June 22, 2026

Orange Beach, Alabama, is a lot like other beach-vacation towns: high-rise hotels and condos lining the water, fast food, pricey seafood restaurants, teeshirt and souvenir joints. It has the white sand and the surf. Of course it’s the Gulf, not the ocean. We got there as storms gathered, then the rain came.

The idea developed in an odd way. Last summer we took the grandsons to Lambert’s Café, a heavy-Southern food place in Sikeston, Missouri, where the servers throw warm rolls to diners. Yes, they do, it’s on their website at https://throwedrolls.com/ The kids got a kick out of it, most folks do, it’s always packed. Lambert’s has a restaurant in Foley, Ala., near Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. We knew we should go.

Orange Beach is a long drive, about 500 miles from home, but we were in Nashville for the family reunion, which we thought would make it shorter. But Alabama is a long state. On the map the trip down I-65 looks like a straight shot. It’s around 90 miles from Nashville to the state line, then nearly another 400 to Orange Beach.

Like all Southern states, Alabama is mostly rural, farms, pastures, small towns.   The interstate passes quickly through Birmingham, once but no longer a major steel-producing city and Montgomery, the state capital. Before reaching them, and thereafter, I-65 is a path through a blur of forest and occasionally farmland and clusters of barns and warehouses. It’s deep backcountry, probably the way the locals like it.

The GPS mysteriously routed us off I-65 just north of the tiny settlement of Fort Deposit. We discussed, intensely, whether to follow the directions, but it appeared other vehicles were complying, so we did. They quickly disappeared on local roads, we were alone on two-lane highway 185, which winds eerily through woods and clusters of mobile homes and deserted shacks for 12 miles before leading back to ’65 at Greenville.

We left the highway again near Barnett Crossroads, taking state road 113 into Florida and due south on U.S. 29. We watched nervously for local sheriffs as the speed limit bounced from 65 to 55 to 45, then 25. I studied my map. We cruised south, ever south, trying to correlate the GPS directions to the map. We slipped from local highways to city streets through McDavid, Molino, Cantonment, small towns, then smaller towns.

We pulled off the road a couple of times to reorient. Eventually we emerged from the boondocks near Pensacola and found a westbound state road. Water and dunes suddenly showed up, then the beach towers of the Gulf, the high arching bridge back to Alabama, finishing an eight-hour trip.

Like most beach resorts, Orange Beach is a grid network, a main highway running parallel to the beach, intersected by side streets packed with hotels, shopping, eateries, amusements like minigolf and stuff for kids. An actual town does exist, stretching inland from the tourist playground. We learned what should have been obvious: that the place got its name from orange groves that used to occupy private plots. The Gulf winds aren’t kind to the oranges, which ruled out commercial orange farming. But the soil is fertile, and the story is that a single Orange Beach tree once produced 2,000 oranges in a season.

On our first morning, on the murky pond outside the hotel, dozens of giant turtles rose to the surface, waiting for scraps tossed by guests. They swam close to the railing, eyes bulging creepily, then submerged again. Later, an alligator appeared and lay perfectly still, as if eyeballing the turtles—and the guests.

The town’s efforts to lure tourists don’t end at the beach. We read about “Bamahenge,” a replica of England’s Stonehenge surrounded by a dinosaur park. The boys love dinosaurs. From Lambert’s we drove probably 20 miles of rural roads to find it: a deserted clearing in dense woods where fiberglass rocklike structures are arranged in the pattern of Stonehenge. A knock on the fiberglass gives a hollow sound. A path leads through the sweltering woods to a half-dozen fiberglass or plastic dinosaurs. We didn’t stay long.

A hundred or so teenagers arrived at the hotel on buses from Lafayette, Louisiana, for a church camp. They packed the dining room, lugging their backpacks and wearing earphones and teeshirts displaying quotes from Scripture. They overwhelmed the Domino’s Pizza next door for hours and held Bible study in the hotel lobby. Only in the Southland, I thought.

