Author: McKenzie Bargeron

Class “A” Pass Tom Poland Posted 08/03/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.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...

Bring Back Seersucker Tom Poland Posted 07.15.2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.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 his crisp white shirt, bow...

Reader’s Digest, My Boyhood Read Tom Poland Posted 07/06/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.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 it just might shock you. Back in 1964 Reader’s...

All Along The Watchtower, Structures That Command the Eye Tom Poland Posted 06/29/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.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...

The Country Store, The Soul of the South Had Everything Tom Poland Posted 06/23/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.net “Where should I send you to know the Soul of the South? I’ll send you to the Mast General Store.” So wrote Charles Kuralt in a 1986 column. Do you miss the...

Puttin’ Out The Fire, Sometimes It’s Healthier Not To Tom Poland Posted 06/22/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.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...

A Chain-Smoking Cat Saved My Life, Maybe I Saved Hers Too Tom Poland Posted 05/12/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.netSummer 2022, St. Simons Island, I’m sitting around the pool when my niece, Harper, and her friend, Stella, ask me to tell them a story. I had seen a photo of a...

A Disastrous Revolutionary War Battle Tom Poland Posted 05/08/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.netOld battlefields seem more like parks. Trying to imagine cannon and cries of the wounded? Difficult, but not always. Farmers’ plows unearthed so many Minié balls at Shiloh, the soil turned white. Shiloh was of the Civil War....

Memory—The Good, Bad, Ugly & Sad Tom Poland Posted 05/08/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.net“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.” Cormac McCarthy’s words. Lord knows I’d like to forget some things, namely certain people I’ve known. Memory is a blessing and a...

Get Some Windshield Therapy Tom Poland Posted 04/24/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.netIf you need to escape life’s ills, put some glass in front of your eyes and forget your worries on a back road. You’ll discover the bones of the land, the DNA of real life, and surprises. I do....

Shiloh Waits for Help Tom Poland Posted 04/17/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.netI call it the Roll Call of The Waiting. Inactive churches in need of friends. Friendship, Dothan Methodist, St. Simon’s Episcopal Church, Halfway Creek, Workman Methodist, Graham’s Methodist ... the roll goes on, and now I add Shiloh, a...

A Curious Battle For Independence Tom Poland Posted 04/13/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.netIt’s a battle Britian claimed to have won, and yet it sent the Redcoats to Charleston and back to Britian ending their presence in the Carolina backcountry.I have visited six battlefields: Civil War battlefields Gettysburg and North Carolina’s...

Bookhardt Cemetery Tom Poland Posted 04/09/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.netOn a cool, windy day I drove Old Number 6 through farm country. You’d a thought wild horses had kicked up the pollen-yellow dust drifting over the coastal plain, which runs flat as an ironing board. Distant forests edging fields seem...

Masters Memories Tom Poland Posted 03/31/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.netI never had time for golf, but I love the Masters. I never miss the Sunday round on TV. It almost always provides high drama. I speak for a lot of Georgians in the Central Savannah River Area when I say...

Peach Blossom Lit Tom Poland Posted 03.18.2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.netCome March, my thoughts turn to peach blossoms and memories of family fruit trees. One tree from youth stands above others. From my deep well of memories my mother’s lonely peach tree rises. Lean, green, with tiny peaches. Somewhere down...

Struggle Tom Poland Posted 03.16.2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.netTitle my photo Struggle. Caption it: Dreams die along the back roads. First two sentences: Can’t even sit in a chair and look forward to better days. Stuck in reverse.A man could write 100 stories about this place. Here’s one of ’em.Many...

A Body Of Work Tom Poland Posted 03.16.2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.netA woman asked what made me the proudest of all I had written. It isn’t books. Maybe one. It’s not the films. It’s not the magazine features. It’s a few columns that trace their origin to Lincolnton, Georgia’s hometown...

A Rare Sighting Tom Poland Posted 03/05/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.netI have seen outhouses, smokehouses, henhouses, doghouses, and all manner of birdhouses. Mankind has its jailhouses, cathouses, flophouses, and roadhouses. A first for me, I saw a rarity, a pigeon house, known as a pigeon cote or dovecote. A pigeon...

The World Book Tom Poland Posted 03/03/2026By Tom PolandA Southern Writerwww.tompoland.nettompol@earthlink.netA lulu of a lady sold my parents a set of the World Book Encyclopedia. Miss Lulu Goolsby to be exact. It changed my life living in rural Georgia as I did. I read that set from A to Z...