Tales from the road: Cockfighting, cats and mansion exploring

Bethel Place in Columbia, Tenn.

               Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter | My YouTube videos

Saturday’s history adventure begins in the farm office of my early 80ish pal Campbell Ridley, a quasi-town historian of Columbia, Tenn., aficiando of Arby’s jamocha milkshakes and master of playful cats named Marco and Polo.

Ridley, a descendant of Confederate Brig. Gen. Gideon Pillow, has a delightful sense of humor that he deploys liberally with friends, family and assorted hangers-on. Exhibit 1: A sign that greets visitors on a wall in his farm office.

Original blue poplar floors in the mansion

“Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body,” it reads, “but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting, ‘Holy shit, what a ride!’”

I vote yes!

Over the past several years out here in Civil War history-rich Maury County, roughly 50 miles south of downtown Nashville, I have explored with Ridley the remains of Ashwood Hall, the mansion of Confederate Gen. Leonidas Polk and his brother that fire destroyed in 1874; walked gingerly through slave cabins on his daughter’s property; examined weed-choked graves at an off-the-beaten path cemetery at the base of Ginger Hill and breathed in the awesome aroma in the ancient smokehouse at Pillow’s Clifton Place plantation.

A cockfighting chair

On this fabulous afternoon, we make our way in Ridley’s truck to Bethel Place, the circa-1845 Greek Revival-style mansion of Gideon Pillow’s youngest brother, Jerome Bonaparte Pillow. Ridley’s first cousin, Eva James, has called it home for the past 60 years. She lives here with her husband, Don.

Inside, I marvel at the original walnut doors and blue poplar floors, outsized paintings of family members and massive mirrors. The 14-foot high ceilings spark a discussion of the ungodly sum it must cost to heat/cool this huge home. The place even has an elevator, added long ago by Eva James' father.

But the piece de resistance of my inside tour is a mundane piece of brown furniture in the parlor.

“This,” Ridley says, “is a cockfighting chair.”

Folks sat in the chair, flipped down the tray and placed their bets on it on the fighting fowl — an activity unfamiliar to me growing up in gritty Mount Lebanon, Pa.

Outside, I marvel at the Ionic columns — yup, they’re original, too — and the antebellum stone wall, the handiwork of Jerome Pillow’s slaves. Naturally, I send a drone up in the air to take in the Pillow era outbuildings — the kitchen, law office and smokehouse — as well as the mansion from 250-plus feet.

A drone view of Bethel Place shows (clockwise from left) the law office, smokehouse, kitchen
 and mansion.

Attached to a stone pillar, a metal ring intrigues us. Did Gideon Pillow — a goat of the Rebels’ defeat at Fort Donelson in February 1862 — tie up his horse at this spot while visiting Jerome? I wonder where the armies skirmished near Bethel Place, a few miles from the Columbia square.

Back at the farm office, Ridley HQ, my tour guide whips out his phone to show off a video of Marco and Polo scrapping like professional wrestlers.

What a great day.

Let’s keep history and catfighting — but not cockfighting — alive. 👊

Marco ... or is this Polo?

Polo ... or is this Marco?