Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, refuses to impose a mask mandate on the state, even though everyone agrees that such a step would radically slow the spread of COVID 19. There is absolutely no reason for what he is doing. He talks vaguely about people’s “freedoms” and their “rights” to be free from governmental intrusion.… Read More »

“Broody”– an ailment, peculiar to chickens, wherein a hen will remain on her nest for an extended period of time, refusing to move, thinking she is about to hatch an egg, when in fact she has no eggs or an egg which is non-fertile.  At least that’s what my neighbor Richard McClaurin tells me. And… Read More »

Our revels now are ended. Letters From Leiper’s Fork is leaving the building.  This has been a three year project. Thank you for reading it. I hope you will scroll down to the beginning of the blog and work your way forward through all the posts. All these stories are true– an anecdotal part of… Read More »

Bam! Sam Henry McLaurin is standing nearby, but he has the courtesy not to laugh. Or maybe he is just frozen in amazement. Anne comes running through the back door and cries out, “What just happened?!” I am sitting there red-handed and laughing, with nowhere to hide. It was another of those screwball scrapes that… Read More »

On Memorial Day I always think of my friend George Mangrum of Lauderdale County, Alabama. Here is his story. It needs to be told. Lauderdale County, Alabama In 1966, I graduated from a modest Alabama high school and went looking for a summer job. It was a time when the civil-rights movement was tearing the… Read More »

On Memorial Day I always think of my friend George Mangrum of Lauderdale County, Alabama. Here is his story. It needs to be told. Lauderdale County, Alabama In 1966, I graduated from a modest Alabama high school and went looking for a summer job. It was a time when the civil-rights movement was tearing the… Read More »

On Easter Sunday in 1914 Burton Davis’ house burned down. It had been built sometime in the 1800s and, according to one picture I’ve seen, was an L-shaped clapboard farmhouse on a stone foundation, typical of rural farmsteads of the time. The house sat on a rise above a small creek traced by a dirt… Read More »

Pete Cummings digs into his black Les Paul Gibson and cranks out those iconic Chuck Berry chords. “Are you ready?” I yell, and the packed house roars. “I mean are you REALLY ready?” And the house begins to rock. “It’s Open Mic night at Puckett’s of Leiper’s Fork. And we’re gonna have some fun!” By… Read More »

When I was in college, I spent my summers working in the United States Forest Service in Leadville, Colorado. Readers of this blog will be familiar with the job from earlier posts, so I won’t repeat it here. If you want to know more, you might look at my prior post, “Me and Freddie Wasted… Read More »

Today was pick-up day for a supply of groceries we had pre-ordered from Kroger last week. The usual drill for pick-up is that you pull your car up to a loading area beside the store, and a worker comes out and brings you what you’ve ordered and loads it in your car. It is a… Read More »

“When I was a boy, Happy Clark was the town drunk.” That’s my longtime friend Donnely Mealer talking. And he should know. He was born here and has spent most of his life around Leiper’s Fork. Donnely and I are both too old to be of much use to anybody, but Donnely has a quick… Read More »

This week marks the birthday of the 20th century American composer, Samuel Barber. He is known to the general public, if at all, as the composer of the beautiful “Adagio for Strings,” employed in the film “Platoon.” Barber wrote many enduring works, and may ultimately be considered the finest American composer of the 20th century.… Read More »

Our dear Leiper’s Fork friend, Laura Musgrave, is at the Tennessee legislature today advocating for state funding in support of Alzheimer’s research. She has been at it for several years. Dealing with the legislature can be lonely and thankless work, but Laura continues to fight one day at a time. She is dedicated, capable, and… Read More »

When I was in high school, my friend Will and I liked to go caving. The $5 word for that sort of thing is “spelunking,” of course, which my darlin’ Anne is only too happy to explain comes from the Latin word for — wait for it— “cave.” 1st declension, nominative, of course. Yeah, I… Read More »

Mike “Goose” Davis came in from work one afternoon, parked his truck next to Marty Hunt’s antique store, and walked over to Puckett’s for a beer. We all sat around and had a few, talking about the day’s work, and then everybody began to drift away toward home. I happened to be walking across the… Read More »

