When I was a young boy, circa six or seven, there were no monstrous interstate highways slashing across the land. The land was beautiful, or as I probably thought, at the time, natural. Interstate highways are about as natural as was Sherman’s march through Georgia. They are federal (Yankee) spending, creating great slashes through private property (eminent domain is Grendel; destroying and destroying and destroying).
​

My grandmother and mother were in the front seat of my grandmother’s 1948 Chevrolet with my mother at the wheel while my brother and I were in the back seat. For some reason they had to take a trip to Vicksburg from Jackson, a trip of about 50 miles. It was not my first trip to Vicksburg but one of my most memorable.
With the single two-lane Highway 80 as our track, it was probably something over an hour before we reached our destination, Vicksburg. I have no memory of why we were going, although at my age I only knew we were in fact going and with the windows down due to no air conditioning, it was fun for my brother and me flying along at 60mph.


It was probably the second longest trip I had ever made as far as distance. Other trips had been in the other direction (eastward) from Jackson to Hickory or Meridian, about75- 90 miles from Jackson. But never had I left Mississippi.


As we approached, the view of the city revealed why the people of Mississippi referred to it as the “Hill City.” It was built on a series of bluffs in and around the river. These bluffs were instrumental in Pemberton’s defense in 1863 against the bearded arsonist U.S. Grant. But almost a hundred years later these same bluffs had become lush with the Japanese plant Kudzu (another story for another day) and were shaded and more peaceful. Back in 1942 we had begun celebrating July 4 again, which had been another celebratory and proper move of secession. For any Yankee who reads (or can) Mississippi had more awards per capita for Medals of Honor in WWII than any other state. But back to the trip.


My brother and I sat in the back seat and had fun just observing the countryside or having a counting game we had created: we counted cows as we sped along, he counted the cows on one side and I counted those on the other. I usually won since we were on the honor system. At the end of the trips he would say “I got 78…” or some such number; I would respond with “I got 937.” My mother would give me the look of: Don’t lie even when you are playing.


But today we were going to Vicksburg and whatever reasons my mother and grandmother had, we would get to see the Mississippi River—one of the great wonders of the world—especially the Southern world. You didn’t have to actually cross it to see it from either the Mississippi side or the Louisiana side, as on the Mississippi side there was a road that carried you along and not too far from the east bank. You could, as well, I assumed, get a similar view from the Louisiana side up close to the west bank although there was no sizeable town like Vicksburg just across the river. And I had never been there since I had never left Mississippi.


Whatever year we were in, ’50,’51… was a year where money was valuable enough that people kept coin purses and anybody with a nickel, or dime, quarter or for goodness sakes a fifty cent (half a dollar) piece has some real money. Money was so valuable that we turned the lights out when we left a room (I still do). And you can be sure that my grandmother and mother coming through The Depression, one raising; the other being raised, knew the value of whatever their coin purse held. Financial frivolities were as scarce as three-legged ducks.


On our previous trips to Vicksburg, we had seen the river and one of the main attractions—the Mississippi River Bridge. It was a two-lane toll bridge and the toll in that period was probably around 50 cents. Although I wouldn’t have used the word at the time, it was a MAGNIFICENT sight. The first bridge built across the Mississippi River south of Memphis (eat your heart out New Orleans).


After driving into Vicksburg and getting their business done (whatever it was) My mother and grandmother proceeded to drive along the river road and my brother and I viewed in awe the great river, the Father of Waters, and our home was the single state that carried its name, Mississippi.


When my grandmother turned around to face her two grandsons in the backseat and asked the question: “Would you boys like to drive across the bridge and go into Louisiana?” It was like getting an early invitation to the State Fair or an offer to get a ride with one of the local crop dusters. We both smiled while silently screaming. Crossing the Mississippi River and entering another state for the first time. Somebody was going to have to open their coin purse!


It was the greatest experience I had had up until that moment of my six or seven years (or whatever I was). And as we crossed, I couldn’t help thinking that we would get a second crossing (and second toll of course) since I was sure we weren’t moving to Louisiana anytime soon.


