By Reba Hull Campbell   I’m not usually one to pick memoirs by sports icons. Musicians, journalists, writers or politicians, yes. But not often sports heroes. I admit, I just…

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By Tom Poland   Late 1950s. May 1. Riding with Dad by a cement block house. White. A few clothes out back on the clothesline. Diapers mainly. A tricycle with…

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By Tom Poland   Cynicism Sometimes Is Backed By Reality I remember the Vietnam anti-war protests at the University of Georgia. Some group firebombed the Army ROTC building and I…

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By Tom Poland   Mom never darkened the door of a juke joint, but that didn’t stop her from rendering a harsh judgment. “The only people who go to juke…

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By Tom Poland   Forever Fly, You Black Riders Roads tell stories. I’ve come across the “Mule Kick That Killed Eight People” in Edgefield County. I’ve seen stores fall to…

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By Tom Poland I visit cemeteries never knowing what I’ll find. February 10, a cemetery gave me a story that has the elements of a great movie—risk, bravery, tragedy, the…

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By Tom Poland   For seven years I only read Russian writers, Boris Pasternak, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and my favorite, Alexander Ilyich Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn wrote of life under Stalin.…

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By Tom Poland   Back roads took me past pecan groves and cotton fields and eventually to Charlane Woodlands, Chuck and Rose Lane Leavell’s home/tree farm. That evening Chuck and…

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By Tom Poland   I wish we had. I traded letters with a writer who lived alone in the remote reaches of Alaska, the Land of the Midnight Sun. Poet…

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By Tom Poland   Let this harrowing tale serve as a warning. Be careful of what you wrap in aluminum foil. A British judge stopped a man’s 12-year legal battle…

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By Tom Poland   Come the cold, dormant months, few snakes, if any, are out and about. Perhaps winter makes a good time to read about the critters many fear.…

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By Tom Poland   I was cruising a familiar Georgia road looking for the past. A gut feeling told me to strike out for a place Hurricane Helene devastated—the busy…

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By Tom Poland   For thirteen years I jogged a trail running within 60 feet of stolen art hidden in the home of acquaintance Roger Streeter. I had no clue…

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By Tom Poland   I was on the phone with Joey Frazier, South Carolina Wildlife magazine’s editor. “Tom, did you know John Culler died last week?” I did not. Just…

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By Tom Poland   A reader and friend, Zilphy DuRant of Florence, South Carolina mailed me a letter and clipping from The Post and Courier about an architectural feature I’d…

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By Tom Poland   Tabernacle Baptist Church sits near an intersection where collisions seem to occur for no reason. Daylight, midnight, rain, drought, people keep wrecking. It got so bad…

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By Tom Poland   Can Your Imagination Turn Real? Summer 2022, St. Simons Island, I was sitting around the pool when my niece, Harper, and her friend, Stella, asked me…

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By Tom Poland   When you write about earlier times as I often do, you hear from people who lived the very days you describe. Over the course of summer…

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By Tom Poland In 2015, the University of South Carolina Press released my collection of memories on how things used to be. Here, then, is a trip down memory lane…

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By Tom Poland   And a Never-Forgotten Dog Can uprooted trees flaunt fall color? No. Dead men don’t talk and dead leaves don’t reveal colors. I figured it was impossible.…

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By Tom Poland   Mama trembled when she talked about the Great Depression. I never forgot that. She’s gone and only the oldest survivors recall those hard times. Today’s full-plate…

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By Tom Poland   Last week my writer-daughter, Beth, wrote a story about her MTV years. She recalled the 1980s watching music videos. She wrote, “When my sister and I…

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By Tom Poland   CUMBERLAND SOUND, Fernandina Beach, Florida (Nov. 1, 2024): The catamaran motors by pelicans perched upon piers. It passes monstrous, red-orange contraptions that could be the Martian…

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