The steadfast Carolina marsh tacky holds a unique place in our state’s heritage and in the hearts of the riders who value them as the perfect hunting partners.

There’s nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse.
—Ronald Reagan

December In The Lowcountry
It’s a cold, blustery December morning. Three horsemen lean into a biting wind at renowned Oaklawn Plantation. With hollowed horns used to signal the other members of the hunting party strapped across their backs, they ride through widely-spaced stands of fire-blackened longleaf pine, the horses beneath them near invisible in the thick underbrush and tall grass that has sprung up since the last time these woods burned. Their quest? Heritage and deer. Trailing a pack of eager dogs, the trio periodically drops out of the view of the standers placed strategically along the edges of the block of woods, only to emerge further downrange. Quietly weaving in and out of the thick underbrush, their movements take on an almost dreamlike quality.

Then suddenly, a whitetail breaks from cover. Whoops, hollers, and cracking whips shatter the morning’s calm. A cinematic blur of movement swirls through the trees. The horsemen rally the dogs to drive the deer toward standers and soon a salvo of shots reaps a deer.

A second drive gains three more deer, but one wounded buck flees, running hard towards a flooded cornfield managed for waterfowl, with the dogs in close pursuit. Two blows on the horn light a fire under the horsemen. Brothers Ed and Rawlins Lowndes and David Grant ride after the hounds in pursuit.

Rawlins Lowndes, commanding the hounds, rides Grant’s marsh tacky, “Sage,” and Grant rides “DP.” Ed Lowndes rides his tacky, “Laboka,” captured from a wild herd on Hilton Head Island. They have the right horse for the task at hand. For a solid week before the hunt, heavy rains have drenched the Lowcountry. The land surrounding the cornfield this morning is a muddy, obstacle-filled morass. Saplings, low-hanging limbs, tangled vines, armadillo holes, bushhog amputees—small-tree stubble—and thick, tall grass make the going rough for any horse. The marsh tacky, though, is not any horse.

The deer plunges into the flooded field with hounds in hot pursuit, and Rawlins Lowndes, carrying a shotgun borrowed from one of the standers, pounds around the edge of the dike surrounding the field, zigzagging between small trees and dodging low-hanging limbs. He urges Sage up the embankment, and up he goes— ten maybe fifteen feet straight up—through thick grass studded with perilous holes.

Lowndes and Sage reach the far bank just ahead of the deer. Is a clean shot possible? On top, the dike is a narrow sliver, and it’s a long way down to the bone-chilling water. Lowndes weighs his options as the deer turns back, narrowly flanking the dogs. By this time, David Grant and DP have caught up, and Rawlins hands off the shotgun to Grant, who gallops off, trying once again to cut off the deer’s escape route.

Back home in the Pee Dee, Grant loves “ripping” — using the horses to flush deer and shooting them from the saddle. But not just any horse will do. It takes a very special horse like DP, one not easily spooked and calm enough to let his rider fire with accuracy. As the deer catapults up the dike, Grant closes in. BAM!
DP doesn’t even flinch.

A Horse for A Kingdom
Lowcountry hunting on horseback resonates with tradition, and that agile breed, the Carolina marsh tacky, boasts an enduring legacy as well. “Tacky” comes from an English word meaning “common” or “cheap.” Hogwash. A small band of men (and women), among them David Grant and Ed and Rawlins Lowndes, knows the horse is worth a king’s ransom. They hunt deer and wild hogs as men before them did—from horseback, and they fully intend to keep hunting atop the marsh tacky a South Carolina tradition.

The Lowndes family has hunted on horseback for five generations. Grant owns and operates Carolina Marsh Tacky Outfitters near Darlington and breeds tackies. He brought three of his horses to the December hunt at Oaklawn, meaning something like 147 marsh tackies were elsewhere that day. The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy estimates that fewer than 150 pure marsh tackies exist, though breeders and advocates for the horse like Grant are trying to change that.

Somewhere over the airwaves, an anthem plays for the marsh tacky, Procul Harum’s “Conquistador.” The song fits. As early as the 1500s, Spanish ships anchored along South Carolina’s coast. Their cargo included measles, small pox and chicken pox, but it also included fine-boned horses, a measure of absolution. The Spaniard’s colonies failed, and the would-be colonists left their horses to fend for themselves near Myrtle Beach and Port Royal. “Conquistador your stallion stands in need of company,” goes the song. Company it found.