It was about this time of year in 1996, as Winter began to blend into Spring, that Bruce Hunt’s horse died. Bruce was like a father to me, and every year at this time, on a warm late-Winter day, I think of him and I want to re-tell this story. https://www.lettersfromleipersfork.com/the-old-man/    

                  THIS STORY IS DEDICATED TO THE LATE BRUCE HUNT Well, a few years ago Sam McCarthy bought himself a horse. The people who know Sam didn’t know quite what to make of it, since Sam was already in his 60s and hadn’t shown any interest in… Read More »

Anne loves the antics of our sweet horses, so she insisted that I post this story. It is true, and it is representative of many, many more just like it. It was bush-hogging time: mid-May, hot, and the thistles and weeds hip-high in the pasture. In my never-ending effort to keep the pastures open and… Read More »

Yesterday was the birth date, in 1874, of the Scottish/Canadian poet Robert W. Service, called the “Poet Laureate of the Yukon.” His subject was almost always the spell cast by the arctic night and man’s desperate search for gold. His narrative poems, such as “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” trace their lineage back through Sir… Read More »

Let me tell you about the late Ivan Walters, who lived in a nearby community smaller even than Leiper’s Fork. He was called The Professor by the few people who knew him, since he was so exceptionally intelligent and odd. Ivan carried x-rays of his skull everywhere he went. He showed them to me. The… Read More »

“I am going down to the barn,” Anne said, as she often does at night when she goes to clean the stalls and spread fresh straw for the horses. Except that this was Christmas Eve, and she added, “You know, the animals talk at midnight.” It is an old loved story from her childhood which… Read More »

Happy Birthday to Giacomo Puccini in 1858. If you’ve ever seen “Moonstruck,” you know who he is. The ensemble scene at the Cafe Momus from La Boheme demonstrates what opera can do that no other art form can: presenting many different characters singing their own differing thoughts simultaneously and in beautiful, powerful harmony. In this… Read More »

Fifty-one years ago, at the close of 1968, the nation was battered by riots, assassinations, a horrible, mis-guided, and unwinnable war, resignation of a president, a riotous Democratic National Convention, and a feeling of powerless malaise among the young which led many to “tune in, turn on, and drop out.” Then, as the end of 1968… Read More »

OK, it’s Christmas time, and it’s time to try to figure out what to give to your friends and family members. You hate to go to town, and you wouldn’t go to the mall on a bet. And all the places you usually shop– like the hardware store and Home Depot and Tractor Supply and the… Read More »

 [This is a true story, but I’ve changed the names to avoid embarrassing my friends.]  You see, there’s a young man in Leiper’s Fork named Eddie Franks. He’s an electrician by trade, and a hell-raiser by avocation. He’s really a sweet guy–  handsome and young, with a  rich head of hair–  but when he drinks… Read More »

Barnwood used to be as common as fresh breezes around Leiper’s Fork. I’m talking about rough-sawn oak and poplar, unpainted, and weathered on someone’s barn to a beautiful silver gray. It’s what gave our rolling, rural countryside the soft character of human habitation.  It didn’t seem useful to anyone in those bygone days, and it… Read More »

We had a guy on the Forest Service crew named Gerry Pavlick who was a rodeo rider. He’d ride in an amateur rodeo somewhere almost every weekend, hoping to earn enough points to join the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. I went with him from time to time. He was cowboy to the core– tight, high-hitched… Read More »

The Country Boy Restaurant, an institution in Leiper’s Fork for decades, has big glass windows facing out on the middle of town. There’s not much to see out there but tourists these days, but in the old days there was a lot to see if you sat there with a morning cup of coffee and… Read More »

Louis Brown “Brownie” McMillan grew up in Leiper’s Fork in an extended family so complicated that I never truly understood who they all were. He lived in a very nice farmhouse down by the creek furnished with all manner of Tennessee Primitive antiques. He was a wonderful cook, and he grew the finest vegetable garden… Read More »