I don’t know how big the town of Mound, Louisiana was back in the early fifties but it dang sure wasn’t as big as Vicksburg. Mound-- the first town in Louisiana after you had crossed the river. Today it is listed in Louisiana as the smallest “village” in Louisiana with a population of 12.


But back then it did have a gas station (filling station) and a small store adjoining it. My mother and grandmother pulled in and bought gasoline (in addition to the toll coming and going, there was additional gas to be paid for by going the extra miles away from Jackson). Suddenly! as by miracle, my brother and I were asked if we wanted to eat some snacks-for-dinner from the wares of the store. Had money become no object? Hardly, but if God had decided to erect a Hog Heaven that day he had made my mother and grandmother the chief engineers.


I don’t recall what? Charlie, my brother, got but I got a Moon Pie and a bag of potato chips. In addition, we both got Royal Crown Colas—RCs. The big bottle drink that had more ounces than a Coca Cola.


What had started as a hour or two trip to and from Vicksburg had become a vacation.


Due to my age and my skills at description, it would have been difficult at the time to be able to describe the view of this greatest of rivers. But the vision I saw that day was wonderous and today I say that, though I have never seen the Nile nor the Amazon nor any of the “great” rivers of our planet, none will ever match the one named for my home. Its width, its dark brown coloring its grand beauty its crowned sovereignty nor what President Jefferson Davis referred to when he had said:


“Vicksburg is the nailhead (sic) that holds the two halves of the South together,” can ever be matched.


As you get older it seems that things do seem smaller as you return to visit them. But as they say, “It is the exception that guarantees the rule.” I have crossed the river many, many times since that day many decades ago and The Mississippi River only grows grander and larger in my eyes.


As we crossed back, I thought of my friends I would see back in Jackson in the neighborhood and in school. To some of them, money was less of an obstacle. Some of them had been to exotic places like Biloxi or even over to Florida and Panama City. I even knew one boy and girl whose family had been to Canada and had seen Niagara Falls.


But I had been out of the state on a trip. I had been across the greatest river in the world. And I had been to Mound, Louisiana. I sat on the back seat and thought about what a great trip I had had and would tell others about. Dang! I was happy.
​
And add God’s wisdom: The River always flows South.


I had finished my Moon Pie and potato chips. But I still held my now half-filled R.C. in both hands. I would make it last. And it did.

The single star in a winter night of spangled sky
Drawing over the hill, oblique to the east.
Pointing to the landed infant king,
Begetting all, liberation from sin’s dark beast.


Sage travelers pass gifts to God in flesh,
Holy gifting in piety for such eternal life.
From afar they carried their bearing
To set before the Lord who shuns world’s strife.


Docile men of the fields shepherding their cares.
Alerted by light and chorus’ great voice,
Expended fear now brings such blessings,
Through angels’ strong cry that they are God’s choice.


A young girl selected as Heaven’s spiritual womb.
The lineage of David, though seed of God’s story,
Brings Himself into the world of His creation;
And manifests salvation through a crimson glory.


Oh, Herod from his vaporous throne calls for blood
Of those innocent ones feared threatening that haunted fox.
His tortured heart bleeds his dark soul dry unto dust
While declaring power over God’s chosen flocks


Sweeping lights from Heaven for scholars, father;
On purity of mother and safety afar of manger bed,
And to the wisest of those travelers who trusted King.
Sought a path not known to Herod’s dread


Oh… Adeste Fidelis

​Mary Fahl sang the beautiful song, “Going Home,” for the movie Gods and Generals. Such lyrics and tune that reached into my Southern psyche as to remind me of what the fight was all about.

I often treat books in a way I treat old, favorite, movies (picture shows) that I watch over and over, over the years, I reread them. I have read Gone with the Wind twice, None Shall Look Back twice and Absalom, Absalom three times (for this one it was because I am slow and it took me three times to understand it: once in high school, once in college and once twenty years later). I have read (though when I was much younger) The Yearling and Tom Sawyer each, at least, three times, though I read Huckleberry Finn but once--didn’t care for it.

