• Culture,  Lifestyle

    Some Bars I Have Known

    Seldom does one go to a bar to drink; more often, they’re the setting to something else. Pure background. I’ve been fortunate enough to spend my time at a great many different kinds of bars in a great many different places. I’ve been to a place in Alaska that is serving cold beer at 8AM on game…

  • Culture,  Lifestyle

    Bald Head Island

    Living in North Carolina my entire life, I am not sure how I spent a lifetime, no more than two hours away from Bald Head Island, and never managed to discover this amazing treasure. It is truly one of North Carolina’s best-kept secrets. It has a look about it that makes you feel you are on an…

  • Culture,  Lifestyle

    The Pig: The Quintessential Southerner

    To study the history of the pig in the South, we must start in the rolling pastures of Spain—the dehesa. The dehesa is a combination of grassland and oak savannah found in Spain and Portugal and is known for producing cork and charcoal from the trees as well as the famous fighting bulls from the pastures. But, the most treasured…

  • Culture

    Robert Johnson: Hell Hound On My Trail

    I love legends and lore and ghostly tales from the Southland, and one of the most prominent spooky Southern legends is the story of how boy from Mississippi became king of the delta blues. Robert Leroy Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, on May 8th, 1911...

  • Culture

    Ghostly Tales : The Bridge

    It’s long been said that “the darkest hour is just before the dawn,” and even before these words were first spoken, man has feared the darkness and what it conceals in its shadows. So for a man to have a desire to pursue a creature such as a duck (my chosen species) into the early morning darkness of a swamp, one must have the ability to, at the very least, suppress his fears with the reason that you are more likely to be killed by a snapping turtle falling from a cypress tree, than to be killed by a ghost. But I will never forget the morning that I began…

  • Culture,  Hunting

    Ghostly Tales Of Big Marsh Swamp Pt.2

    The rest of 2013 I did not return to this swamp, I frequently made excuses not to go. But November 2014 the ducks got too thick and once more the itch became too strong. One evening I made up my mind I was going back, but this time not by myself. I called my long-time friend Johnathon to go with me. I was careful to not sound desperate for his company, but I had decided if he did not go I sure as black berry bush has thorns, was not going into that hole alone