In the 1600s, stunned English explorers, mouths agape, beheld Cherokee and Chickasaw Indians riding small, rugged horses. Feral marsh tackies sought refuge in Lowcountry marshes, where they were captured and domesticated, first by native people, then by European settlers and African slaves. The even-tempered horse made a good ride for children. The Gullah tilled their fields and gardens using tacky power. During World War II, beach patrols seeking Nazi U-boats rode marsh tackies. Had spies slipped ashore, men upon marsh tackies would have been the first line of defense. No surprise there. The horse had already ridden into the history books courtesy of an earlier war.

It’s believed that the legendary Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, led his irregulars into guerrilla-like forays on the sturdy-yet-nimble horses. Marsh Tackies would have easily outflanked the British Army’s larger European breeds in the woods and swamps of the South Carolina “backcountry.” Today the horses are used to pursue a quarry that’s a bit of a guerrilla fighter itself—wild Pee Dee hogs.

August In The Pee Dee
It’s a Saturday in the middle of August, and today’s band of equestrians and hunters includes the Lowndes brothers, Grant, Richard Perdue, Bryan Stanton, Moultrie Helms, and guide Troy Byrd. Other participants in the hunt include tacky devotee Wylie Bell, a writer/designer for the Florence Morning News, and equine photographer Dwain Snyder.

A day that began in heavy fog has turned hot enough to melt pig iron in Roblyn’s Neck, a 14,000-acre tract along the Great Pee Dee River. By now, wild hogs with any sense have retired to the most unpleasant pieces of real estate possible, deep in the shade of thick scrub and briar thickets. The sun rains down, and thundering down a lane scraped from the ancient sea bottom, the horses kick up contrails that hang in the air. Time suspends as well—it looks like a scene from the wild, wild West.

“No hog rippin’ today,” says Grant, “Ripping” was coined from the sound an old buck makes when you jump him out of the bed. “Rippin’ deer,” Grant adds, is a “Lowcountry art.

“In the Lowcountry you can find tracts that haven’t been turned into one big cut-down and you can get close to the deer. In my area I still ride cut-downs. I have chaps I made for my horses to keep the briars from cutting too bad.”

According to Grant, marsh tackies are the best horses he’s found for rippin’. “They take the gunfire, briars, and blood better than most,” he says. “I will ride a cutdown with the wind coming to me and pick my way from spot to spot where I think a deer will be bedded. When he rips up, you better be quick and you better have a good horse.”

But today is about hogs, and as the day heat ups, so does the action. The land echoes with yelps, yowls, and yaps of Pee Dee curs, a dog Grant describes as the “noble Pee Dee game dog.”

“When you hunt hogs,” says Grant, “you need dogs that can think – ‘Plenty of signs, but no hogs. Where are they?’ You need a dog that can work an area and find a hog bedded down in a blowdown or more often in the middle of a hellhole cutdown. It’s tough!”

The music dog hunters love sounds out—a howling bay that signals the dogs have cornered their quarry. That epic do-or-die last stand unfolds. Somewhere afar a banshee-like squeal makes the hair stand on the back of your neck. Riding point, Grant and company gallop off, puffs of smoke bursting from unshod hooves. “Most of the time,” said Grant, “I ride point. I get the honor of being the first to bust up briars, jump a ditch, cross or swim a slough, or dodge snakes.” A good point horse, he adds, “will go to the bay on its own when it hears the dogs.”

Closer to the dogs, bedlam—pig squeals and chaotic dog vocals. Grant plunges through head-high brambles, briars, and undergrowth clawing his way to the action. There’s Bill, diminutive leader of the curs, nipping at a 200-pound sow.
Grant’s adamant about protecting his dogs. He hunts with a GPS tracking system that gets him to the bay quicker than the old days. “I often ride right into a fight if my dogs are getting cut-up from a bad hog.” Grant says he has a “pact” with his Pee Dee curs. “If they have the grit to hunt all day, fight everything a Pee Dee river bottom can throw at them, run a hog through Hell and back, and fight to the death if need be, I will do whatever it takes to get to them.” And for that task, there is no equal to the marsh tacky.