​
I have also read The Catcher in the Rye twice. I read it when I was in my teens, about the age of Holden Caufield, the protagonist, and though I found it humorous at the time I, moreover, pitied him for the New York home he seemed to have either never had, or had lost. Prep school was not home schooling.

All of this is to make a point: A contemporary author whose books I have read more than once, Dr. James Everett Kibler, writes keenly on home and the rich meaning of it. My only regret is he has not written more of them.


I love the topic, the settings, the characters and the stories. Dr. Kibler’s books are (in my opinion) poetic treatments of prose, all such that anyone who loves his own home understands that home is a place of seclusion and contentment. Even in homes, which probably includes all of them, where there is, or has been, from time to time boisterousness or anger and perhaps even regret and shame there usually is a grace that generates peace and love through family. It is a place to fight, and even die, for. Concrete and speeding cars and fast (fat) food restaurants are not a place of home nativity. The personification of the interstate highway system is a psychotic domestic executioner.

In one of Dr. Kibler’s novels, Walking Toward Home, one line which I have quoted elsewhere as it is a favorite of mine, a character by the name of Kildee says: “Guess the best thing dirt roads do…is they slow people down. The world’s too much in a hurry, and usually with no place to go. Everything flies by in a blur. And people get to where they don’t belong anywhere and ain’t from no place at all.”


Dirt roads take you home. Interstate highways take you to traffic jams.


Interstate highways take away land which were places for homes once, and fields of cotton and corn. Now fields grow corn for ethanol for cars so more freeways will be needed to take away more fields for corn. . . what?


It has often been acknowledged that the North was (and still is) the navigation society, the South the (and still is) agrarian society. From Memory’s Keep alluding to what Triggerfoot would have thought, had he been aware of Thomas a’kempis’ words: “‘Those who travel seldom come home holy.’” Holden Caufield did not, nor did Yankee commercial ships. Travelers necessarily leave their homes, and with it, part of their souls.


To my home in Houston, I much prefer visiting my son and his wife in NE Louisiana where he lives in a house in the woods surrounded by more woods with neighbors, few, but themselves lovers of the land and the homes that are part of them.


I sit out on his front porch in a rocking chair (I bought him three so I would have one to sit, rock and smoke my pipe in) an awning of trees shading while providing for jay birds, red birds, occasional tapping woodpeckers and the melodic mockingbird once in a while, with his three dogs alternately sleeping and watching me watch them, then occasionally bolting and chasing after a squirrel or a rabbit taking a shortcut. If early or late enough a deer prances by probably sourcing the pond in the back.

​
It was this part of the South where my wife was born and reared before we married and became Houstonians. Her roots Louisiana, mine deep in the Mississippi earth. Our son loved this area of Louisiana so much he left the concrete city for this piece of land and dirt and gravel roads. It reminds me of Triggerfoot’s thought of the young grandson of Mr. Pink, Eugene, again in Memory’s Keep:
​

I brought her home last year and I buried her in the Southern Louisiana soil of her birth. One day I will again lie beside her, our markers traditionally facing east. Not only will we be facing the rising sun, we will be facing Mississippi. We both will be smiling, for where we are and what we see.


​At some point in my youth, I was called upon to memorize a poem, Requiem, by Robert Louis Stevenson. It has locked itself in my memory forward until now.

There was a little dog down the street from us named Streety. My brother and I hadn’t got our own dog yet; that was five or six months in the future. So, we had adopted Streety as our own–though many in the neighborhood had done the same. He belonged to an elderly gentleman (I think he was about 80, though as a six-year-old, it was difficult to guess ages) down the street named Mr. Worley. My mother said Mr. Worley’s wife had died the day after I was born and Mr. Worley had taken Streety in shortly afterwards.


Streety was all over the neighborhood, a friend to all, a large mutt of mixed ancestry. All of this was typical of small town Southern life. Not that Yankees didn’t have small towns, dogs or friends, but they weren’t stranger oriented, as they were more interested in what you did (money) as opposed to where you were from (family). Besides, Yankees don’t love dogs as much as they prefer to kick them. But I’m a bit away from the story.


