M.B. Gibson's Blog, page 2

Four Damn Fights to a Pint

Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton stared at me from a Wanted Poster on the wall of Savannah, Georgia’s Prohibition Museum. A moonshiner, it said, designated as “armed and dangerous.” With a name like that, there had to be a story. Some readers may already have heard of Popcorn who was born in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, in 1946. He’s been an icon of sorts, representing Appalachia’s culture in books, film, and on The Discovery Channel’s Moonshiners. A bit of research took me to a fascinating world. First, that nickname. Marvin grew up rough and, as a hot-tempered young man, loved to drink. ...

Do You Suffer from Rascality?

Diagnosis: Dysaethesia Aethiopica, also known as “rascality” Symptoms: Partial insensibility of the skin; dull intelligence; physical lesions; laziness Condition: Found only in those of African ancestry A prominent physician and medical scientist, Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright, used his pea brain to identify this supposed ailment in the 1850s. He was called a national expert in Negro diseases. Once the Civil War started, he was even asked by President Jefferson Davis to serve as surgeon general of the Confederacy’s Department of the West. Clearly, his words carried weight in the Antebellum South. Dr. Cartwright believed if black or mixed people were ...

The Oldest Man in the World

The elderly gentleman sat on his cabin’s porch wearing a white apron and the jacket he claimed was given to him by General Ulysses S. Grant. “So you see, I ain’t really the oldest man in the world, as some people try to say. I’m just the oldest man in America.” Born on Christmas Day in 1820, Mark Thrash, affectionately known as Uncle Mark, died on December 18, 1943, one week before his 123rd birthday. A short time before that, Roscoe E. Lewis, who worked collecting slave narratives with the Writers’ Project, visited him at his home at Georgia’s Chickamauga ...

“Death is Not the End”…There’s the Burial

Mozart My husband and I recently re-watched the 1984 movie about the great composer, Mozart, called Amadeus. Its depiction of Mozart’s death at age thirty-five made me curious. Shown as penniless, he became sick, quite possibly poisoned, and was dumped in a mass grave. Is that what really happened to such a shining star, a musical genius whose talents were appreciated all over Europe by the time he was six years old? Pardon the pun, but I did a little digging. No one knows for sure how Mozart died. A week after he expired, one newspaper reported that his rival ...

The Human Side of Combat

Learning the story of D-Day and the Normandy invasion is as chaotic and complex as the event itself. It’s made my head spin. The only way to tackle it is in little bites, individual stories of regular people transformed into amazing examples of humanity. An 11th-century church in the tiny village of Argoville-au-Plain tells one such story. In the darkness of June 5 and 6th of 1944, paratroopers dropped behind Utah Beach with the goal of destroying a road to Paris considered critical for the German army. An intense battle ensued. Two young medics chose the church with its thick ...

Jolly Fellows Ain’t Funny

Back in the 1970s, I enjoyed lunch in an Australian outback restaurant with two guy friends and my best friend, Carol. We ate on the family-friendly side of the establishment, not in the pub which, even then, was primarily a male venue. Out of nowhere, a fight broke out and a man flew across the table directly beside ours. A product of the New Jersey suburbs, I was appalled. The guys continued eating, undisturbed. Fights happen. “What would you want them to do?” one asked. “Take it outside,” I insisted, “to an alley.” They laughed. “That would be stupid. There’s ...

God’s Acre

In 1780, the British army had laid siege to Charles Town in South Carolina and won. They used the city as their base to rampage the entire colony, with plans to use a succession of victories as a catalyst to move north, ending these ridiculous hostilities once and for all. In 1782, fires burned before the small city of tents where the women known as camp followers prepared meals for local militiamen and soldiers alike. Winters were mild in the South, yet a warm, spring breeze was surely welcomed. On this day, six men appeared at the Charles Town Garrison ...

The Measure of a Man

When examining a life, how do we judge its merit? Was the person a hero, a villain, or somewhere in between? From ancient times, people have opined on standards for a man’s character. Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius said, “The measure of a man is the worth of the things he cares about.” Nineteenth-century American philosopher, William James, said simply that effort determined a man’s measure. President Joe Biden had a folksier take. “My dad always said, ‘Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up.’” Graydon Carter, the Canadian ...

The Mafia, NASCAR, and Walgreens

It’s human nature. From the youngest to the oldest of us, the forbidding of fruit increases its allure. A wise person once said of Adam and Eve, “The mistake was forbidding the apple. If they had prohibited the serpent, Adam would have eaten the serpent.” So, in 1919, the United States ratified a constitutional amendment banning alcohol. How did that go? Quite predictably. This thirteen-year period is the subject of a fascinating gallery in Savannah, Georgia, called The Prohibition Museum. My husband and I recently visited, and we learned plenty. In particular, the many ways people maneuvered around this anti-alcohol ...

My Intimate Connection With Stephen King–Maybe

Many stories are told of the haunting of 17Hundred90, an inn built that year in Savannah, Georgia. None can be confirmed. The version shared by the hotel is of Anna, who was brought to the city as what we might call a mail-order bride. Imagine the girl, not much older than a child, tossing across the waves alone, traveling to a strange land. With no photos to study or videos to watch, she likely had little idea how her future looked. Few would blame her for befriending a young sailor during the journey. As one might guess, the pair fell ...