By Tom Poland   Grandmothers’ Weapon Of Choice The New Oxford American Dictionary defines “fly swatter” as “an implement used for swatting insects, typically a square of plastic mesh attached…

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By Tom Poland Stumbling Onto A Corpse 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…

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By Tom Poland   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…

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  By Tom Poland “Cocaine,” JJ Cale wrote it. Eric Clapton sung it. Clapton described the song as anti-cocaine and that seems to be the case, if you read between…

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By Tom Poland   A Short and Sweet, Fragrant Memory Vintage petunias, those flowers my grandma loved, I saw them in youth. As I sort through my memory album they…

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By Tom Poland   Her May-June reign approaches. The rocky shoals spider lily, Hymenocallis coronaria, will soon flaunt her crown of white, green, and gold. Exquisite, ephemeral, and periled. Much…

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By Tom Poland   I fished many a farm pond as a boy. When I left my red-varnished cane pole for Miss Zebco, I fell in love. I filled my…

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By Tom Poland   April, along a back road to Athens, G-A, I saw ghosts. Amid new homes a shed and barn cast blue shadows across brilliant-green grass. Then I…

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By Tom Poland   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…

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By Tom Poland   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,…

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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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