Dear Mr. Jones

I wonder at times, Mr. Jones, how many people know of you. Certainly they know of the town that bears your name - Jonesville. Could you have ever imagined the amount of people that now call it home, or the four lanes of traffic that speed hurriedly through?


Most go about their everyday lives with work and family, satisfied with Jonesville being a place of refueling or grabbing something for dinner. But some of us still remember the narrow two lane road that stood in front of Rosie’s Bar… Or even further in memory when it was the Farnsworth Store, the only place for miles to buy necessities…Or maybe some still remember The Jonesville Mall, with its planked wooden floors and antiques for all to see.


I wonder Mr. Jones, how many know you were the first postmaster of this town that bares your name. Or that you walked with a limp, compliments of Sherman’s Blue Army, a wound that would hinder your steps for 49 years…


Yes Mr. Jones, things have changed greatly in the last few years… But it’s changed drastically since you arrived on horseback from the thick woods of Alabama so long ago. The farmland has all but disappeared. The homesteads you helped settlers acquire are now shops and subdivisions, sidewalks and streets, all what these people call progress…


Some of the farmers have gone to farming new houses… It seems to be a better crop than beans… Some couldn’t hold on anymore… Some passed away and the land was left to the next generation to be split and divided… Sold quickly it was for the fast money of making…


And still Mr. Jones in this fast moving place there’s not even a sign marking its history… No words of your story, pressed out in stamped lettering, standing along the roadside… No words that would say your eye’s were sky colored blue, or your wife’s name was Virginia, or that your first name was John and your middle was Joseph, or that you were wounded 7 times in that war between the states… No there’s no sign at all…


Sorry Mr. Jones, for closing this letter so abruptly… But my teardrops are now falling like diamonds of sadness… For my memories are all I have left… But I’m sure this is not The Town you envisioned, so I know my tears are not falling alone…