John Sledge
An Elegy to Spanish Moss
Not long ago, I had to attend a meeting at the Bragg-Mitchell Mansion on Spring Hill Avenue. Having a little time before...
Tedious on the Mud
Getting into or out of antebellum Mobile by sea wasn’t easy. No one involved with maritime traffic then was completely happy with the...
Steamboatin' on Mobile River
Steamboats were the defining objects of antebellum Mobile. According to one contemporary list, there were 50 of them working the local waterways....
Eyeing the Sparrow
In the weeks before my father’s March 2001 passing, he began jotting notes about his Port City boyhood and love of natural...
The Stakes: 1814
In the late summer of 1814, a year after the massacre at Fort Mims and five months after the Creek defeat at...
French Plantation Life on the Mobile River
Throughout the Port City’s long colonial century (1702 - 1813), there were plantations all around the Bay area. These were not like...
The Mississippian Period
Long before Europeans first trod these shores, Native Americans were here. In the beginning, they were simple hunter-gatherers, subsisting on...
Grit Lit
Tom Franklin burst upon the literary scene in 1999 with the publication of his award-winning short story collection “Poachers.” He followed up that...
History Repeats Itself
Charles McNair calls me on a rainy Saturday afternoon after I’ve left him several messages. He’s in Miami on a job, and...
The Canoe Fight
This month marks the 200th anniversary of one of the most storied incidents in Alabama history, the Canoe Fight. It took place...