On our last day we made it to the beach. The surf conditions flag was red, snapping in the breeze, warning bathers. The sky was gray, a scattering rain pelted the sand, the Gulf of Mexico/America (take your pick) incoming tide crashed against the sand, slowly eroding the edges of the man-made beach. As the sand washed away, I guessed the city or county or state would soon be trucking in fresh sand to keep the tourists coming.

Other beach visitors were scarce, no doubt because of the stormy weather, which I failed to check before proposing the trip. Our 12-year-old grandson and I walked east for a while along the waterline, feeling the warm Gulf surf wash over our feet. A few brave folks ventured in waist-deep. A fellow cast his long surf-casting rod. The rain picked up, we could see others lugging their towels and umbrellas toward the street.

We followed, hunched low against the wind and rain. That afternoon we were trapped in the van by a monsoon-like cloudburst. I pulled over and parked as the rain obscured the car next to us. Afterward, as we glanced at the sky, angry clouds extended from the horizon. We ended at a Fifties-type diner, the Sunliner, where the servers wore Fifties styles, oldies blared from the sound system. Tourists looked over antique Fords and Chevies parked outside.

We got underway about 7 AM on back roads to I-10 into Mobile. I pushed for a stop at the USS Alabama Memorial on Mobile Bay, nestled among the oil refineries. The Alabama fought in the Pacific, supporting the Marianas, Philippines, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa campaigns. After the war she was decommissioned. In 1964 Alabama was towed to Mobile for her new career as a museum ship. When the Navy reactivated its four Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s the ship was cannibalized for parts.

 We skipped the ship tour, anxious to hit the road, but stopped at the Aircraft Pavilion and snapped some pictures. We cruised past the oil tanks, inhaling the rich aroma of America’s energy industry. It was the business end of the beach trip. The rains returned, we pushed on.            

June 15, 2026

We picked up the grandsons and headed for I-40 and slipped through the western North Carolina peaks and the rebuilding of the Pigeon River overpasses. We passed Knoxville and headed into Midstate Tennessee, crossing the pretty Caney Fork River four times, possibly five.

The target was Mount Juliet in Wilson County, just east of Nashville and site of a reunion of the Harper family, which traces roots to an Irishman who as a teenager left the Old Sod in 1857 or 1858. While still a teenager he fought for the Confederates.

Michael Farrell mustered out at war’s end with no rack of medals or recognition. He managed to buy some land and got into farming. He married Bridget, they had ten children. Their kids had kids, and so on. Eventually, Harpers were and are found all over Tennessee. Sandy’s uncle Pete Harper lived to 95. He and his wife Elrose had six. Mike, the third son, organized the reunion.

Saying “yes” to the reunion conveyed not exactly a plan, more of a vague understanding that the trip was no family social drop-in. Inevitably, it was a pilgrimage into the past. Like other Southern places, Tennessee loves its history, revers it, luxuriates in the virtuous and the nightmarish. We stayed in Mount Juliet with Mike, a dedicated scholar, not only of the Harper family story, but also of the vast reach of history that leads us to understanding of our lives.

Mike revealed a sampling of hard truths, the mostly invisible, hardscrabble details of the lives of ordinary people of which history is composed. He showed me three books of a four-volume opus, The Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaires which, strangely, he was able to buy on Amazon. It’s available for $50. The books, published in 1985, are a catalogue of answers to questionnaires sent to some 1,600 Tennesseans, obtained between 1915 and 1929 by two Tennessee State Library archivists.

Two forms of the questionnaire were distributed to these elderly gents, all in their seventies or eighties. The questions sought personal information, name, birthdate, birthplace, family background. They probe the mens’ (they’re all men) lives, like date and place of enlistment, details of service. The questions explore awareness of the war’s cause, the horror of slavery, whether the men owned slaves (very few) or knew slaveowners—again, very few.

Most, like Michael Farrell, were farmers, their fathers were farmers, their mothers and wives cooked, sewed, cleaned, cared for children, often five or six or more. They were low-ranking enlisted men who fought in many battles, suffered serious wounds. After the war most returned to farming, often to poverty.

