Old Ones Dream

The Bear, and Thomas' Buck

Lord…! I’ve not often come to tears in my life (and that lack it is a flaw) but when I have teared it has often been over an heroic animal; the stretch run of a horse race, the “putting down” when I was thirty of the 31 year old mare... Read more →

Memory Overflow

Back about the time of living on the park at the mill village (1987-1996); the children would ask me a question about the past and I, being unable to recall and sure that I was losing my mind, would often respond that I was in memory overflow. I explained that... Read more →

Our Berkshire Pigs Go to Georgia for Sunday School

On Monday evening T and I went out to Oskar Blues to listen to one of our favorite local "Old Time" music groups, the "Hogtown Squealers". They delivered a spirited and driving rendition of "Thunder Road" which reminded me of the movie Thunder Road (1958) which reminded me of the... Read more →

Parents: The Forgotten People! - A Guest Post by Thomas

From the writings of Thomas circa 1950s, found in his papers. Presented to a Parent Teacher Organization in the mid 1950s PARENTS: THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE! A father was heard recently to say, "When I was a boy I did what my father wanted me to, and now that I'm a... Read more →

The Best I Ever Had: Scalloped Oysters

If you Google "Miss Jane Christie Hammond" you will find her wedding announcment in the November 1, 1953 edition of The News and Courier. You won't find her recipe for "Scalloped Oysters" that appears on page 66 of my yellowed and disintegrating copy of the original 1952 edition of Charleston... Read more →

Small Grain Harvest in the 1940s

Thomas was born in 1909 and around 1989 he wrote about his first job, as a fatherless only child, on his mother's farm. He was likely about 8 years old at the time. Burton sometimes let me operate the reaper and binder, which was used to harvest oats, rye, and... Read more →

The Marshall Tucker Bull

There is a farm on the Orangeburg Scarp in South Carolina, that we called ours for 94 years until 1984. And on that farm we had some cows which made necessary a new bull every year or so. In the winter of 1978-'79 we had a dream of getting in... Read more →

Leaving the Farm

Leaving the Farm Mother Earth to ashes held for years on a mantle place not the first hostage period at the foot of the ancient Scarp Just finally freed scattered on the Little River at Corn Mill Shoals spin dancing with the keeper broken by the dart of a Brookie... Read more →

Righteous

Out beyond wrong and right there is a field I will meet you there - Rumi Going to the Sun My siblings and I share the same genetics but our hair is of different colors and lengths and we have each taken markedly different paths through life. We have a... Read more →

The First Day of the First Grade - Revised July 29, 2013

My memory of when my world was new is less cluttered than the sea of activity and emotion of later years. I remember the first day of the first grade. We were only about a dozen and all sitting in the grass in the sunshine by the big Hackberry tree outside the gym door and Jackie shared her lunch with me. That was the kindest thing that someone outside my family had done for me. I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget. Read more →