Little Bulldozers
Wylie Bell first learned about the marsh tacky when she interviewed Grant about the Hilton Head Marsh Tacky Beach Run. She ended up riding one of Grant’s tackies at Hilton Head. “The first thing I noticed,” she said, “was how easily tackies adapt to new situations. Here were these five-year-old horses thrown into a thousand people, racing horses next to a rolling ocean. And they handled it amazingly well. People were crowding around them all day, and no one got kicked or bitten or run over by a spooked horse.”

Later, Bell discovered the marsh tacky’s hardy character. “My first hog hunt opened my eyes to how tough a breed the marsh tacky is. I’m always careful to watch for fallen limbs, holes, uneven terrain, muddy spots—anything that could cause a horse to trip. On a hog hunt, you run full speed through mud and muck and cutdowns with stumps, holes, logs, and briars. The horses never miss a beat. They don’t panic when they get wrapped up in briars or when they’re mired in a bog up to their chest. Like little bulldozers, they push through whatever you ask them too.”

Grant tells his hunting partners, “Let’s hunt back to the truck.” It’s an inside joke. Too many times they’ve hunted all day with no luck. But sometimes when he says, “Let’s hunt back to the truck,” that’s when they catch hogs. But no such luck today. It’s hot and the curs pant heavily, winded. The hunt ends. It’s time to load up the tackies, those noble survivors.

Pursuing deer in December, wild hogs in August, tilling gardens come spring, racing at Hilton Head, defeating the British, patrolling for German submarines and proving to be an anchor for tradition, the marsh tacky does it all. What else can be said about this horse for all seasons as a horse pure and simple? Bell hits the nail on the head.

“The marsh tacky is simply better put together to handle riding in the woods and swamps. They’re smaller and more agile, their hide is thicker, and they have good, solid hooves. Marsh tackies are not big horses, but they ride big. They have huge hearts and sharp minds, and for people who own them, they’ll be that horse of a lifetime.”

The Eyes Of Laboka
Ed Lowndes on Lowcountry Deer Hunting
I ride into the woods along deer trails looking for a deer’s hiding places. My tacky, Laboka, will usually see deer lying in hiding. When Laboka sees one, he stops and stares into its eyes. I focus my eyes into the thicket, fallen tree, or cane patch and spot the deer. If the deer is suitable to pursue, I “jump” it, and the chase unfolds. The deer will run its course through old-growth hardwoods into Carolina Bays. The deer knows it can escape into the water and thick marsh grass where hounds can’t follow. The deer’s speed and wits usually let it escape through the standers. I ride Laboka to the perimeter to stop the hounds’ pursuit. While on my horse, I loudly crack my whip to simulate a gunshot and the hounds believe the deer has been harvested. I blow my cow horn to regroup the hounds behind Laboka who leads them into woods to look for another deer. This old style of hunting brings “fair chase” into our vocabulary. My horse’s name, Laboka, means “the mouth” in Spanish. He’s very inquisitive and nuzzles objects he finds interesting.

