Late Summer Rains on Tom Cat Ridge

I can tell that August is losing its grip on the Summer, now. The afternoon thunderstorm, growing out of the west, was all hat. Maybe a drizzle of rain, for a few minutes, and a stray lightning bolt, or two, a rumbling once in awhile... The air did cool nicely, after that, and I enjoyed an evening walk around the front yard of Three Acres Plantation, with a cup of coffee, in my bedroom slippers... Yes, like General Longstreet, I wear carpet slippers outside around the yard. My brother finds this to be terribly amusing, but with the situation with my feet being what it is, the bedroom shoes seem to work out quite well. Here at Three Acres, comfort is key.

It is nice to have your own place in the country, and I realize that few people ever get this sort of a sensation, or such an arrangement. Owning your own land, away from others and their noises, is terribly addicting, even without the slaves, and the crops, and the Big House, and all of the other accoutrements that establish a Southern plantation. Many of the Southern plantations were about the size of my place, here, with small dog-trot houses, and not nearly as many Greek Revival architectural homes, nor even the Avenel-styled mansions as Hollywood would like to have us believe. A place my size would have had about ten to twenty slaves, and I would have worked in the fields beside them, as a master, and as an overseer, and as a slave on my own plantation... It was a family business, as much as anything else, and slaves were more like family than the yankee historians would have us believe. They certainly were at Avenel house, all one hundred of them! Few people travelled more than 25 miles from their homes, in their entire lifetimes, up until the War of Liberal Aggression. People worked and fed themselves, and survived. In that attitude, one can see how the farmers would have been convinced that the federal invaders needed killing, and that right quickly. We the people were our land, and there was no separation between us, and it.

Personally, I would have never owned any slaves, I do not think. The idea of finding a wife is daunting enough! And children! I just don't know about any of that! The view is getting mighty dim from Tower 50!

My grandfather was hired-out at the age of five to the neighboring farms, somewhere around this area, and he owned the first real property that we owned, which was right here. With a 3rd grade education, he amassed the 119 acres that we all live upon, today, and he worked it with four people; himself, and his three children, one of whom was my father.

And now I have my portion of it, right here. My cousin Stacey's land backs into mine, and I do not think that anything behind us will ever be developed further, at all... at least, not while I am owner of Three Acres Plantation!