COOL SPRING CEMETERY,
(Minor
Hill Hwy on west side of Hwy) GILES COUNTY, TENNESSEE
Back in the 1950s when my childhood family of 8 traveled back and forth from
East Colbert County Alabama to Culleoka in Maury County Tennessee to visit both sets of
grandparents, once we had a flat right at the Cool Springs Church. We pulled
over into the parking lot to change the flat tire out. In those days a flat tire was a common annoyance.
Dad (Paul Austin b. 1912) got out of the old tan 1952 Mercury and began the tire
change procedure. He began to tell a "truism" that stays with me even to this
day to us kids who were trying to help or were just standing around. He said "this flat
tire,
while it is delaying us and is no fun to deal with may have been thrust upon us by
our God to allow us to avoid a much worse calamity further up the road such as a
bad car accident.
Having said that the tire was changed with a good attitude and we kids also
discovered and sipped the spring water there at Cool Spring (not sure I'd do
that today). After the tire was
done we loaded back up and continued on the trip and Cool Spring became just
another distant memory in my childhood days of old. We traveled on north up Hwy 11 thru
Pulaski then drove up Hwy 31 to Stiversville, in Maury County then turned eastward toward Culleoka on Valley Creek Rd.
To begin the trip we traveled from Hatton School Road in east Colbert County in Alabama
to 2nd Street then across Wheeler Dam to
Lexington Al. and connected to Hwy 11 up the road. This was all about a 70 mile trip.
The moral of the story is count your blessings. Look around you and you will see
it could be or could have been much worse.
It also strikes me odd that 55 years later I would remember this remote event
much less come back here to survey this
cemetery and then even discover distant relatives (Phillips) are buried in this cemetery.
My
goal is to photograph as many of the tombstones of Giles County as I possibly
can. So let the work continue under God's watchful eye.