They’re Exotic & Closer Than You Think

My fascination with islands began with Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. The Scotchman’s novel took form when his stepson painted an imaginary island with watercolors on a cold, rainy summer day. Stevenson, looking on, began to imagine his tale. And so, from a boy’s map came Stevenson’s Treasure Island and the villainous Long John Silver who gave us the model of a pirate forevermore: a peg-leg Pete with a parrot perched on his shoulder.
Such is the power of islands. They fire up the imagination, leading us to wonder what mysteries might lie on those distant self-contained worlds.
All that mystery isn’t lost on Hollywood. Islands have long provided Hollywood and television raw material. Here are but a few: The Island of Doctor Moreau, “Fantasy Island,” “Gilligan’s Island,” and Papillon (Devil’s Island). And then there’s “Lost,” the recent TV series about the survivors of a commercial jet crash on a mysterious tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific.
We expect islands to be strange, exotic, and dangerous. In Lincoln County we are no strangers to islands. More than 100 islands dot the lake, freckles of land that seem ordinary. They don’t, for instance, nurture strange beasts or post signs warning you to keep away. Beyond the lake mystic islands are out there though, and they’re closer than you think.
Stallings Island
As the Savannah River courses toward Augusta you’ll find Stallings Island in Columbia County. The island takes its name from the Stallings culture, a Late Archaic era of hunter-gatherers. The island sits eight miles upstream from Augusta in the Middle Savannah River. The Native Americans who lived here have been referred to as “the people of the shoals.” Known best for their innovations in pottery, these people “fibered” their pottery, that is they mixed Spanish moss and shredded palmetto leaves into the clay for strength.
North America’s oldest pottery lies here, preserved by time and off limits to intruders. The island is considered the birthplace of pottery in North America. The pottery dates back some 4,500 years ago, predating farming in Georgia. The Shoals People long lived off freshwater mussels, piling up mounds of shells known as middens, well before any fields or orchards were conceived.
Archeologists discovered a massive pile of shells 12 feet tall, 500 feet wide, and 1,500 feet long on the island. Artifacts found include stone axes, shell beads, flaked “arrow points,” and “cooking stones” made from soapstones. Don’t think you can go there looking for artifacts, however. The island is protected.
This island, once known as Indian Island, contains numerous human skeletons. So many, in fact, it led explorer Charles C. Jones Jr. to refer to it as “The Island of the Dead” in 1861.
People no longer live on the island but donkeys do. The Archaeological Conservancy purchased Stallings Island and put goats and donkeys on the island to control vegetation. The Conservancy fenced off the large mound to protect it from looters.
Paddle by and you may well hear braying donkeys and bleating goats, placed there to control the island’s vegetation. “The Island of the Dead” … it sounds forbidden and it is but it’s nowhere as dangerous as …
Monkey Island
This island sounds like an urban legend. Many people refuse to believe it exists. Even people that live near this island find it hard to believe that approximately 3,500 wild monkeys live there, free ranging, no cages, no pens.
A reporter from the Charleston Post and Courier described what sounds like a scene out of Africa. “The monkeys emerge from a primeval Eden of live oaks, families grappling down the branches, ‘troops’ strutting in the underbrush like little lions, mothers carrying yearlings on their backs.