Streety was friendly and dirty: both most of the time. He loved the drainage ditches in front of the houses and when it rained he was in Hog Heaven. Often in the summer we would join him in the water-swept ditches, attempting to ride on his back (his mixed ancestry had some big dog in him) down to the end of the street where the ditch emptied. A day later after the water subsided we would spot Streety back in the ditch, enjoying the mud—this was from Hog Heaven to Pig-in-Slop. My mother allowed us the first but not the second, though she had, in a minor way, adopted Streety, too.


Streety sure loved Mr. Worley. We often saw Mr. Worley walk out onto his front porch and spread his arms as Streety bolted toward him, his front paws landing on the top of Mr. Worleys shoulders. Mr. Worley would turn his head to one side in order to avoid the face-on-slurp and lick. After a moment, Mr. Worley would sit in his chair and Streety would gather his 90 pounds or so at his feet, content just to be there, while Mr. Worley smoked his corn cob pipe. He was the only man I ever actually saw smoke a corn cob pipe in person.


Streety was so friendly and could size people up quickly that our neighborhood mailman actually brought Streety treats from time to time. Often Streety followed the mailman on his rounds, as if he were protecting him from some growling stray that might be about.


One day Streety was killed. A truck driver speeding down one of the neighborhood streets hit him broadside. He lay there bleeding from the mouth, his crumpled body twitching. But my friends and I knew the twitching was not a sign of life but of the end. We cried as much for Mr. Worley as for Streety I think. Mr. Worley walked slowly toward the street, his deliberate steps a sign he too knew Streety would never stand or run again. And we saw Mr. Worley rub his eye with the back of his hand. It was the first time I had seen a man cry.


As I got older I was to look back and remind myself that this was something coming to the South that would change its character to some extent. Cars and trucks racing through neighborhoods was not localism, not Southern.


I don’t know why, but though I saw Mr. Worley on the porch after that, I never again saw him smoke his pipe. My mother said that maybe he had quit smoking.


​I thought maybe he had just quit.

I love that old refrain. Of place
That wreathes with eternal song;
That suckles those whose love is
Of the South.
Oh, Dixie land

Where the deep-rooted ages
Are begot to memory in such view.
“Away, away” its chorus cries,
And cries its name,
Oh, Dixie land

Where God placed pastoral grips
Of His children enriched in spirit;
Heeding masculine pleas with code,
And all same, toil for His will.
Oh, Dixie Land

Existing from the flow of water
That clears or browns from
The reaches of the mountains,
Unto its deltas wide.
Oh, Dixie land

It brings rich dreams to us.
Those men of soil and life for
Their ladies strong of heart and mind;
Whose feminine manners reach out,
Oh, Dixie land

Though Yankee hymns, craven shameless
Lyrics cry for blood to flood the land;
And bury the blissful times
Of those whose home was sacred.
Oh, Dixie land

Its knights brave and dashing;
All did climb those bloody walls,
And waged and sang the final song,
To eternity; yes,
Oh, Dixie land

It is a love, a love and love,
That takes my mind to heights
Before unknown but to God;
And stirs my thoughts.
Oh, Dixie land

It lets me sleep with fertile dreams
Of the people and their world;
Such a place claims Injun Batter,
And Buckwheat cakes, too.
Oh, Dixie land

It can cry, while its tears softly run.
From folk: set to work, raised by prayer;
And strong of mind and spine, and
Always their souls to be lifted up.
Oh, Dixie Land

Of haranguing Yankees’ jealousies
My love will not be slaked;
That love but grows protecting itself,
While we stood; now stand, against such evil bent.
Oh, Dixie land

Oh Lord I love the life down wherein
It breathes from unlike chests.
But all and all molded as Southern,
And never, never will we annul.
Oh, Dixie land

It flies its flag within its heart.
And hears that Rebel’s cry-- brave shout,
In spite of those who hate
This valiant land of love and hope.
Oh, Dixie land

I love old Dixie. My home.
Love holds the well of dreams; wherefore
All mystic visions are special,
And are in God’s eyes, ascended splendor.
Oh, Dixie land.

