Childhood Memories       

     The small town of Courtland where Lisa grew up is rich in southern history. Nestled between Decatur and Florence, many old plantation homes still grace the quiet streets. Now, all but forgotten, Courtland was once a safe place for a child to grow and thrive.

     The town spans only two city blocks and storefronts boast original exteriors. On many street corners slave blocks of grayish white stone still stand. Dim reminders of how slaves were once auctioned to the highest bidder, most purchased by plantation owners in need of  field workers.

     Many times Lisa paused at a street corner, her hand lingering on the stone’s  cool surface. How had the slaves felt? What humility's did they suffered? How had they handled the heartache of being torn from their families? Although, sad thoughts for a child, a remarkable part of the area's southern heritage and a much-needed reminder of the past.

     Lisa remembers fondly, gatherings in the Town Square. Playing ball with friends, wadding in the public fishponds, watching old men while away an endless summer’s day whittling cedar into amazing shapes. Touch football, and Halloween. Teens congregating on the Square, water balloons filled and ready for battle. Eggs thrown until all were exhausted. Erasing all traces of mischief in the square's fishponds before going home. No worse for wear, and all done in good fun in sight of the police department. An acceptable way for children in small town America to pass time. A time lost, a time mourned.

     Lisa digresses to nineteen-seventy to her first year in Courtland and growing up in a two-hundred-year old house. Segregation came about, thrusting the South into turmoil. But the storm passed as storms always do.

     Rumors echoed of  crimes committed in Courtland’s past history and how the guilty were punished brings to mind the ominous…Hanging Tree….

     Whispers that the last hanging tree in the county once graced her families front lawn. Lisa remembers staring out the window to the gaping hole where buttercups sprouted and she wondered...

     Naturally inquisitive,  she questioned old timer's in the community and discovered that the scarred earth in her front yard was all that remained of a tree, its canopy, large enough to play baseball beneath the shade, had been where criminals took their last breaths,met their maker. 

     For many years the tree stump, snarled and twisted, lay to the side of the house, awaiting its demise. Each spring  Lisa's father  piled brush and leaves on top the stump and set it on fire, repeating the process until nothing remained but black and gray ash.

     Lisa loved her childhood home and cherishes the memories. Even the eerie noises that come with an eighteenth century plantation house and its history. Unexplainable sounds that go bump in the night, objects that move for no apparent reason…footsteps … when no one else is there…

     But a fond reminder of how people lived in a gentler and slower paced era.