Reference my recent cotton-pickin' discussion: Readers who remember Super TV Star Tennessee Ernie Ford (to whom Tennessee Wesleyan College gave an honorary Doctor of Music degree in the mid-1960s) will recall (as one dedicated column peruser did) his favorite adjective--"pea-pickin'." "Just a pea-pickin' minute," I can hear him exclaiming. As that discerning analyst pointed out, this "pea-pickin'" instead of "cotton-pickin'" emphasizes the agricultural difference between Ford's native Upper East Tennessee and Polk County.

Valuable coins! Citizens of the Delano area, you may find a treasure trove of old money around and about. Local company-issued scrip, such as the Prendergast Lumber/spinning mill issued in the early 1900s, was throw-away trash. In fact, I can remember Aunt Blanche, who had once taught at Prendergast, had some Prendergast "money," of which she spoke disparagingly at any opportunity. What happened to her stash, I don't know. Now, however, there are avid collectors of this stuff, especially the coins. A year or so ago, a Polk County Prendergast five-cent piece appeared on eBay, to which my daughter-in-law (who was a Prendergast whose grandparents came south before World War II with TVA) called my attention.

She had bid her limit of ten dollars on it. As the end of the auction approached, it was evident that several collectors were interested in it as the bids crept up, but trying to get the coin as cheaply as possible, no one was bidding boldly. With a minute to go, I bid $101, and got it for $82. for my daughter-in-law's birthday present! So Prendergast-Wetmore-Delano old timers, check all your dresser drawers and borrow a metal detector. Collectors on eBay are waiting for you.

Speaking of old money, did you know that Polk County once printed its own scrip. When I was working on my edition of John Coffee Williamson's diary in 1954, the Stuart Sisters of Cleveland (granddaughters of John Quincy Adams Lewis, who had a two-story log hotel in Benton in the 1850s)) gave me three pieces of Polk County Script from the Civil War period. On yellow paper with black print, they were illustrated with little locomotives, though the nearest train tracks were in Cleveland at the time. Framed, these quaint souvenirs of an olden time hung in my parents’ front hall along with a silhouette of Thomas Hart Benton and some other local history memorabilia for twenty years or so before I gave them to Roy Lillard in the 1970s for the Polk County Historical Society, where I presume they are today

I am taking a two -week vacation from writing, going on a sentimental journey to England, but (for the benefit of anyone who remembers dear Vernie Lewis's prognostication that, like Stella McClary, "You'll die in Victoria Station!") I will not go to London. I will be in Brighton on the south coast, for a luncheon at Sussex University, where I studied 1964-66.

Topics scheduled for up-coming columns: Lerah Emerson, The Last Medicine Show, The Juggler and Aunt Blanche, How Benton Observed the World Premier of "Gone with the Wind," and more and more and more.