Long before there was a gallery to curate, babies to raise, classrooms full of students to inspire, courses to pass, miles on the pavement to log, or basketballs to bounce, for little Trista, there were books to read.
Before the interview even began, only minutes after meeting Freeman McKindra, I knew he was an incredibly kind and well-respected man on Lane College’s campus.
It’s 3:00 on a cold and rainy February afternoon — two days before Valentine’s Day, to be exact. The rain is incessant, and parking is sparse on North Liberty Street in Downtown Jackson.
Thank you to JEA for sponsoring the Spring 2024 Issue of Our Jackson Home’s journal.
My mom would always call her friends a colorful thread in the tapestry of her life, and she would always tell us the same is true for our friendships.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Obviously it’s a question you get asked less and less the older you get — “What is your dream?”
Maybe you’ve walked by and spotted us rehearsing through the wide-open windows at Turntable Coffee Counter, seen the light spilling onto the shadowed sidewalks outside, or heard the occasional shout of laughter drifting down the mostly deserted downtown streets.
The American Dream is a national narrative that has been retold and repurposed for more than 100 years, often as a way of keeping hope in a difficult world.
As you enter the city limits of Jackson, Tennessee, on either direction of Highway 45 there is a sign that gives passersby a brief insight into a school, a team, and a tradition that has its home just two miles from the South Fork of the Forked Deer River. If you continue driving south from that river, you will cross the bridge just past the fairgrounds, and enter the territory known as Hawk Nation–the domain of South Side High School and the Hawks.
Michael Smith has always been a singer. When we met up to share some Shawarma House and talk about his music, Smith—also known by his stage name, Almost Isaac—told me that when he was a kid, it was a near-impossible task to get him to stop singing. “People couldn't shut me up. We had a rule at my kitchen table that if you start singing, you get three warnings. On the third warning, you had to go back into the back hallway of our house and scream at the top of your lungs for 45 seconds. And I was the only person that ever had to do it.”
El Ganadero, tucked into the long plaza near Tractor Supply on Carriage House, is in many ways
like most Mexican restaurants in Jackson–familiar decor, familiar menu items–but in the ways
that matter, it felt much more like my favorite Summer Ave. dives in Memphis, where you can
almost bet that the lower quality the dining room furniture the better the pastor is going to be.