“In the mist and rain, eerie as ghosts, they surround a human visitor. They whistle like birds and screech and hiss with a sharp intake of breath. Their eyes stare with intelligence and curiosity.”
I can’t tell you where the island is because it’s federally protected. No trespassing. At all. Besides, finding it is near impossible. It’s taken some reporters years to find it. Let’s just say that south of Augusta in the South Carolina Lowcountry, monkeys thrive on a small island somewhere in the vicinity of Beaufort.
Some reports say the species there include rhesus, African green, macaque, common marmoset, Capuchin monkey, and squirrel monkeys. Other reports, and these are more consistent, say only Rhesus monkeys live there. Eyewitnesses indicate that the Rhesus monkeys, native to India, consider the island theirs. No humans dare live there. To go there is to risk being torn apart, especially if you go there during the breeding season. (Nothing worse than a jealous Rhesus monkey.)
The monkeys were first brought to the island in 1979 for the Food and Drug Administration’s Polio Certification program. Their original purpose was to test the effectiveness of polio vaccines. They were left to their own devices, namely to live and breed. Each year adds another 750 newborn monkeys to the island. The new monkeys are tagged or tattooed.
Each year 500 monkeys are taken to labs yearly. The island, according to published reports, is a containment area for the primates that Alpha Genesis Inc. uses for biomedical research. The original colony came from the Caribbean Primate Research Center of La Parguera, Puerto Rico.
The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources owns the island today and leases it to Charles River Labs out of Massachusetts through funding by the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAD). NIAD says the monkeys are used to test antibodies for things ranging from HIV AIDS to anti-bio terrorism medications.
Now if all this monkey business sounds captivating and you’re thinking you want to go down Lowcountry way and see the monkeys, be forewarned: you may be endangering your life. According to the CDC, incidents of the B virus existed in free-ranging macaques in Puerto Rico’s Caribbean Primate Research Center, which were moved eventually to South Carolina. Once transmitted to a human, B virus has a fatality rate close to 80 percent. I’m not sure those species inhabit the island, however. Reports conflict.
Another reason not to go is the fact that poachers have sneaked onto the island to hunt monkeys and the monkeys have learned to be aggressive.
I saw a report where some curious teenage boys went to the island for some hunting. Hearing a thunderous, screeching noise they looked up to see hundreds of monkeys swinging down from trees. The boys vamoosed to their boat pelted all the way with the freshest monkey manure imaginable. So, there’s yet another reason to steer clear of Monkey Island.
So, we have Stallings and Monkey Island. Chances are you never heard of either. Exotic islands are closer than we think aren’t they. We don’t need to hop an airplane and fly to other countries. We may not be able to go onto some of them but just knowing they are there makes life more interesting.
A few years back I wrote a little story about a forbidden island and it provided me an escape in my mind as good as going to Africa. Based on some experiences I had in the 1980s, it was a journey like none other.
Are there other exotic islands out there just under our nose? There are. There’s Goat Island where a man and his wife lived alone for 32 years subsisting on the land and what the sea drifted in, living outside man’s laws and conventions. And this island, too, is closer than you think, but it’s a story with a sad ending, a story for another day.