Baseball season ended last night with the benighted Washington Nationals defeating the powerful Houston Astros in a brilliantly played 2019 World Series. Baseball at this level of play often bursts the metrics of probability and becomes a game of outliers– of heroes failing, and of journeymen, almost forgotten players performing critical plays. The Nationals were… Read More »

Stinkey is sitting at the counter in the Leiper’s Fork Market having his lunch. Stinkey is a rough old boy, in overalls and a dirty bill cap, from up in Kingfield, a historic backwoods enclave on the mountain above Leiper’s Fork. Kingfield is a place where growing marijuana has replaced moonshining, and where fighting cocks… Read More »

From the early 1960s until the 1990s, there was a bluegrass show held down in Cave Springs, a beautiful wooded holler about ten miles south of the Boston community. The show was free and open to all comers, but most people knew that they should not try to perform unless they were known to the… Read More »

When I was a boy, I discovered the Chicago Cubs. Most years, the Cubs lost more games than they won, but they played in a very old stadium on one of the most beautiful fields in baseball. Their suffering fans were baseball purists, so for a budding ironist like me the Cubs were a perfect… Read More »

I went to school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. That was in the 1960s and 70s when Nashville was seething with talent and creativity. Mickey Newberry and Kris Kristofferson called it “a little Greenwich Village with an accent.” I was a liberal arts student at Vanderbilt, with a double major in Philosophy and English.… Read More »

On this day, far back in 1886, the Louisville Colonels played major league baseball as a member of the National League. Louisville no longer maintains a major league team, but it is still a great baseball town– It is home, incidentally, to the craftsmen who make Hillerich and Bradsby “Louisville Slugger” bats, which every boy… Read More »

My back-fence neighbor Richard McLaurin knows a lot of stuff— interesting stuff to be sure, but just stuff nonetheless. He particularly knows a lot of stuff about chickens. He keeps an assortment of them in his back yard ( now there’s a story), and he loves to study them and talk about them. He even… Read More »

This is Debbie Fox. She bakes marvelous homemade cakes and pies for the Country Boy twice a week. She is married to Randy Fox, part of the extended Fox family from up on Bending Chestnut ridge. For years, Debbie’s husband Randy sang in the Fox Brothers, a local Gospel quartet. They had a brush arbor… Read More »

Today, July 22, marks the birth of Raymond Chandler in 1888. Several years ago I won second place in a national “Write Like Raymond Chandler” contest sponsored by the Library of America to launch its re-publication of Chander’s complete works. These were my entries, the first of which won the second place prize. The Fated… Read More »

“Letters From Leiper’s Fork” will not have any new posts for a while. But there are over 100 posts there already– all true stories about life in The Fork, pictures of local people, lots of music, stories about me, and just a touch of social commentary. I hope you’ll go back and read some of… Read More »

Yesterday,  Southern California was struck by the rolling waves of a strong earthquake. The San Andreas fault was flexing its muscles. When I heard the news, I was reminded of an experience I had on a hike years ago out to the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers, deep in the red stony deserts… Read More »

Gene Brewer, our next-door neighbor for almost 30 years, passed away last month. He is another connection lost to the old Leiper’s Fork. Gene was a highly respected man in the community—a charter member of our Table of Wisdom at the Country Boy, and a member of the board of directors of the Williamson County… Read More »

“It ain’t me. It ain’t me. I ain’t no Fortunate Son”–  John Fogarty Here is the virtually forgotten, but universal tragedy of my friend George Mangrum, who died in Vietnam because he was “No Fortunate Son.” Please read it and remember George on this Memorial Day. For Memorial Day  

My dear and lovely friend Rachael McCampbell knows how to pick ’em. Two years ago she charmed a man named Curtis Stewart into marrying her. She picked a good one in that case. I was delighted to see Curtis fall under Rachael’s spell because he relieved me of the duties of doing Rachael’s yard work,… Read More »

Everyone in Leiper’s Fork has been mourning the passing of Bruce Hunt this week, for over 30 years our community’s finest man. Everyone has been remembering what he was like and grappling with ways to express their feelings about him– I certainly have been.  The best way I’ve found to honor Bruce is to remember… Read More »

