An Old Familiar Place

Decoration Day   An amazing sequence of events began to unfold the first year after the end of the War Between the States. As far back as April 25, 1866, some southern women from the little North Central Mississippi town of Columbus were decorating the graves of Confederate soldiers who had fallen at Shiloh, one of the bloodiest battles of the War. They placed fresh spring flowers on the graves of their fallen heroes, soon realizing the graves of the Union soldiers were bare because there were no family members to care for their burial sites and to memorialize them. The women began to lay flowers on the Union soldiers’ graves as well as the graves of their own Confederate dead. It was a day of remembrance of the young soldiers who had been reluctant to fight a cruel war that meant they would have to kill or wound their fellow countrymen. Three years after the end of the War, in May of 1868, modeling the tribute paid by the women of Columbus, Mississippi, Un...

I would have to revisit RACHEL.  That was a foregone conclusion. The Payne saga is far from over, and I've opened the sequel, loving every minute of it. Where will it lead? I have no idea. That's what makes fiction so wonderful. You don't have to explain it. You just have to "step into the water and wade out a little bit deeper." Here's a portion to slake your thirst. Stay with me! I promise to give it a title soon, and you can count on the historical portion being as near accurate as research will allow. Step Into The Water— From the Prologue of The Book With No Name She dared to trifle with the past searching for answers to reasons why—answers that would suffice to comfort and cajole her into concluding that the war years and those that followed had not all been in vain. One thing had led to another. The train rumbled out of the depot of the Bluff City, Memphis. For three days of insufferable jerking and jolting, three evenings of watchi...

"Sense of Place" I was elated when I learned I would be getting an endorsement for JOAB.  JACK LAMAR MAYFIELD, OXFORD, MS  I met Jack Lamar Mayfield last year in Oxford, Mississippi. My friend from high school days, Emmie Lou Mooney Greene, a prominent Oxonian herself, introduced me to him and we spent several hours getting a grand tour from an historical perspective. I fell in love with the beautiful university town situated in the rolling hill country of northeast Mississippi. Of course, I had been to Oxford many times, but never having known such things as Jack Mayfield shared that day. Jackie, as known by his friends, is a fifth generation Oxonian. His family came to Oxford shortly after the Chickasaw Cession of 1832. He is a former history instructor and writes a weekly column for the local newspaper The Oxford Eagle . His column is entitled "Sense of Place" and is solely about the history of Oxford and Ole Miss. He is the author of a book ...