Piedmont Porchlight Stories — Mrs. Delphine’s Dixie Boarding House They held the meeting in the Baptist Fellowship Hall, because that was the one place in Piedmont big enough to hold both the peopl…

Piedmont Porchlight Stories — Mrs. Delphine’s Dixie Boarding House They held the meeting in the Baptist Fellowship Hall, because that was the one place in Piedmont big enough to hold both the people and their egos. Folding chairs filled the room like metal cornrows; the coffee urn gurgled in the corner as if dreading what it was about to witness.

Eli was the second son of old Jeremiah, who owned the finest stretch of bottomland along the Coosa River this side of Birmingham. It was good, rich land that smelled of black earth and promise. Eli…

Eli was the second son of old Jeremiah, who owned the finest stretch of bottomland along the Coosa River this side of Birmingham. It was good, rich land that smelled of black earth and promise. Eli had a brother, Hezekiah, who was the firstborn and carried himself with the solemn gravity of a crown prince waiting for his throne. The trouble began, as it often does, not with a great evil, but with a small, proud thought.

Well, sir, it does seem to me that the human animal is constituted in such a way as to fret most over the smallest of his obligations. I recall a case in point, concerning my old acquaintance, Aaro…

Well, sir, it does seem to me that the human animal is constituted in such a way as to fret most over the smallest of his obligations. I recall a case in point, concerning my old acquaintance, Aaron McCarley. Aaron was a man so scrupulously honest he’d return a borrowed feather to the chicken, with interest. And this peculiar virtue led him into the grandest calamity of his life.

Piedmont Porchlight Stories — Mrs. Delphine’s Dixie Boarding House By the following night, the railroad men were wound up tighter than a banjo string. Every tale they’d told all day had gotten taller, and every description of the ghost had become more elaborate, until one version included spurs, glowing shoes, and a faint whistling of “Dixie.” Finally, Cap’n Leland Potts slapped his palm on the depot counter and declared:

With a grip that would have shamed a hydraulic press and a heart that weighed more than the suitcase itself, Walter B. Hendricks descended the steps of his brownstone and turned his face, grimly, toward the great, rumbling unknown—which, in this case, was the Tenth Street bus station. The suitcase, a venerable leather veteran of many a sales convention, contained all that remained of Walter B.

Piedmont Porchlight Stories — Mrs. Delphine’s Dixie Boarding House If there’s anything railroad men can’t abide, it’s the notion that something strange happened beside their tracks without them knowing about it. The Seaboard line ran on timetables, tradition, and the collective stubbornness of men who treated trains like kinfolk; loud, temperamental kinfolk who weighed 200 tons and refused to stop for anybody’s nonsense.

Cora Fagan was not simply Piedmont’s oldest weather observer. She was Piedmont’s most creative weather observer. Folks said she could look at a cloud, tilt her head to the side like a confused blue jay, and predict the entire week with more confidence than the Birmingham meteorologists who had a Doppler radar the size of a barn. Accuracy was another story.

Well, now, it so happens that in the town of Piedmont, Alabama, there was a feller by the name of Atticus Hunt. Atticus made his yearly living in the three weeks betwixt Thanksgiving and Christmas, operating a lot he called, with considerable optimism, "The Evergreen Emporium." It was a fenced-off patch of mud and misery on the corner of Ladiga and Barlow, piled high with northern firs and pines that smelled powerful enough to cover the scent of damp cotton and desperation common to the season.

The first thing Cliff noticed was the quality of the light. It was not the timid, greyish pallor that normally leaked around the edges of his bedroom curtain, hinting at the slow unveiling of the e…

The heat in the parlor of Eighty Oaks wasn't just a weather condition; it was a character in its own right, a heavy, sodden blanket of humidity that had been draped over the story by That One Upstairs—the one who typed their misery. Inez, her spine straight and rigid as a preacher's judgment, fanned herself with a copy of yesterday's doom-laden prose.

The first thing Cliff noticed was the quality of the light. It was not the timid, greyish pallor that normally leaked around the edges of his bedroom curtain, hinting at the slow unveiling of the e…

The first thing Cliff noticed was the quality of the light. It was not the timid, greyish pallor that normally leaked around the edges of his bedroom curtain, hinting at the slow unveiling of the eastern sky. This was a bold, brass-gold light, full and immediate, striping the floorboards from the wrong window. The window that looked west, over the backyard and the gnarled oak tree.

Piedmont Porchlight Stories — Mrs. Delphine’s Dixie Boarding House It is a truth widely known in Piedmont that nothing good ever happens after 11 p.m. Not a single respectable event has been documented between those hours and sunrise, except the birth of one child who grew up to be a tax collector, proving the rule rather than breaking it. But Mr.

Well, sir, I have been asked to relate the sentiments of a turkey concerning that annual autumn institution called Thanksgiving, and being of a literary bent—though my reading has been largely conf…

Well, sir, I have been asked to relate the sentiments of a turkey concerning that annual autumn institution called Thanksgiving, and being of a literary bent—though my reading has been largely confined to the seeds scattered near the fence-post—I shall endeavor to do so. My name is Plato, a title bestowed upon me by the farmer’s wife, who has, I confess, a classical education and a heart of flint.

Piedmont Porchlight Stories — Mrs. Delphine’s Dixie Boarding House If there was one thing certain in Piedmont, Alabama, it was this: no ghost ever got to haunt a house in peace. The morning after the phantom made his courteous debut in Mrs. Delphine’s hallway, the sun wasn’t even up before the rumors were. They were spotted galloping down Center Avenue like wild ponies, kicking up dust, ignoring fences, and stopping at every screen door to say howdy.

The heat in the parlor of Eighty Oaks wasn’t just a weather condition; it was a character in its own right, a heavy, sodden blanket of humidity that had been draped over the story by That One…

The heat in the parlor of Eighty Oaks wasn't just a weather condition; it was a character in its own right, a heavy, sodden blanket of humidity that had been draped over the story by That One Upstairs—the one who typed their misery. Inez, her spine straight and rigid as a preacher's judgment, fanned herself with a copy of yesterday's doom-laden prose.

Piedmont Porchlight Stories — Mrs. Delphine’s Dixie Boarding House By sunrise, Piedmont, Alabama was a town in motion. Not productive motion, mind you,but the chaotic, over-caffeinated, benevolent foolishness only a Southern town can muster when it thinks the dead need help. And at the center of it lay: a ghost with a purpose, a boarding house with rails in the basement,

Well, sir, you wish to know of the barber shop, and I shall tell you of it, for there is no institution, save perhaps the Senate, that collects so much wind and delivers so little substance, and does it all with a sharper instrument. The establishment in our town was run by a gentleman by the name of Jedediah Scruggs, though we called him Old Jed for brevity's sake, and because he was old as the hills and looked to be hewn from one.

A Piedmont Porchlight Story by Ol’ Big Jim & His Faithful Scribe If you ever find yourself walking down Center Avenue just as the sun throws its last handful of gold dust across the rooftops, y…