Tom Poland

United States

Writer at Freelance

A Southern writer who grew up in Lincolnton, Georgia, and lives in Columbia, SC.

Articles

Tom Poland: Pines, pianos & chainsaws

2 weeks ago | indexjournal.com | Tom Poland

Several years back I wrote a feature on Chuck Leavell, keyboardist for the Rolling Stones and former member of the Allman Brothers Band. As well, he is a preeminent forester and conservationist. PBS aired his series, “America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell.”Chuck and I got to know each other and when he felt it was time to expand his 2004 memoir, “Between Rock and a Home Place,” he asked me to write it with him.
Queen Of The Shoals

3 weeks ago | pmg-sc.com | 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 of her habitat lies beneath lakes. Today, with so many shoals beneath lakes, this tenacious plant has little habitat to cling to. It’s a national plant of concern. She rules just three states: Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama.
Nailing down a mystery - Lexington County Chronicle

3 weeks ago | lexingtonchronicle.com | 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 such doors. Brenda N. Bancroft, historian and co-founder of the North Augusta History Park, has come across three. Each door is the same. Row after row of nails at precisely the same height in age-darkened boards. It’s a bit of a mystery. What’s their story? I reached out to some folks who keep up with the old days and ways.
Tom Poland: Vanilla-flavored memories

3 weeks ago | indexjournal.com | Tom Poland

Springs creaking, Granddad’s maroon Ford rattles down Mom and Dad’s long dirt driveway. Washouts make for a rough ride but that doesn’t stop Granddad. Here he comes selling Watkins products. His trembling hands pull a bottle of vanilla flavoring from a box, and whether it needs shaking or not, it gets all shook up. Destination? Mom’s fabulous pound cakes. That was long ago. He grew cotton and ran a country store in eastern Georgia.
Lonely Lone Star

1 month ago | pmg-sc.com | Tom Poland

’ve long felt that two South Carolina community names ascend to prettiest—Silverstreet and Lone Star. Those names, evocative and wistful, charm the ear. One conjures up biblical streets of gold; the other brings to mind the Alamo, Davy Crockett, and that independent state, Texas. At long last I saw Lone Star. It’s a spot in the road that awakens feelings and memories. The bottle caps pressed into earth in front of an old store’s vanished gas pump?
Caffeine

1 month ago | pmg-sc.com | 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 the lines. There’s another addictive drug out there. Another huge hit. Caffeine. JJ Cale should have written “Caffeine.” Allow me to edit his lyrics. “If you got bad news, you want to kick them blues, caffeine/When your day is done, and you want to run, caffeine.” Run is right. The world does not run on fossil fuels, solar, or nuclear. It runs on caffeine.
Tom Poland Column: The Hometown Weekly

1 month ago | blufftontoday.com | 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 special. Farmers, grandmothers, country storeowners, housewives, and others pulled news about people they knew from their mailbox. “The Smiths ate Sunday dinner with the Jones. The fried chicken was delicious.” “The Browns drove through the Smokies.
Tom Poland: The forgotten rain porch

1 month ago | indexjournal.com | 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 never heard of, rain porches. In the clipping, Seth Taylor wrote about the Pee Dee being the “birthplace of a porch unlike any other.”Driving back from Chapel Hill, I saw a road worthy of my ramblings.
Granddad’s fiddle - Lexington County Chronicle

1 month ago | lexingtonchronicle.com | 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, my mother didn’t know its provenance, that fancy word for something’s origin. My mother, in a pleasant sense, lived in the past. She talked often of her family and upbringing in a remote part of Georgia. Well, remote back in the 1930s, before men dammed rivers and paved roads and sliced up the land and the world came calling to buy lots.
Tom Poland column: Caffeine and the Coffee Pot Diner

1 month ago | blufftontoday.com | Tom Poland

“Cocaine,” JJ Cale wrote it. Eric Clapton sang it. Clapton described the song as anti-cocaine and that seems to be the case, if you read between the lines. There’s another addictive drug out there. Another huge hit. Caffeine. JJ Cale should have written “Caffeine.” Allow me to edit his lyrics. “If you got bad news, you want to kick them blues, caffeine/When your day is done, and you want to run, caffeine.” Run is right. The world does not run on fossil fuels, solar, or nuclear. It runs on caffeine.