Remembering Florence: (Tales from a Railroad Town)

For a town that once consisted of nothing more than a shed, a pine forest and a name, Florence, South Carolina, boasts a surprisingly rich history. From the ten foot bomb dropped on a Mars Bluff farm by apologetic Air Force pilots to a record-breaking seventeen-inch snowfall, this Pee Dee hub has seen plenty of extraordinary events and famous characters. Here, William Howard Taft enjoyed pine bark stew and Herbert Hoover visited Mikado Millie—a world champion cow known for her prolific milk-making. Longtime journalist Thom Anderson lovingly recalls these hometown tales collected over thirty years of writing columns for the Morning News.