I wish I had a picture of the late Junior Walls, something that would reveal his stocky strength, the Native-American cast of his skin, and, most of all, his piercing blue eyes. He could bore a hole straight through you with those eyes if he was displeased about something.  And it seems he was displeased… Read More »

Here is a re-posting of “Pully-Bone,” a true Leiper’s Fork story: https://www.lettersfromleipersfork.com/pully-bone/

In Nashville, everyone is a songwriter. Their songs may be rarely recorded, but they’re songwriters just the same. Waitresses, bartenders, clothing salesmen and car salesmen, carpenters, and the man who fixes your washing machine. I’ve known all types. I know doctors who write,  lawyers who write, and even our state senator does, when he’s not… Read More »

Reese Smith and I were sitting in Puckett’s having coffee last week when a man came in we’d never seen before. He stood out in the usual Puckett’s crowd because of his appearance and the way he carried himself. He wore an expensive cattleman’s hat, pressed jeans, a white shirt and waistcoat, and, most impressively,… Read More »

It’s Opening Day! It is the holiest day of the year for students of baseball. “Time begins on Opening Day,” as Thomas Boswell writes. It is a day when we gaze to a horizon six months and 162 games distant, and prepare ourselves for the long struggle to come. It will take that long for… Read More »

What you will see herein is the only United States Forest Service ship ever launched on the San Isabel National Forest in Central Colorado. In that respect, it is unique and, as we will learn, it was short-lived. As you probably know, I spent my summers during college working for the United States Forest Service… Read More »

Yesterday was the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, who lived in Leipzig from 1675 until 1750. I could not let the occasion pass without saying something, though no one can ever say enough about Bach. Bach was virtually the inventor of Baroque counterpoint and certainly its finest practitioner. His works are vast and deep, intricate… Read More »

It all started when air began bubbling up in our toilet. We’d had a slow commode for quite a while—- after all, we live in a 100 year old farm house with a full deck of eccentricities– but this was the first time something had started coming up the wrong way. I didn’t want to… Read More »

Tomorrow is March 14, “Pi” day. The date, as Americans notate it, is 3.14, which is Pi to its first two decimal places. Pi denotes the mathematical relationship of the diameter of a circle and its circumference. (Everybody remembers “pie are square!”) But the fascinating thing about Pi is that it has far more than… Read More »

My ordeal started when Bruce Hunt strolled out onto the porch of Marty’s antique store and casually announced that Stella Martin had lost her dog. There was a stir of interest within the sleepy assemblage of people sitting around, since it sounded like something might be about to happen. For people like us, living in… Read More »

Jake Butcher was born in the small town of Maynardville, Union County, Tennessee, in 1936. He was a man honored, and then vilified, throughout the state. Jake’s father, C.H. Butcher, Sr., owned and operated a general store in Maynardville. C.H., Sr. was a canny old fellow, and as owner of a general store he knew… Read More »

Back when I was trying lawsuits for a living, there was a deputy sheriff in Anderson County, Tennessee, named Robert Cross–  he was chief deputy, in fact. Anderson County is in East Tennessee, north and west of Knoxville. Cosmopolitan Oak Ridge occupies part of the county, but the rest of it was deeply rural and… Read More »

Many years ago, on a late winter day like this one, my old friend Bruce Hunt and I were faced with the prospect of the death of Bruce’s favorite horse. It was a day of vivid and unusual clarity for me, as I think it was for Bruce.  I hope you will read the link,… Read More »

Several summers ago, flowers began disappearing in Leiper’s Fork.  Now, flowers don’t normally vanish into thin air, particularly if they’ve been potted, but they were disappearing nonetheless–  geraniums, daisies, and impatiens, and all kinds of other pretty things.  For the most part, they had been hanging in baskets in front of Puckett’s and the antique… Read More »

Jesse Norton Mullins, my maternal grandfather, was born in 1885 to a sharecropper family in southwestern Georgia. At a young age he drifted into Houston County, Alabama, where he “read law” with the old lions of the Houston County bar. He learned quickly and soon became a powerful old-style trial attorney, given to grand gestures… Read More »