Nothing gets folks riled up like a mean old wasp flying around, and when a lot of wasps fill the air, the fun begin. I recall how much joy I got out of watching red wasps flit about the sanctuary at New Hope when I was a boy.
I knew from great personal sacrifice that a wasp sting is one painful sting, among the worst stings in fact. And so it was with keen interest that I watched red wasps flutter about in New Hope Church in the 1960s. Throughout my boyhood, I was certain a wasp would nail a member of the congregation some day giving me a memory for life.
All this wasp foolishness came about quite by accident. I was in the process of researching material for a book I’m writing on the blues and how the shag developed when I came across a 1953 newspaper with a small news item buried low on the front page. There it was. “Wasp Disturbs Church Service.”
I couldn’t read the little story without smiling. Here’s what the story said.
“A buzzing wasp came near upsetting a church service Sunday at the Ocean Drive Presbyterian Church. The church’s pastor, Rev. Howard C. Leming, in the midst of his sermon was ‘dive-bombed’ by a big wasp which came down out of the church’s rafters.
After discreetly dodging the insect’s assaults for several minutes, the harassed minister cut loose and swatted at the pesky varmint with a hymnbook. Finally the wasp flew down into the congregation and lit on the top of a bald-headed church member who swatted him into eternity.
The subject of the pastor’s sermon for the day was “Temperance and Temper and How to Control Them.” Reverend Leming said later that he was “thankful for the opportunity of illustrating his sermon with a vivid example.”
Well, there’s something about baldheads that wasps like. Maybe a gleaming pate looks like an airfield to Mr. Wasp. Maybe it sends out a secret signal that says, “All clear for landing!”
How well I remember watching a wasp come in like a glider one day to make a perfect landing on Mr. Harvey Bonner’s bald head. I was sitting right behind him with a wasp’s eye view of the matter. Though he was fully focused on the sermon, Mr. Harvey knew something was up literally. I saw just one tiny flex of a neck muscle. And then he sat as still as a stone while that wasp cakewalked around his bald head.
The wasp must have been on his head five minutes. I half expected its mate to fly down and start building a nest. But no other wasps arrived. The bold wasp that had staked a claim to Mr. Harvey’s head crawled around in tight circles, flexing its wings as if it was about to take off. It crawled north, south, east, and west. And then it raised its shiny blue tail and I just knew Mr. Harvey was about to get a jolt from Hell itself. But no, it just wagged its tail up and down like it was practicing stinging.
“Shoot,” I thought. “That wasp’s a dud.”
After sufficiently mapping Mr. Harvey’s head, the venomous critter crawled down the side of his head, stepping out onto the man’s right hear. I must admit that I was secretly praying, “Oh Lord, don’t injure Mr. Bonner but do let this wasp releaseth its stinger into yond man’s ear.”
After doing a few pirouettes on the tip of his ear, the wasp set sail and returned to the ceiling where the cycle began anew.
Now most folks would lie and say, “Oh I sure hope that wasp doesn’t hurt that fellow.” Not me. I wanted the wasp to sting Mr. Harvey, not to do him pain, of course, but to create a disturbance. I was curious as to what he might do when the wasp let him have it. Perhaps he would have been stoic and simply endured the pain or maybe he’d have shouted “Hallelujah! Praise be to God” and run outside. Or most likely he would have slapped the wasp into eternity as that fellow in Ocean Drive did back in 1953.
I don’t ever see wasps in church nowadays. One of the great steps backwards in church entertainment was the advent of central air conditioning. Sure makes entertainment in church hard to come by. All the windows are sealed shut. Central air does its job quietly and efficiently and the wasps? Well, they are nowhere to be found.
Before New Hope installed central heat and air, wasps were regular attendees at Sunday services. They’d cluster by the handful up in the ceiling where the electric cords attached to the ceiling. As other wasps joined the fun, a cluster would get bigger and bigger. Then, suddenly, it was too big! That’s when it fell toward the congregation, a swarming ball of evil.
As it fell, the wasps broke away one by one and flew back up to the ceiling. A few wasps, however, no doubt disoriented, would buzz the congregation causing great spurts of joy to fill my heart. Older ladies in hats would bat their funeral home fans about with more zest than usual, and I can assure you their eyes were not on the preacher. Oh, no. They were following every move those satanic wasps made.
And then that one courageous wasp risked being swatted into eternity by landing on Mr. Bonner’s head. Too bad it was such a dud. One of the great disappointments in my life will always be the fact that not once did a wasp sting a church member during one of Dr. Warren Cutts’ soul-cleansing sermons.
And Mr. Harvey? If you ask me, he should receive a posthumous Purple Ear for the courage he displayed so many years ago.

