Istarted teaching high school English when I was 21 in a place called New Hope.

It wasn't really a town. It wasn't a village. It was, in Mississippi parlance, "a community" — a rural area in Lowndes County, Mississippi, with neighbors spread far and wide. However, it had a great school and several churches that anchored the community together.

At the time, I was a recent graduate of Mississippi State University and lived 33 miles away in Starkville, Mississippi. Each morning and afternoon, I drove to New Hope, crossing the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway twice each day just outside Columbus, Mississippi.

I taught at New Hope for two years, lucky enough to have the same group of 30 students both years. We got to know each other well.

Toward the end of my second year, the school loaded up a

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