Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia: Inferno

The Real Shame in Slavery

Slaughter in the Trenches

'Sores All Over His Legs'

"Uncle Virgil Latham fought in World War I. He was gassed, and he got trench sores, and his feet and legs never did heal up right. He had them bandaged and had sores all over his legs. Uncle Virgil was in the Veteran’s Hospital more than he was at home. He would come out there and get out there on that farm and he’d try to plow. He had a pair of young mules and -- boy, I’m telling you -- they were big ol' mules! About 1,200 or 1,300 pound mules. There wasn’t nothing those mules wouldn't move. He bought himself a riding turning plow, where you could just go around and around and around with them and turn around when you got around to those bogs. He’d just ride all day, all he had to do was sit up there and hold the lines. Of course he could do that. But if you got out and started walking in that plowed ground, why those feet and legs they would just feel solid sore. It was what he called trench sores, or something like that. It was caused from standing in the mud as a soldier. That’s what caused it. And he also was deaf. He had problems with his lungs. In fact his lungs are what killed him. He’s buried in Cedartown, on the hill just above where the Central of Georgia railroad yards are. Just back west of there. That cemetery on your right, going from the Central of Georgia railroad through town, it’s there on your right." -- T.J. Latham

Ascendancy of the Mule

Mules gradually displaced oxen and horses as the work-engines of small, southern farms as the 19th century progressed:

"By the twentieth century, mules were a standard fixture on southern cotton farms and plantations of all sizes. The number of mules in the region increased until 1925, when nearly four-fifths of the mules in the United States were in the South ... the mule remained a constant, as well as a central, aspect of southern agricultural identity. This is evidenced by the fact that farm size in the South was often based on the measure of a one-mule farm or a two-mule farm." -- George B. Ellenberg, Mule South to Tractor South: Mules, Machines, and the Transformation of the Cotton South

Memory Bubbles

"We think we can put our memories away in a box and we can go check on them later and they will be the same, but they are never the same; they are these electro-chemical bubbles that continue to bubble over time." -- Andrew Jarecki

Bad Teeth

"After the Depression come, that's about the time Daddy's health got real bad, when he left Acworth, in about 1931. In fact, they didn't think he was going to live — they thought he had TB. They just knew he was going to die from it. But it was his teeth! Because his teeth were so bad. But they left Cherokee County to come back to Haralson County. He said, 'Well, if I'm going to die, I'd rather be in Haralson County.'" -- Denver Bishop

"They thought it was the mill that was ruining his health. They told him to get out of the mill and get back on the farm, get back in the country. And he did. But when he had his teeth pulled he regained his health and he was fine." -- Mildred Bishop Munroe