So here we are at the leading edge of another year, another year where many make promises to change their life in a meaningful way. How about you? Make any New Year’s resolutions?
I’m not big on making New Year resolutions. Why wait until the first of the year to make a needed change. Still, January 1 provides a definitive starting point for many when it comes to making life changes. “It’s a new year, and, hey, I want to be a better me” and filled with hope but empty on commitment they list the changes that surely will make them a new person … for a few weeks at most.
Here’s one resolution that won’t stress you out like trying to lose weight will. It won’t prove as maddening as quitting smoking, so smokers tell me (I never smoked). It won’t punish you by denying you foods you love as you try to slim down. It will, however, broaden your mind. I’m talking about reading more. That’s the one resolution I’m making: to read more books in 2011.
I was glad to see family members giving books as presents this Christmas. A good book makes a great gift. Books transport us to other worlds and other lives. And some books make for classic gifts. Acquire a small library of timeless books and you leave others a legacy they too can pass down.
Some books become prized possessions. I own more than 30 books signed by the author. They range from The Blue Wall by my old professor at Georgia, the late Jim Kilgo, to books by prominent authors and authors destined for obscurity.
Kilgo’s book, a coffeetable book, explores the Blue Ridge Escarpment that towers over the Piedmont. Rising nearly 4,000 feet above sea level, this massive granite wall stretches from Asheville, North Carolina, to Georgia’s Chattooga watershed. With Kilgo’s book in my hands, I immediately find myself on a granite cliff far above rolling hills with a convenient cup of coffee nearby, cozy rock climber that I am.
Books connect us to surprising turns of events too. Back in the 1980s, I wrote scripts for a videographer at the University of South Carolina, Milt Butterworth. How surprised I was to discover that Milt shot the video and still photography for America’s Lost Treasures, the coffeetable book that chronicles the discovery and recovery of sunken gold treasures off the coast of Charleston in 1988 and 1989.
When a storm sunk the SS Central America in September 1857, a glittering trove only Midas could dream of, tons and tons of gold bars and gold coins, gold dust, and gold nuggets sank 1.5 miles beneath the Atlantic. It would rest there 131 years.
Milt was there, the ship’s videographer/photographer, at the moment of discovery. He photographed a sea floor carpeted in gold, a discovery conservatively estimated at possibly a billion dollars. Milt later came to Columbia and I saw some of the treasure, flanked by armed guards, in person. He signed his book for me.
Back in 1989, I co-authored a book whose foreword was written by James Dickey. You have not seen a signature until you the late Dickey’s ornate autograph that covers nearly a fourth of a page. Now and then I’ll pick up that book and my mind leaps, not to the book we did, but to the frothing white waters of the Chattooga.
I have five books signed by a writer most Americans have never heard of who just happens to be one of the country’s most gifted writers, James Salter. To read his work is to journey through the intricate beauties of the English language. Take one of Salter’s books into your hands and you hold a master writer in your hand.
Salter once worked as a screenplay writer for Hollywood. To be a scriptwriter is to never be seen; you are at best an anonymous entity, a ghost, who gets a fleeting second or two as the credits roll and even worse the frustrations run deep. Bumbling directors and spoiled “stars” more often than not sabotaged his best efforts, and so one day he just quits. He walks out on Hollywood.
Consider this passage as to why Salter finally decided he had had enough of being a Hollywood screenplay writer. “There was another final script, which in fact ascended a bit before crashing as the result of a director’s unreasonable demands, and I suppose there might have been another and another, but at a certain point one stands on the isthmus and clearly sees the Atlantic and Pacific of life. There is the destiny of going one way or the other and you must choose.
And so the phantom, which in truth I was, passed from sight.”
Have you ever faced the Atlantic and Pacific of life? Ever felt unseen at some moment, a phantom? If you have, you’ll love Salter’s book, Burning The Days. It is about the life decisions and passions that make us who we are to become.
Books are not about writers and their signature so much as they are about knowledge, adventure, and insight. For a long time now I’ve not read nearly as many books as I used to. Writing demands all my time and what little time I have seldom goes to reading books. Once I get my current book project completed, I intend to change that. Books and I have been good friends for a long time and it’s time to renew that friendship. We’ll share memorable times I’m sure.
Books, like certain songs, have a way of cementing a date in time. I read Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls in a hotel in Spain in 2001 looking at mountains on the horizon out my window. I had that feeling of “being there,” and I could envision Robert Jordan in the outlying mountains lying upon pine needles spying on enemy soldiers. It was a time and a trip I’ll always remember.
Books: you can’t write about books without writing about bookstores. There was a time when you could walk into a cozy little shop where a sole proprietor sold books. Such quaint places are on the way out, the big chain stores are forcing them out of business.
Even so, the Barnes & Nobles and Books-A-Million aren’t that bad. There’s something comforting about the intermingling aromas of coffee, paper, and ink. A cold Sunday afternoon is well spent in a bookstore sipping coffee thumbing through new books you may buy.
Right now I’m reading the memoir of Keith Richards, the rogue guitar player-songwriter for the Rolling Stones. He comes across as a lot smarter than he looks and acts. His book is a good read. If you want to get a better grip on how the Mississippi Delta blues ended up in England and came back to the States repackaged as rock ‘n’ roll, read Richard’s Life.
There’s something magical, something alluring about a good book. It’s a world unto itself. It’s magical. No wonder so many people aspire to write a book. Maybe you long to write a book. Until you decide to sit down and start writing, read a lot of good books. As I tell my students, you’re only as good a writer as you are a reader.
Paper. Leather covers. Gilt edges. And now electrons. Perhaps you own a new electronic book reader like the Nook or Kindle. Fine. They can store many books. There’s just one problem. How do you get an author to sign an “e-book?” Mr. Patterson? Please sign my Nook.”
But don’t let that hold you back. Make a resolution to read more books, traditional and e-variety.
What can a good book do for you? A lot. Maybe change your life. Resolve to read more. And, besides, the way television shows are going downhill, a book offers a superior option that is always ready when and where you are.