The great “American” pollical rally of enfranchised citizenry (always of the “country,” not of sovereign states) is headed toward November with about half of the rally-ers and rally-etts waving the glory-hallelujah banner of most of the self-righteous talk shows, Fox Network, and of course the usual Republican blowhards. These same citizens all claiming their fortified bunker is built on the “right-wing,” which of course takes in those Southern, misbegotten, former Rebel slave-worshippers, though they have not seen the light of their wrong-headed doctrinal hatred. They will have to vote in tune as staunch MAGA members. Why? Because as such typical woebegone characters as Sean Hannity and Mark Levine ad nauseum will say:

“IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF OUR LIVES!”

This is what Hannity, et al., and their mediocre mindset, throw out election after election. Sean and his purported “right wing” ilk even said the same thing (at the time) about Mitt Romney. This sort of rallying cry is what makes real conservatives gag on the word "conservative."

This chosen half of (again) “the country” also know they make up roughly half only because they would have far fewer without their Southern brethren - who, of course - they say,  must see the light one day.

These ill-read, pompous vaunters, of course, would not know the history (from any era) of slavery from the history of the Chicago Black Sox. But not to stray…

In fact, what this half would harvest, with the population spread in approximate proportion to electoral votes, the MAGA parade would be fortunate to garner 100 electoral votes without such “lost cause” recalcitrant(s)… “his truth is marching on.” Oh, glory, glory hallelujah!

Why such denigration of such people with whom (if I vote) I will post a ballot the same as theirs?

Because most are either unscholarly rubes or simply liars. Ah, hell, the truth is I really think they are just trash. They constantly and deliberately berate the South for its foolhardy insistence on its secession. Its cause they insist was the cause of slavery (I just saw another online “historical fact” of slavery vs states rights, which triggered this lambasting of so-called conservatives). But why? Same reason I house train my puppy. 

This, I remind you, is the so-called “right wing,” that venerates the Declaration of Independence as the greatest nation building document in the name of FREEDOM (and there are those who claim that colleges and universities are not “doing their jobs.”)

Praise be! In November our great republic “gives” us our chance and RIGHT to vote.

And remember, it is the most important election of your life! Cackle, cackle.

​Good luck.

“Why don’t you get a tractor? You could get more done.” 

“Don’t need more done.” 

“But you could get it done faster.” 

“Faster than what?” 

“Faster than that mule goes.” The Yankee machine man really wanted to sell this down-south farm boy a tractor on account of the boy seemed to really be struggling with the mule (whom the boy sometimes called "Gee," and sometimes called "Haw," the Yankee wondering why the down-South boy wanted to confuse the mule with multiple names) that was a bit pitiful in the Yankee’s eyes considering he (the mule) was constantly flicking horseflies or mosquitos or various sorts of flying bugs off his ears, not to mention his slow pace–even going so far as stopping once in a while without having been so instructed. 

The Yankee sold tractors, machines, and whatever mechanical paraphernalia he could muster up and did not understand that the nature of the mule, unlike a horse, allowed him to stop when needing rest. His daddy had never told him that Southerners were like mules and Yankees were like horses: Mules were tough, hard-working, stubborn and smart enough to rest themselves from time to time—what they called leisure. Horses (a few are thoroughbreds, but not many, he had said) will just run and go until they drop dead. Everything needs to be fast, fast and faster. 

“This mule ain’t going, he’s pullin’. If he wanted to go he’d done gone before now.” 

“Well, why not just give him a retirement in the pasture. Then I can get you a fine tractor, you would have more time, and your mule could have some pasture time dallying with the girl mules.” The Yankee’s mountain of masterful unknowledge knew no bounds, it seemed. “Then you could use them stud fees and make payments on the tractor which is going to save you time so you can get more done and make the payments on the tractor.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“You know. Payments on the tractor.” 

“What kind of payment?” 

“Payments…Payments” 

“You mean there’s mor’n one?” 

“Oh, of course,” the Yankee replied, realizing the down-South farm boy wasn’t proclivous to high-finance nor high-financing. You see you pay something down and the rest you do over some period of time until you own it. 

“Down where?” 