The answers were unedited, rough and raw, showing a few years of school, sometimes a few months. One remarkable man attended the U.S. Naval Academy; when the war started he abandoned the Navy and enlisted with the rebels. Another said he himself had been a slave, he didn’t know his age or where he was born, but he knew where he had fought. Yes, the Confederates had black soldiers.

The books, the names in alphabetical order, draw excruciating detail about private lives in those tragic years, halting, pained commentaries written decades after the fighting ended.

The next day Mike finalized his reunion planning. He packed his detailed family-tree display boards, old photo albums and documents. He bought food, packed the gas grill and table coverings, made last-minute calls.

Sandy and I drove with the boys into the city and stopped at the veterans cemetery near Madison. We walked a bit and found the gravesites for Sandy’s mother and father, a Navy veteran, and older brother, who served three Vietnam tours and died young, his death attributed to Agent Orange exposure.

We parked near the State Capitol and climbed the dozens of steps to the entrance and got through security. The massive, somber, church-shaped building was quiet. The governor was absent. The rock-solid Republican legislature recessed after passing a “redistricting” measure that reshapes the state’s lone Black-majority 9th district in Memphis as a safe Republican district, pushing the state’s longtime Democratic congressman to retire.

The Capitol’s statuary recognizes the state’s warlike past. Outside, Andrew Jackson on his steed looms above the north view of the city. Nearby, World War I sharpshooter Audie Murphy aims his rifle at imaginary Germans. In the second-floor corridor, busts of Jackson, segregationist President Andrew Johnson, and Alamo hero Davey Crockett stare down at visitors.

The Capitol isn’t all about combat. The second floor displays a bust of Sampson W. Keeble, the first Black member of the General Assembly. Also shown: an engraving recognizing passage of the 19th Constitutional amendment, which establishes women’s suffrage. Another depicts Black men voting after passage of the 14th amendment, which guarantees citizenship to all persons born in or naturalized in the U.S, and the 15th, which guarantees the right to vote.

As in other places, history starts fights. In 1987 the Sons of the Confederacy demanded removal of a portrait of Governor William Brownlow, a one-time defender of slavery who changed his thinking and supported Reconstruction while in office (1865-1869). In 2021, over protests, a bust of Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest was moved to the Tennessee State Museum.

We climbed back down the outside stairs past the giant Jackson and Murphy statues. Their bold stories didn’t register with the 1,600 veterans who wrote their answers decades after their service.

Like other ordinary people across America who served in all of America’s wars, they fought and suffered. Books weren’t written about them. Their lives created histories, of the agony of war, in suffering, but also humility and dignity, stories that teach and inspire. 

June 8, 2026

The Swamp Rabbit Trail faded into forest. A half-mile from where I stood, silhouettes of a few walkers and cyclists wobbled forward through a cavern of green. This was two or three miles south of Travelers Rest, the semi-cute, touristy village some 15 miles north of Greenville. 

I had started at the trail’s northern terminus, which meets the end of a lonely country road three miles north of the town. Thick forest leans over the asphalt. A patch of light shows a quarter-mile distant. In 15 minutes a highway appears, the trail follows in parallel. A single walker appeared a couple of hundred yards ahead, then a runner moved by, a tall thin guy. I passed Carolina Embroidery, across the highway I spied a long flat warehouse, signed as “GRACE CHURCH.”

Twenty minutes more took me into the center of Travelers Rest. Traffic picked up on the highway, which is Main Street, as cyclists flew by on the trail in both directions, along with runners and parents pushing strollers. A digital gauge fitted with a camera standing next to the trail offered a count of passersby.

The city of Greenville built the trail along an abandoned rail line about 20 years ago, pushed by local hikers and nature lovers. The project went through some hiccups, financial problems, land-use issues, local opposition. But in the end it’s an asphalt path. Construction amounted to grading and paving. Two cars can’t fit side-by-side.

I read that people started walking the trail in 2008, although it didn’t officially open until 2010.  “Swamp Rabbit” was a nickname for the no-longer existing Greenville & Northern railroad, which ran from Travelers Rest to Greenville.

