Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Post #8 - Alabama Abstracts

In researching the history of this rural backwater where I now live, I often come across little story snippets that I just fall in love with. I have a bunch of these. I may have to trot a few out if I'm to meet my goal of 41 posts by August 7th.


The local equivalent of the poor house was the pauper farm. Back in the 1930s, one of the residents was an old blind black man named Lewis, a former slave. His wife was buried in the pauper cemetery on the property. Lewis would often visit her grave and keep it clean. He would feel his way to the grave, locating it by a broken lamp he'd placed there. Other residents would move the lamp to other graves in order to trick Lewis into keeping those graves clean too.

1 comment:

Pico Alaska said...

Angela called this a Southern Gothic anecdote. She's right, cuz there's sure a good little story or poem in this. You probably can't discover any more about what really happened without doing a lot of legwork. So that leaves you w/ having to write (or at least wanting to read) a piece of fiction.