“No, no. Not down, like down. Down like on.” 

“So you want me to put something out to pasture that I DO own so I can pay for something I don’t own? And I only pay ‘on’ it not ‘for’ it. Have I got this understood right?” 

“If you wanna put it that way.” The Yankee removed his hat as, the sun was beating down a bit fiercely. 

“And you think I can pay for it by breeding boy mules and girl mules?” The down-south farm boy had stopped his plowing long enough to chat with the Yankee, and during this pause he had taken out about two fingers worth from his Beechnut pouch and plugged it between his back teeth and gums. Then after letting the leaves settle in and having sucked out some of the delectable juices he spat at a passing horsefly. He missed. But the challenge was in the trying, not in the doing. 

The Yankee Machine Man wiped his forehead with his dainty monogramed handkerchief, then put his hat back on. One could almost see the thoughts oozing from his brain in machine-like wavelets: These dang old Rebel boys are a difficult lot for explaining modern devices to. 

“Why certainly. Certainly. Just think of it as rewarding this old mule who has worked so hard for so long. Now he can retire and enjoy himself.” 

“And you say this is gonna save me time huh?” 

“Oh, without question, my good man.” 

“How much time you think I’ll need to get them mules bred?” The mule turned his head toward the YMM and bared his teeth. It wasn’t clear if it was a smile of happiness or frustration. He brayed. 

Well whatever the gestation period of a beast such as this is, I don’t know. Perhaps something of a long period of months maybe. What would you say? 

“I’d say it’s prob’ly longer than that.” 

“Oh, I didn’t know. I’m from New York city. I’m not much up on Southern animals.” 

The Farm Boy took another spit and missed another horsefly. He pushed his hat back on his forehead, and passed an expression, whether concealed or not, of you ain’t up on a bunch. “Well. Mr. New York Man, or Tractor Man or whatever it is you is, I’d say that tractor you wanna swap me can lay eggs and hatch chickens a whole lot quicker that this mule can get to gesti-cating more mules.” 

“You mean it’s that long?” 

“Pretty dang long. But I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you half the studs fees in what they call perpetuity for that tractor. My cousin could use it to have him a ride into the hay bailer. That way his wife could use the pickup for family git arounds. I would still have my mules for plowing and you could cash all them stud fees checks you are certain you’ll git. You’d be up there in New York city or wherever it is livin’ the high life with your stud fee money and I’d be mule plowin’ and my cousin would be drivin’ into town on a fine piece of machinery.” 

The New York tractor man drove away with a smile as big as a harvest moon. Ready to retire like a wealthy Kentucky horse breeder. He had made the swap, a written contract and all, and had left these down south Southern boys a single tractor and a hefty goodbye. 

​The farm Boy was out plowing the next morning when he took a spit and squarely hit a horsefly right between the eyes. ​

If you travel I-20 east from Jackson, Mississippi, somewhere about 20 miles short of Meridian you’ll see a sign: Hickory Exit. This sign is one almost ad infinitum of green signs along a monster interstate that has sucked the life out of localism, particularly important throughout the South. But should you drive into downtown from old Highway 80, you’ll see a different sign: Welcome to Hickory, Miss. The Little Town with A Big heart. A bit more dash and devotion and emotion than: “Hickory Exit.”



Hickory lies in Newton County, an area rich in Southern history; much, which is not uncommon in the South, involves The War–no, not WWII. Newton County was the focal point for one of the John Wayne/John Ford often South-friendly movies about a battle in 1863: The Battle of Newton Station. Results were heartbreaking for the Confederates but illustrated their courage and character.


Hickory is the burial ground for much of my family; at least one side of it. My father, grandfather, grandmother, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends are buried in the little cemetery on the hill, facing east, sine qua non. A small area in the rear under large shade trees is the final rest for a handful of Confederate soldiers, though most headstone inscriptions have weathered beyond legibility. The remembrance of where they died still can be read: C.S.A.


