Today we took a spin over to a city called Columbia. There are many antebellum homes and plantation residences in the area and we spotted quite a few in town. There are substantial renovations in progress in the buildings surrounding the main square and city hall. The little main square is surrounded by historic masonry structures occupied by coffee shops, a record store, bakeries and the usual cute downtown stuff. Many of the nearby houses are quite pretty and well-maintained, a treat for architecture buffs like me.
Columbia is also a place where there has been a long history of discrimination against those without milk-white skin, continuing a long history of lynching right up until the Korean War. It seems those that shriek the most about liberty are the first to deprive others of their right to a fair trial by their peers before burning their houses, exercising them at the end of a chain behind pickup trucks and ultimately stringing them up. Assholes.
Columbia also has one of the two still-existing houses where James Knox Polk, 11th President of the United States, lived. He also lived in the White House. Here he lived in a nice but not massive downtown corner house in Columbia from 1818 to 1824 and we swung in for a glimpse. Polk’s second house was quite a bit smaller than our current prez’s second residence.
This is another time when we have gone to the alleged residences of famous Americans and found that almost all of the houses were actually the places that George Washington, James Polk, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis temporarily occupied, some of them staying as little as three months. Therefore, there can be many houses for George Washington, et al. We found the same to be true for the oldest house in the U.S.A., of which we have been to three.
Lotsa gorgeous birds here. We also spotted a coyote. I didn’t know there were coyotes in Tennessee.
See the pictures from today by clicking here