This post is an essay published today on the literary website Chapter 16, a daily publication of Humanities Tennessee. New York Times columnist Margaret Renkl serves as Chapter 16’s editor, and it is a first-rate publlication. You should take a look at. https://chapter16.org/with-bears-in-winter/    

Several years ago, Anne and I were in New York, planning to rent a car to drive up to Vermont. As it happened, the car rental place was just behind the Waldorf where we were staying. Staffing the counter at the rental place was a lovely young African-American woman. She was working calmly through a… Read More »

Today is the birthday of Mozart, so let me tell you this: My lovely wife Anne began playing harp at a very early age, studying with Mrs. Fitzgerald “Sally” Parker in Nashville. She was a prodigy, and she was made a regular member of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra when she was only twelve years old.… Read More »

This is a post from 2017 about Commie tractors and haying back in the old days when Leiper’s Fork was a farming community. It’s true, of course. Follow this  link:  https://www.lettersfromleipersfork.com/no-commie-tractor/ 

Sometimes it’s possible to have too many buffalo in your yard. Just ask my next-door neighbor Gene Brewer. He can tell you. And it’s all true. It all started one fine spring morning when I arrived home to the sight of thirty buffalo running at a quick clip down Bailey Road. As I sat in… Read More »

Leiper’s Fork lost several of its most beloved citizens in 2018. Here are eight who come to mind, all longtime friends of mine, more of the old-timers being lost who connected the community with its roots.  As Ecclesiastes says: “All these men were honored in their generation, and were the glory of their times.” Butch… Read More »

Letters From Leiper’s Fork’s selection for its 2018 “Woman of the Year” is Anne Christeson, a longtime resident of Leiper’s Fork. She received votes from Wayne, Sweetheart, Beauty, Junebug, Blue, and Sundown, as well as Alex, Bubbles, and Barn Cat, and, of course, Walter. The only dissenting votes were from Trump’s “base”– the 15 skunks… Read More »

Contrast Anne’s belief in Christ’s birth with Thomas Hardy’s longing to believe. It is very touching. https://www.lettersfromleipersfork.com/hoping-it-might-be-so/

I found this picture of my Leiper’s Fork friend Pete Cummings last week. Pete died last summer after a three year struggle with cancer. He was about 60, far too young for a blazing man like him to die. Pete played a lightning guitar in our band at Puckett’s every Thursday night. He would launch… Read More »

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OK, it’s Christmas time, and it’s time to try to figure out what to give to your friends and family members. You hate to go to town, and you wouldn’t go to the mall on a bet. All the places you usually shop– like the hardware store and Home Depot and Tractor Supply and the… Read More »

Bob Salyer is an unusual man. He is intelligent, opinionated, and he can do almost anything. But like so many people around the Fork, he is a little off-balance–more than a little. He’s one of the coolest people I know. He came here in about 2000. He came in under the radar, so for a… Read More »

We are on the gray brink of winter. Shakespeare, in his seldom-played “Cymbeline,” has Aviragus promise his beloved Fidele as the death of summer approaches: With fairest flowers While summer lasts and I live here, Fidele, I’ll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose, nor The… Read More »

You can’t imagine how much fun the Grand Ole Opry was when it played downtown in the drafty old Ryman, before it was ripped out of the Ryman and taken to the suburbs. With a theme park attached! Ah, but such memories. A Night at the Opry  

I hope to have a new post on Letters From Leiper’s Fork next week. In the meantime, in honor of Veterans Day, you might look at my prior post, “No Fortunate Son.”   For Memorial Day  

Today is Veterans Day, a day when the world pauses to commemorate the signing of the Armistice ending the horrors of World War I. One week before the Armistice was signed, the Engish poet Wilfred Owen was killed in action. After his death Owen would become known as England’s greatest war poet, a poet who… Read More »

I love talking to people on elevators. Yesterday at the Vanderbilt X-ray center, I boarded a small elevator already occupied by three old people. One of them, leaning on a cane, was very old indeed. I said hello to everyone, and added some pleasantry about growing old and the aches and pains of time. Then… Read More »