My great aunt Lula Everett, was born in Hickory, graduated from Blue Mountain college in Blue Mountain, Mississippi, returned to Hickory and taught grade school for 50 years until she retired, an old maid aunt. She lived for all those years in the same house on the small ridge which comes into sight just after rounding the bend and viewing the sign: Welcome to Hickory, Miss., The Little Town with the Big Heart. She finally died there some forty years ago.


It was there where my brother and I spent many Christmases and Thanksgivings and many days in many summers with our country cousins. Some of these memories were fictionalized by me in my first novel: MISSISSIPPI COTTON. Through many of those times or days or nights or holidays we felt the heart of TLTWABH. Our elders talking on the screened porch in grown-up talk (a dead phrase, I fear) about things we did not understand, though sometimes teasing our imaginations; our comfortable Uncle Walter, smoking his savory-smelling briar pipe while sitting in the porch swing. He was an Ole Miss Law graduate who returned to TLTWABH, having served at one point as a local judge (hence his nickname among townspeople, Judge), and practiced law for fifty years; the windmill we climbed, standing beside the house, its pump long since having rusted beyond use.


Even those who left for distant lands, Jackson, Memphis and even Cousin Bill who late in life moved to Pensacola, returned. Uncle Hiram went to Ole Miss Medical School and practiced medicine in Memphis for over 50 years, though upon his death he returned to TLTWABH. And Uncle Bill who moved to Little Rock and was a successful businessman is buried on the little hill facing east in TLTWABH. My grandmother who also graduated from Blue Mountain and followed my grandfather to Jackson with his lumber business also returned to a final rest in TLTWABH beside her husband.


It was in this setting of my home-away-from-home (my brother and I were born and reared in the big city–Jackson) that I discovered something as a boy that I only recognized later as a man: localism. The spirit of “local” is the attendant existence of an agrarian life. Not just in Mississippi, but throughout the South.


One has to only read Southern literature to understand the provincial milieu of the South and the agrarian roots that have fed it. From Joel Chandler Harris to William Faulkner to Eudora Welty, and occasionally to John Grisham, when he has the urge, narratives of the South have throbbed with story: aboriginal, provincial, local, which is where all good tales originate; because chronicles or yarn, both, have at least a kernel of truth, and truth is about real people; not pasted together adventures of heroes lurking (mystery) or leaping (adventure) around skyscrapers and towers and up-and-away jet planes crashing via laser powered sci-fi matrixes, but of rural, geographically defined and confined lineage, and always Southern: family, characters, and folksy icons, from Jerry Clower to Junior Johnson to Junior Samples to Jeff Foxworthy , the South has always been, as well, a culture of characters: characters and neighborhoods, not characters and metropolises or empires or interstate highways tying together a nation.


But this culture has been pierced by the 4, 6 and 8 lane monster that roars through the countryside with its personification having more power and less conscience than Sherman ever demonstrated. Hickory, Mississippi, population 500, The Little Town with a Big Heart, has been swept aside by a modern monster of enlightenment, and expediency.

Presently, the sign designating TLTWABH has been consigned to the edge of the town square so that upon rounding the curve on old highway 80 approaching Hickory, no longer are you greeted by the sign. But few round the bend anymore; most are chasing life on I-20, never to see or experience TLTWABH.


The town is still cleaved by the rustic old highway with its browned, aged, concrete and narrow lanes. From Jackson to Brandon to Pelahatchie to Morton to Chunky to … it ran through all the towns, pausing for local stores, and cafes via local speed limits and only a few red lights. In its time a modern conduit, a smaller gash cut through the land for people. The paradox is that the interstate isolates the local; isolates it from people. People pass by not through and no longer visit the stores and cafes, or talk to the locals. They are hurrying to bigness on the other side of the world.


Highway 80 seemed harmless. It seemed good. But maybe all roads are as Kildee says in James Kibler’s novel, WALKING TOWARD HOME: “Guess the best thing dirt roads do…is they slow people down. The world’s too much in a hurry, and usually with no place to go. Everything flies by in a blur. And people get to where they don’t belong anywhere and ain’t from no place at all.”


