Years and years ago, my mother and I would take trips together. My favorate trip was when she and I went to Savannah, Georgia. We visited all the usual sites, including a walk-through of one of the plantations and the small shacks where the slaves had lived.

It soon became apparent that our female tour guide was well aware that we were Yankees. Although she was very polite, she couldn’t seem to help giving us what I would definitely call the “stink eye.” We were unabashed Yankees and boy, did she know it.

Her attitude soon got up my mother’s nose, and I was secretly praying that we would not start up another “late unpleasantness” as the tour guide put it. I believe that it was the tour guide’s eye-rolling that got to Mom the most.

When it came time for us to leave, we stopped to put our names in the visitors book. By this time, Mom’s Yankee blood was on a slow boil, and signed her name as “Mrs.William Tecumseh Sherman.”

Needless to say, we took off out of there as if our feet were on fire. To this day I wonder if those charming southern ladies ripped that page out of the visitor’s book. To think that my mom nearly started another civil war!