Letters From Leiper’s Fork will be on hiatus for the next several weeks. I am about to be sucked into the maelstrom of the American health care system– Vanderbilt Hospital edition.  I’m not sure when I’ll be back, but maybe before the end of the year. I have some funny Leiper’s Fork stories in the… Read More »

Baseball season ended last night with the brilliant Boston Red Sox defeating the Dodgers in the 2018 World Series. So today is truly the darkest day of the year. Winter is upon us. We will no longer have the gentle, summer-long ebb and flow of the pennant races, sustaining us from one day to the… Read More »

When gunfire erupted in Umberto’s Clam House, Sina Essary watched her husband of three weeks throw over the dinner table, absorb three bullets to his frail body, and stumble out into Mulberry Street to die. It was April 7, 1972, in New York’s Little Italy, and Sina’s husband was no ordinary victim. He was Joey Gallo—“Crazy… Read More »

That’s me with my old friend and Vanderbilt classmate, Dr.Clark Lea, at a Nashville Sounds baseball game in Memphis. I love Clark like a brother. Always have. By day, Clark is a highly-respected surgeon in Nashville. But by night, he has served for several years as the volunteer team doctor for the Nashville Sounds AAA… Read More »

Bruce and Marty Hunt are, hands down, the most beloved people in Leiper’s Fork. I have tried many times to write about them, but I’ve never been able to do them justice, so I’ll limit what I say here, and instead attach some pictures and links to two stories about Bruce. For many years, Marty… Read More »

Baseball season concludes today, with the better teams moving on to the excitement of the playoffs and the World Series. But the small minor league clubs ended their seasons and closed their doors almost a month ago, and sent everyone home to endure the oblivion of Winter. Some of those players will hang it up… Read More »

Mr. Harding Meacham– at right, with Moon Poynor– was the son of Mr. Harold Meacham. They were called Mr. Harding and Mr. Harold respectively. For two generations Mr. Harding and his father were major landholders and political powers in western Williamson County. Most of their land is now sold, and Mr. Harding’s son, Ralph Meacham,… Read More »

On the radio today, I heard Dave Dudley singing his iconic truck-driving tune “Six Days on the Road.” I’ve heard it a thousand times, and I’ve performed it a lot. It tells a story, like so many good country songs – the story of the truck driver, which you imagine to be Dudley himself, through his… Read More »

“Hell yes, I was there when the jail flooded! I damn near got electrocuted!” That’s the irascible Charles Ladd, talking in his usual outraged voice. Charles is about 70, a small man with a barrel chest, bone white hair, and a face like fried bacon. He works as a farm hand in Leiper’s Fork, and… Read More »

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Country Boy Restaurant, the heart of old-time Leiper’s Fork. It was founded back in the 1950s by Donley Mealer and his wife Rosalee as a laundromat and snack bar. (It was also home to some illegal “payoff” poker machines in the back. Puckett’s had them too, as… Read More »

We’ve had rain and gloom in Leiper’s Fork this afternoon, as Autumn starts to arrive. The weather has put me in mind of the 2nd Movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto #23, a desolate but beautiful piece. The concerto was written in 1786, five years before Mozart died. It is one of the magnificent piano concertos… Read More »

I stopped into an obscure Music Row bar at about 3:00 o’clock this afternoon. There was no one in the place but the bartender, looking bored. So I sat down and we struck up a conversation about his career as a songwriter. He hadn’t had any cuts, like 99% of the other writers in Nashville,… Read More »

William E. “Moon” Poynor is the patriarch of a family in Peach Hollow which includes his wife, Irene, son Douglas and his wife Claudine, son Chris and his wife, daughter Brenda, grandson Robbie and his wife Tracy, and great-grandchildren Will and Hayley– plus other family members who have moved away that I never knew. Moon… Read More »

All these people are friends of long standing. They all have their stories, but I have not been able to compile them yet. There are also many other people I have not yet posted about. They will come later.

These are a few summer pictures of where we live.