But, today the old highway’s seed, the federal interstate monster: the scoured-powered transit with its green exit signs dominated by federal highway programs and DOT and every other acrostic and/or acronym for a mock organism abetting the accelerated dash through the land makes old highway 80 seem as it once appeared to me coming round the bend–a country road, a pathway to family.

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And though the sign depicting TLTWABH is downtown, away from all, who only pass, it is still committed to heart. Maybe downtown is where it truly belongs; in its home; because it is local; because the South is local. And local is home.

​Aristotle’s three forms of government and each corrupt form:

1. Monarchy—Tyranny
2. Republic –Oligarchy
3. Democracy—Ochlocracy or mob rule

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. - Thomas Jefferson

The problem for anarchists in achieving success is that in order to reach their goal they must have an organized effort. In other words, a system which creates its own paradox—organized anarchy. So, it is true of a mob. There is no thought within a mob that defends itself as properly governing anything other than with a mob—something that cannot be governed, by definition.

This was the tenor in France before finally the mob turned on its own creators and gave them their own up close and personal view of Antoine Louis’ efficient Guillotine.

On Tuckers Carlson’s show a few years back, (10-10-18) his opening discussion of the night was the present similarity between the Democratic party’s daily talking points and most (all?) news outlets’ output. Any discussion of the Democrat party today would be along the same lines.

On one channel, CNN, the discussion of such mob rule was ridiculed for even suggesting that protestors, who chase senators around restaurants or in elevators and shout and curse in the face of conservative and Republican persons, at any number of functions are anything like a mob. Those protestors were simply exercising free speech according to CNN’s guests. They added that The Tea party was actually more mob-like because they raised their voices and were mostly “racist” anyway.

Don Lemon, the host at the time, became irate at the thought that these monsters were any more than citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. According to Lemon the Constitution allows people to protest “whenever and wherever.” Then he repeated the same line within seconds. Not once did anyone on the panel, nor surprisingly did Carlson himself, take the opportunity to either point out or pull out a copy of the First Amendment and read the language which, in part, states “…the right to peaceably assemble…”

This sort of backward tutorship and pseudo-academic authority is a pie in the face to those who are not stupid. But then in the United States neck-of-the-woods, this select bunch (not stupid) has taken on fewer and fewer members.

Lemon, a pie-thrower, and his cable ilk were insistent on their stance that, any time, any place any way a protest is worthy of protected rights. The assumption was made, apparently, as long as they are Democrat party supporters and not Tea Party apparatchiks, or conservatives, they are quite free to say anything at any time— "peaceably" be damned!

Much of historical invention is built around not only our own “Civil War” but a revolution 70 years prior to it. The French Revolution, in the minds of many, was a great undertaking by patriots who were fighting evil aristocrats who were starving and mistreating the common people. These “patriots” in their zeal for freedom and equality simply went a bit too far, resulting in the deaths of 3% of the French population. But The rule of the majority and the concomitant mob-rule took root and resulted in mayhem, executions and finally, Napoleon.

It is this history that Democrats should most care about, though they seem not to know of it or understand it if they do (not that the Republicans do either). They might not understand it (which is most likely) or they may simply pretend to not understand it. They feed their mobs with patriotic deceptions and cheer them on when they succeed in driving the opposition from a restaurant or podium or shoot one at a ballgame. Their own congressmen and senators stoke the fires of mob frenzy while watching the political polls in a potential vote calculus.

Meanwhile untutored, unread and blustering broadcast agents like Don Lemon and CNN et al (yes, Fox too) with their collective eponymous Robespierre of Booker, Waters, Schumer et Squad squeal for more confrontations. These modern Democrat Jacobins and their Republican Directorate (le Directoire), live lavishly off of the taxpayers in the castle of The Deep State.

The current mob activity - as with all mob activity - has no uniformed or informed thought processes. It has action only. And it will never act on instruction, but on uncontrolled frenzy. Not unlike Joe Biden’s White House dogs*.

To Chuck Schumer, et al: While the Guillotine has been declared, by law, illegal, what different would that make to the lawless?

But, not to worry. Your modern Directorate, as they did of old, will find wars and you can keep your heads in the interim.

*Somebody ought to report those S.O. Bidens to the Humane Society.