The trail surface is mostly level, so popular with walkers, runners, folks with strollers, cyclists. They’re out there for the fresh air, fitness, and scenery, in any order, any season, dawn to after dusk. It’s a touch of nature without the hassle, just concrete and asphalt, no rocks, roots, poison ivy, snakes, or other unpleasant elements of the outdoors. In parts there are mosquitos.

In these weeks following the melanoma work, my days grew long. You can only read so many books and magazines, walk around the block only so many times. I pushed the distances out farther, eight, ten miles (On the Road May 25). The state park was off limits. I added to my share of light household chores, folding clothes, cooking meals, or at least heating them up.

Amidst all those time-killing things, I sat in the house. Outside the scruffy grass of the unmowed lawn had grown thicker since a heavy rain. Our little plot of shrubs accumulated weeds. I thought then of the trail, which bisects the county, northwest and southeast, into wilder, gentler places.

I could start at the center and head outbound and return. Or aim at a longer distance, from the northern terminus, hiking southbound as far as possible in five or six hours, through the mill district and into the suburban flow of strollers, cyclists, and walkers, which intensifies closer to downtown. I checked with a few others, no takers. This would be a solo project.

Sandy went along with the idea, although she had other things going on that day. Early Thursday we navigated through a maze of winding country byways to find Tate Road, a short, deserted strip surrounded by silent forest. The trail’s end intersects with the road. No signs or markings. We had a quick kiss, I trudged forward.

I followed the asphalt—all you have to do, the trail is idiot-proof. Traffic picks up, the highway becomes Main Street. The trail continues parallel to Main past a driving range, a restored Victorian home, now a lodge, a brewery, some tourist businesses. Then into the woods.

The wooded stretches are serene columns of green and deep shade. The pedestrian and bike traffic thins and disappears, the trail extends into haze. Cyclists yell “Left,” the walker jumps. I learned to stick to the right-hand fringe. Here and there a house shows up. I try for long strides, the woods inches forward, sunlight breaking through the shade every few hundred yards.

The trail crosses a half-dozen streets north of the Furman University campus. Vehicles slow for the trail traffic. Lean young guys without shirts race by, training for cross country. The pretty campus lake and bell tower and the soccer stadium come into view. Then back in the woods for a while. Rail tracks appear to the east. A half-dozen freight cars sit next to a big sign, “Berea,” an unincorporated place. Warehouses and factory yards line the trail behind chain-link fences.

Here the Reedy River, which eventually flows through downtown Greenville, appears as a narrow muddy stream on the east side of the trail. A factory wall shows a colorful painting with the magical legend, “We rise by lifting others.”  

At about ten miles I pass the Swamp Rabbit Café and Grocery, a chic health-food hangout, coffeeshop, and playground. Cyclists pull over for coffee and beers, parents watch kids on swings. I sprawl at a picnic table and pause for five minutes to gulp water and electrolytes. The Reedy widens a bit.

Traffic picks up as the trail moves through the old mill district. Sturdy multilevel brick structures that once housed busy textile mills rise on either side, some as abandoned hulks, others already turned into condos or offices. Further along, men and machines are at work, bulldozers and excavators pushing huge heaps of Carolina clay. Warning signs show up, the trail detours into Unity Park.

The park is pretty, a monument to Greenville’s late-arriving spirit of racial tolerance and regret for decades (about a century) of Jim Crow politics. Nicely landscaped ball fields and play areas border the trail. The Reedy flows faster, crashing over rocks through downtown. The trail becomes a city promenade, lined by expensive hotels and restaurants. It follows the river into shaded Falls Park. Kids, barefoot, tiptoe across the rocks.

My pace is slower, I feel the warm sun on my shoulders. I make the turn after Cancer Survivor Park, a lovely, poignant spot, then press on past the Veterans Memorial, breathing deeply. Another turn, at 14 miles, leads into fashionable Cleveland Park.

Moms are watching kids at the big playground at the edge of the Park. I push on along the trail extension under the bright sun. The forest thickens again, a quiet jungle of kudzu. My strides are shorter, at 15 miles, five hours. I turn and hoof it a half-mile to the zoo, Sandy is waiting. I look back. The trail still beckons, casting its spell. Another time.