more. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Being the chap I was, collard greens’ smell and similarity to the stringy dark-green algae in fish ponds repulsed me. Mom would cook up a mess and sit it before me. I’d dragContinue Reading
Photo: My grandmother and mother’s cornbread mold with an ear of Bradford heirloom corn. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Born of fire, master of fire, and survivor of fire, my vintage cast iron cornbread mold fed many a soul. Best I figure it came to be in the 1930s.Continue Reading
Something about a rainy winter day fires up the imagination. For some. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net I have long admired the work of a fighter pilot turned writer. He wrote under the pen name James Salter. James Arnold Horowitz volunteered for combat duty in Korea and flew moreContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Photo: The ash door to the smokehouse in Historic Brattonsville. To some, the smokehouse remains a symbol of the impoverished, rural South. Not me. I see it as a rustic savior, and I thank the late Harry Crews for my column’s title. I recalledContinue Reading
My lost geisha By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net It was the photograph in my father’s war album. Her white kimono. Hair black as onyx. Pale, serene face. Perfect bone structure. Gloss, a sheen upon her hair. On one side, a nameless GI. On the other, my father, not muchContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Photographs speak if you listen to them. That curling, cracked Polaroid of your deceased uncle and aunt tells a story as surely as the photos of Iwo Jima and V-J Day in Times Square images do. A world entire lives inside the four wallsContinue Reading
Red, messy, slick, and a trademark of the American South. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Drizzle drifted and spritzed as if it were January except it was October. Mists coated my camera. In its viewfinder red mud glistened in rain that slickened it to slip-sliding away status and thatContinue Reading
The front entrance to New Hope Baptist Church, Lincolnton, Georgia. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net For the first time in my life I was alone in my church. The old Regulator wall clock ticked away as I ticked away the families who had walked through their last door. Ivys,Continue Reading
The Horaltic Pose By Tom Poland: A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Back roads never disappoint me. Such was the case with a road, paved just a tad, but deliciously dirt the rest of the way. As I suspected, its name, Sardis, comes from the Bible, though it could be a family name.Continue Reading
By Tom Poland: A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Sunday lunch at the Sea View Inn. Forty-five years it had been since my daughters and I were together at Pawleys. While eating I thought about our long-ago days at an old beach house. I could rent the house for a week for somethingContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Sea View Inn’s fried chicken. As evening shadows fell, I made my way home through woods. Overpowering the peppery smell of autumn leaves, the chicken frying in mom’s cast iron skillet came to me. For the rest of my life no fragrance said homeContinue Reading
In older times families ordered caskets from carpenters. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net I hadn’t seen him in 10 years. Him would be the preacher who buried dad and mom. He was preaching down South Georgia way in Sylvania. An early Sunday morning journey was in order. My familyContinue Reading
By Tom Poland, A Southern Writer Another Shady Grove cemetery that transports me to Alabama in July 1936. On a sultry August Sunday I drove up on Shady Grove Methodist Church. Seeing it resurrected James Agee’s “Shady Grove, Alabama, July 1936,” his description of a cemetery in Let Us Now PraiseContinue Reading
Seems a cowboy could hitch his horse and get a shot of whiskey here. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net June 29, 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Interstate Act. Nigh 70 years later a grid of steel, cement, and asphalt makes it impossible to see little of interest. DespairContinue Reading
Tree bark’s “tattoos” age more gracefully than human tattoos. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Young with her whole life in front of her, her complexion was flawless. On her left shoulder in forever flight was the blue outline of a butterfly. Ought to be a story there I thought. “TellContinue Reading
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