Both added rustic beauty to the land but you see them less and less. Both spoke to man’s resourcefulness, and yet they were too simple to survive. And thus the land loses two countryside icons: fire lookout towers and windmills. Oh you see plenty of blinking cell towers but you see fewer and fewer fire towers and windmills, picturesque, but sentenced to live in the past.
How many times has a drive through the country been more memorable thanks to a windmill or a fire tower, and how sad when you come that way again and see one or both gone. The horizon loses its fading stars and is all the less for it.
I recall the remnants of but one windmill in Lincoln County; only its tower remains. As for the county’s fire tower, it stands just off the corner of Highways 79 and 378 and is visible from town, a rare thing. Another fire tower stands where the Thomson Highway runs into Highway 78, and another stands off Highway 78 near Aonia. Fewer than ever stand though and I hate to see them make that one-way trip to a place we call the past, but going they are until they are gone, gone, gone.
Growing up, we called them fire towers. I still do. The loner atop the tower was known as the “fire lookout” or “towerman,” though towerwoman is appropriate, as you’ll see. The towerman sat in a “cab” looking for telltale signs of fire. Inside the 8-by-8 foot cab typically was a swiveling chair, a two-way radio, telephone, binoculars, and maybe a small refrigerator. Of course the crucial equipment was the alidade, a surveying instrument, and a topographic map. Together, they helped the towerman pinpoint a fire’s location.
The peak of the fire tower’s reign was 1953 when 5,060 towers looked out on the land. Fire towers rose to grace the horizon as Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps put young men and World War One veterans to work during the Depression. The CCC built a lot of good things for the country, among them the great and beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway and fire towers where life was lonely at the top.
Shirley Williams knows how lonely it gets. She sat atop a Georgia Forestry Commission fire lookout tower for well over 40 years. Back in July 2004, the Savannah Morning News ran a story on Shirley. At that time, she was one of but seven operators working in state-operated towers. She manned, you might say, the Ludowici fire tower. She started out in a different tower on Highway 301, gone now, dismantled, and sold for scrap, the destiny of many a tower.
Shirley said you could see for 25 miles on a clear day. Beautiful sunsets were the rule, not the exception. “And you haven’t lived until you’ve been in a fire tower during a lightning storm,” she said. Otherwise, “up there,” she added, “it’s quiet and peaceful; not a lot going on.”
Georgia once had 360 such quiet, peaceful sentinels watching over its forests. That averaged out to well over two towers per county. Gone, dismantled, no longer standing are 188. Those active total 15. The number standing unused comes to 157. What will become of the 157? They’ll disappear because few people are willing to sit above the landscape for hours. In this economy, you’d think someone would love to work where it’s quiet and peaceful. Perhaps they’d look down on the world with new appreciation.
They won’t get the chance I’m afraid. Fire towers are falling out of favor also thanks to technology. Satellites have replaced them somewhat, but satellites aren’t as effective as you’d think. By the time a satellite spots a fire it’s well underway, and that’s not good.
Ever been tempted to climb a fire tower?
I did just once. Up all the flights and steps I went until I reached the trap door. Pushing through, I entered another world. Everything below seemed foreign. Not one for heights, I didn’t stay long. I wish now I had. Gazing down across the land is something you can do only in the mountains. And to do it from a fire tower in the flatlands is an opportunity soon to be lost in time.
As for windmills, every time I see one my mind conjures up the Australian outback, famous for its parched landscape. They spin and pump water for livestock and the farmhouse there and here too, though here it is more a rarity than ever.
These relics with their face constantly in the wind bring a lovely touch to the land. Acting also as a weathervane, they show us which way the wind blows. They invite the wind to lift water from the ground. The wind-powered blades operate a “sucker rod” that turns rotary motion into the reciprocating movement that powers an underground cylinder pump. It ingeniously pushes a water column to the surface, where it spills over into a storage tank. The depth of the water table, by the way, determines how big the windmill needs to be.
To create an independent power source, the breeze pushes the blades, which turn a driveshaft that powers a gearbox that steps up the generator’s speed high enough to produce electricity. Shockingly primitive technology.
Quiet except perhaps for a squeak now and then, windmills blend with nature to give man the most reliable, most efficient pumping machine ever invented. Windmills are so efficient and durable their basic design hasn’t changed in 120 years.
Here in the South and the states in general, the old windmills we see were built by Aermotor Windmill, a company down in San Angelo, Texas, that’s still in business. My hope for Aermotor is simple. Long may it endure.
Today I see few windmills, other than the miniature models you occasionally see in yards. And then there’s that monster down toward Augusta at Windmill Plantation.
In this era of coveting green energy sources, you’d expect to see more windmills on the horizon. Windmills are making a comeback in the huge and controversial windmill farms, but I’d love to see more old-fashioned, quaint windmills providing water and power in our homes. Maybe I’ll get my wish.
Technology is giving us what are called personal windmills. Maybe that trend will catch on and it’ll become fashionable and wise to put a small wind turbine on a nearby hill or in the back yard where the winds comes through. Wouldn’t it be nice to cease with all the hot air about the environment and global warming and simply put the wind to good use?
Still, despite the possibilities, we’ve come to this: a lesser horizon. I doubt few school children will draw a cell tower like we used to draw windmills, blazes aspinning and water apumping. No, I doubt kids draw cell towers at all, but what do I know. I was born in the last year of the first half of the last century. That’s right. You do the math.
Down along the coast, lighthouses have long garnered the glory for adding a picturesque touch to the land. Inland we had our fire towers and windmills. Now we get the garish, blinking cell towers that call attention to themselves, but memorable they’re not.
Think about this for a moment. Do you remember with sharp recall the cell towers you see driving here and there? Neither do I. Way too many, way too ugly. They look like overgrown 1950’s TV antennae on steroids or remnants of some future industrial zone spared to remind us how we put a blight on the land. But an old windmill or a fire tower standing vigilant over a green forest? You remember sights like that.